Compliance as a Value Driver – Nyasha Gutsa on the Future of Construction Risk

Rishi Srivastava (00:00)
Welcome to Finance at the Job Site, the podcast where construction finance meets the field. I’m your host Rishi Sivastava, founder of Beiing Human. In each episode, I sit down with construction CFOs, controllers, owners, project managers, IT leaders, ERP consultants, and industry experts to uncover how they connect the back office with the field, choose and implement technology, manage cash flow, and drive profitable projects.

Whether you are running the numbers, leading the team, or designing the systems that keep projects moving, this is your place to learn what’s working, what’s broken, and what’s next in construction finance.

Rishi Srivastava (00:37)
Today our guest is Nyasha from Billy. Welcome Nyasha.

Nyasha (00:42)
Thank you, Riffey.

Rishi Srivastava (00:43)
NASA first section is on your career journey and leadership. You’ve gone from finance and accounting to product leadership at WeWork and Occupier and now to founding Billy. What motivated you to build in the construction compliance space?

Nyasha (00:59)
Yeah, and first of all, thank you so much for having me in your podcast. I’ve been watching it, you know, online and see a new episode every week as well on LinkedIn in particular. So great job with that as well. And I guess just to jump straight into it, a lot of people asked me this question on just what motivated me to build in the construction compliance space. It’s what I’ve known all of my life. That’s

really like the area I’ve hung out. So buildings and how they’re operated, how they’re built as well. And what I just kept seeing in every role is I watched operational teams and finance teams duplicate the same work and still miss risk or things like, like we missed an invoice or a lien waiver. Somebody can’t get paid or they don’t have sub-insurance. These are all

roles that I have done by myself. And in working at some of those technology companies like Procore or WeWork or Arquipier, I kept seeing the same patterns across the products themselves, which is, you know, things get stuck not only between the teams themselves, but also just the systems themselves. So I wanted to essentially build around that. so Billy really exists to turn unnecessary headache.

is really insurance. So not only just like the COI itself, but also the endorsements. They may have very hidden language like, hey, like this person cannot work in a condo, or they cannot do hot work. And the COI might be checked beautifully, but there’s no coverage there. So we turn all of this into a real workflow that protects margin and also speeds up pay.

Rishi Srivastava (02:44)
Yeah, compliance, even though it sounds boring, it is an important aspect of managing a construction business.

Nyasha (02:50)
Absolutely. Yeah, it’s necessary because on every construction project you’re required to have insurance. And I think one of the most fascinating things about it is if you look on a construction site, is software for general contractors to use. There’s also software for subcontractors to use. But a construction company is not just made up of, you know, GCs and subs and the people that work there. There’s also third parties.

Rishi Srivastava (02:56)
Mm-hmm.

Nyasha (03:16)
like lawyers, accountants, insurance companies, brokers, carriers. But there’s no experience in any of those silos today, project management systems, even some categories of our software that can really connect those third parties to a construction site. And that’s what we really do.

Rishi Srivastava (03:34)
⁓

wow.

of the school you trained future product managers. How did teaching sharpen your own school as a founder and leader?

Nyasha (03:45)
Yeah, I mean, to be honest, teaching forces you really like to make fuzzy ideas very crisp. I think for me, it gave me a repeatable playbook, which is really you have to define the user, quantify the job to be done, really sharpen the muscle of shipping small, and then measuring loudly with your team as well.

And I think a big part of it is also discipline, which is the discipline shows up in how you ship those features and how you run customer onboarding. And in each one of those parts, there’s a learning experience there too as well. So the results are really mostly going to be around faster cycles, making clear decisions, and building a product that speaks the customer language. And I think I’ve also tried to exemplify that.

Rishi Srivastava (04:19)
Thank you.

Nyasha (04:39)
with DILT as well.

Rishi Srivastava (04:40)
Yeah, I teaching this in my view is a very hard skill. Even if I know something, I have some programming background, it’s hard for me to teach that to a person who’s sitting next to me.

Nyasha (04:52)
Yeah, I mean, I think even if you’re teaching, you’re also learning as well because people learn in completely different ways. Some people are really good at learning visually like myself, and then some are really good at just, you know, they can read, take instruction and be able to learn. So being a teacher isn’t just about imparting the knowledge, but it’s also how to impart that knowledge as well.

Rishi Srivastava (05:21)
Yeah, make good sense. The next question here for you, Nia, says, you’ve also been a pilot. Does aviation discipline influence how you approach building technology for construction?

Nyasha (05:33)
Yeah, I’m still involved as a pilot as well. So I am also a flight instructor. teaching adults is something that I think I have gotten a grasp around as well. And I think everything teaches you things like checklists, because if you don’t do that, you will end up hurting yourself or others as well. It also teaches you redundancy and

in very complex situations as well. So we apply the same to software, run clear ⁓ playbooks, example, fail safes, or designing for edge cases that can occur in construction especially, right? Because not every construction does the same type of builds, meaning that even their software is completely different. And so we also can take that analogy

of, know, EVE and checklists because just like in compliance, small misses can become very expensive problems.

Rishi Srivastava (06:33)
Yeah, I mean, you know, I run a software company too and not having checklists have cost us big time, you know.

Nyasha (06:42)
Yeah.

Rishi Srivastava (06:43)
Looking back, what career moment gave you the confidence to take the leap and start Billy?

Nyasha (06:49)
That’s a really good question. I think part of it was just talking to a lot of general contractors during COVID. A big part of it was they did want innovation around payment compliance. So if you look at COVID, is the question of, we start writing checks and move towards digital payment systems? So you can see the rise of softwares like Levelset, Procore Pay.

Flash Tracks, GC Pay, right? Those are a category of product known as construction payments. And I worked on Procore Pay as well. And so what I didn’t foresee was just more the rise of we need something that connects us to insurance, connect construction to insurance as well. And it just kind of started becoming clearer and clearer, know, late COVID.

when interest rates really started rising. And so that means the replacement costs of assets or a person gets hurt increases and it’s translated in higher premiums for a lot of general contractors. So this product category, I think really inspired me to just be like, hey, like I want to be in this space where I can build something that isn’t just like, you know, a system, but it’s a system with a lot of business logic.

behind it that can run as a service. And we can also connect insurance with construction in one place. So that’s when I realized it’s not a tooling gap, it’s a system gap. And that was Spark.

Rishi Srivastava (08:17)
you

When we think about Billy, your primary users, are they these COI brokers or are they actually construction companies?

Nyasha (08:34)
Yeah, so there are construction companies that you get an insurance document from somebody in insurance, like a broker. In some cases, if you’re small enough, maybe you have a carrier as well. So these are things that live between systems and teams as well. And you need software to do that. You need software to be able to do that efficiently. And you also need software

Rishi Srivastava (08:55)
Mmm.

Nyasha (09:00)
to surface their risk that’s within, you know, these hundreds of pages as well.

Rishi Srivastava (09:04)
Right, right. So the next section is on construction, finance, and compliance. is tackling construction insurance compliance. Why is compliance such a persistent pain point for contractors and finance leaders?

Nyasha (09:18)
Yeah, I think it touches on the last point that I had, is compliance lives between systems and teams. You can have Procore and your ERP, right? And they can issue contracts and sure, like you can integrate them to do things like, hey, like is the COI received or is it expired? But who is going to actually read all the documents that the broker issues? Because actually,

The most important things aren’t the, isn’t the COI, it’s things like is there an action over in this policy, right? It’s things like, they even allowed to do those operations? Are we named in this insurance documents? Because God forbid if one mistake occurs in your job site and those insurance documents from your subcontractors were not correct, like this pain is going to be like worth more than the subscription.

of Billy itself. back to the point, compliance is a pain point because it lives between systems and teams. Brokers issue those documents, whether they forward them to their subcontractor or upload them in a system like Billy. Somebody in the construction company, such as a project coordinator, project manager, they have to receive those documents, track them in

various systems, the accounting system, right? They can put it in the project management system. And then the finance team releases payments based on those documents, right? Do I feel confident to release documents because they are compliant for the contract? And that’s where the truth gets lost, right? Like compliance is really cross-functional by nature, but the data model, you know, has been…

a point solution today by design, but it’s not as well.

Rishi Srivastava (11:08)
Yeah, the data model needing to flow across teams and systems. ⁓ The next question is, switching certificates of insurance platforms is notoriously painful. What’s the biggest mistake companies make in that process, and how does Billy simplify it?

Nyasha (11:13)
Yeah.

Yeah, we see it all the time when folks switch to Billy, for example, and people think really around file migration, but not really around requirements as a migration, because the reason why you’re tracking those documents or managing them is because there are requirements that were set in contracts as well. So the biggest mistake we see is people wanting to move the PDF itself, but not the logic.

⁓ We as a business migrate the brain or the logic requirement groups. We want to know about the endorsements. We want to know how you go about doing renewals, how you go about doing things like, like we’re in warranty because in some states there is a law called the statute of repose where the general contractor is still liable for up to 10 years after construction has ended.

And the risk is transferred through insurance, right? So we want to know all of that. So we have you covered. And so we automate ⁓ all of this, including vendor outreach, so that the last mile doesn’t burn your team. Cheers, all.

Rishi Srivastava (12:36)
Yeah, I think I really like the point about the requirement migration. I’ve never thought of a system migration like that. So construction CFOs and controllers often see compliance as a cost center. How can they reframe it as a value driver?

Nyasha (12:52)
Yeah, it’s a very particularly interesting question and I have two answers for that. One is, practically speaking, if you’re a construction CFO, when you bid for a job, one of your line items is insurance. But you’re really just covering your company’s insurance, right? Like how much you pay across your coverage lines divided by however many projects you have.

If you pay a million dollars in premiums per year for all your four lines of coverage and you do 10 projects, ideally you want to charge off $10,000 to each project for insurance. However, the thing that’s missing there is the amount of time that is spent by project coordinators, their accounting team, project managers, whoever touches vendor compliance for insurance.

And that is a cost that should be also factored into that insurance cost. So compliance management for subcontractors should be passed on to the owner as part of the project cost. It is possible for general contractors, and I’ll give specific examples. There are general contractors who will, for example, figure out the cost of billing and essentially

pass it back to the project owners as a technology tool because it is helping them to become more efficient. It frees up time for the project coordinators and it also reduces risk for everybody else. The second part to answer this is really to think about compliance in three Rs It’s really risk, the receivables, and also relationships.

When we think about risk, it’s really about, am I going to have fewer claims if I were to do compliance management correctly? Although they really call it risk management. And then is this going to prevent things like change order disputes or contract disputes because they’re contracted in different requirements that maybe a vendor can’t meet? And then when we think of the receivables,

It really is about reducing business friction. So that means people get faster approvals because we’re doing risk management correctly. And the relationships end up becoming, subs get paid faster. Because there are places you can go to across the country where the subcontractors will say, we love working with XYZGC, but they pay slow. And the pay slow just creates a lot of friction.

between your trades and the general contractor themselves. But then there are some places you go and they’ll say, love working with these people because they pay us faster. They’re managing their risk. They’re using technology to streamline things. So subs get paid on time because expectations were transparent as well. So this is what I think of how CFOs can reframe compliance from being a cost center to being an actual value.

driver. Depends how you want to do

Rishi Srivastava (15:53)
Hmm.

Yeah, yeah. GCs have a reputation to protect. They’re risk managers and downstream subs think that you’re not paying them right on time. It’s a big problem.

Nyasha (16:06)
Yeah, everybody wants to get paid on time. It’s all about cash flow.

Rishi Srivastava (16:09)
Right.

Like, yeah, if you’re not protecting your vendors cash flow, mean, they’re going to be mad. So the next question here is, you’ve worked on enterprise solutions for some of the world’s biggest real estate and construction companies. Where do you see the biggest disconnect between finance leaders and field teams when it comes to compliance costs?

Nyasha (16:18)
Yeah.

Yeah, I think that the finance teams see aggregate risk and the field feels like today’s schedules. So if a system flags risk without context, to just say like, hey, the person is non-compliant, the field teams are going to hear things like, this is a blocker for us.

They need a why and the fix in one place. What’s missing? Who do we call? And how does it impact things like ⁓ payment and site access? I’ll give an example. So here at Billy, we built the Procore site panel to surface status and tools that project managers live in, not just financials. And we wanted to mirror what happens in

payment workflows for finance and also site access for superintendents as well. So, same facts, but just like tailored views, a superintendent, project manager, they could have Billy up in the field and they can see it even on the schedule. It’s like a bouncer list who can come in. There’s reports that are tied to the manpower log. So we can tell you who came on site.

and where they compliance there. And you have time to take action as well, but this is how we kind of like reduce that friction and get people to work together in one place.

Rishi Srivastava (17:59)
friction reduction. What role do you see data analytics playing in protecting and preventing compliance risks before they turn into financial losses?

Nyasha (18:10)
Yeah, a big part of it is about detecting patterns as well and finding what I call leading indicators. So patterns are catching or identifying risky endorsements. Like they have an action over clause. And you can see a patent in maybe type of contracts, type of subcontractors, or even down to, well, we see more noncompliance with these policies.

Rishi Srivastava (18:17)
Mm-hmm.

Nyasha (18:35)
and endorsements. It kind of gives you an idea of maybe your subcontractor base is struggling to meet your insurance requirements because insurance is a hard market right now as well. So we help those things. Other leading indicators could be things like renewal velocity, like how fast are vendors submitting their new documents after policy is expired or is about to expire.

⁓ outreach response or even open items that are tied to upcoming payments that are going to be issued as well. So in a big way, like, you know, some of the things that we do here are we use ⁓ official intelligence to extract those endorsements, exclusions, and we try to tie those to, you even the form numbers as well, try to benchmark by trade.

and provide some of that reporting to our general contractors as well.

Rishi Srivastava (19:30)
For those ⁓ listeners who don’t understand action over clauses, could you explain?

Nyasha (19:36)
Yeah, so it simply means how do I simplify action over clause? Basically, like, I don’t know how I’m going to explain that this in in short, but all right. And action over clause just really means that if let’s say your insurance company like gives you insurance today and you go into job site and you have an action over clause, if something happens on the job,

the insurance company will say, hey, like we say this person can do this job. And if that condition happens, we walk away free. So the risk is going to transfer, let’s say from the subcontractor who did something on the job site, it’s going to go back to the GC because the insurance company for the subcontractors say you cannot come after us because our contract with the subcontractor did not allow them to do.

you know, this kind of work as well. So you’re left holding the bag as the owner or general contractor for that particular project as well.

Rishi Srivastava (20:29)
Hmm.

Thank you for that explanation.

Future of construction, finance and technology. Always an interesting topic. You’ve said. You said Billy is making construction compliance simple. What does simple mean in an industry that thrives on complexity?

Nyasha (20:43)
Yeah

Yeah, so we try to hide the insurance jargon behind clear outcomes. Everything is simple in one screen, one status and one next step. So if a project manager can answer, are we clearer towards, know, awarding a contract, paying them or getting access, they should be able to get that information in less than 10 seconds on any internet enabled device. So you can access Billy on mobile.

Rishi Srivastava (21:04)
Thank

Nyasha (21:19)
You can do it on the web as well. So I think this is one of the things that we do to make it very simple as well.

Rishi Srivastava (21:19)
Boom.

Yeah, access, you know, the industry that you and I operate in, and a lot of these older systems, you know, they’re only desktop systems, you know, some of them, at least, you know, so web and mobile, I’m glad that you’re giving that to your customers.

Nyasha (21:43)
Absolutely, it’s much needed.

Rishi Srivastava (21:45)
How do you see compliance automation fitting into the broader wave of AI and digital transformation heading construction finance?

Nyasha (21:53)
Yeah, I think it’s the idea of solving a problem for vertical industry like construction and then providing agents, for example, that do specific functions tied to compliance, for example. And so we already do that as the connective tissue between operations and finance around compliance. For each

know, vendor and their contracts that is tied to Billy. There is a specific AI agent that is on there. It can read the documents. It can find specific requirements that you need as well. So it expedites, you know, the review process for our service side. If you want a deeper review and verification of that insurance. And then, you know, there’s the syncing of the information to various systems like into Procore’s New.

compliance module into things like ProCore Pay as well, or folks who build custom integrations on top of Billy. Maybe they want to send that information into Viewpoint Vista or CMIC, where they can enforce another decision, which could be payment-related, or we’re onboarding you because you’ve been pre-qualified in Billy as well. And for us, that’s real transformation, not just another dashboard. It’s really…

breaking those barriers between systems and teams so they have that information anywhere they want it.

Rishi Srivastava (23:18)
So the AI computation cost is pretty substantial. If you’re not careful, you may end up spending a lot of money going through the agents and the processes around them. So I’m asking you, how are you managing the AI computation costs so you can deliver something cost effective to your customers?

Nyasha (23:38)
Yeah, we start by listening to our customers and just really solving for what they need today, not what we would ideally want as well. So we build for where our customers are and what they’re looking for. A big part of what drives our business is not advertisements. In fact, we don’t even spend money on Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads, for example. Most of our business just comes from virality.

subcontractors taking us to other general contractors, general contractors referring us to their other peers in their peer groups and brokers referring their partners to us as well. So on the AI side, it’s not like we’re trying to build chat GPT into, know, Billy. You can go to chat GPT. We’re only solving for construction workflows that people need today.

Rishi Srivastava (24:24)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah, it makes sense. You’re not building AI just for the sake of AI. There is a need somewhere in your workflow that you’re solving for your customers.

Nyasha (24:35)
Correct.

Rishi Srivastava (24:35)
For smaller contractors, compliance can feel overwhelming. What lessons from enterprise adoption can be scaled down for them?

Nyasha (24:44)
Yeah, there’s a really good saying in construction, is measure twice, cut once as well. So I think for smaller contractors, you really need to think about what do you want to become good at as well. And from that, I would start with maybe what are the top three requirements that I need to get these kinds of jobs where I’m really good at. Try ⁓ to get

or work with your broker around, you I need COIs and these types of endorsements on every job that I work on. I need to essentially automate, you know, renewals for other vendors that I work with as well. I need a way to, you know, automate their vendor requirements too. Other things that they need to think about are things like, let’s integrate systems, but don’t do everything.

To start with one, right, and connect those systems, maybe your PM tool. So if your project management tool has the ability to connect to some of your point solutions, I’d work on that as well. So you probably get about 80 % of the value without 80 % of the change management that occurs in just trying to do many things. Yeah, so in summary, I think it’s just really

Rishi Srivastava (25:56)
Yeah, mean 80 %

Nyasha (26:00)
You win by limiting scope and getting really good at the follow through. So clear requirements, broker communication on things like reminders, and just simple compliance report. It can help you with a lot of things.

Rishi Srivastava (26:15)
Looking at the next five to ten years, do you see compliance software emerging into financial systems like ERP or staying specialized?

Nyasha (26:25)
I mean, it already is part of systems like Sage 300, CMIC, Oracle, JD Edwards. But this is more of just box checking. Do I have the document or do I not as well? I think that compliance by itself is its own product category. It can be in the newer ERP systems, but…

Rishi Srivastava (26:45)
Hmm.

Nyasha (26:50)
there’s still the question of how do you really connect broker workflows to that particular system as well. The can be part is just mostly if you’re deeply embedded, doing things like contracts, maybe some things around, how do I provide workers compensation insurance based on payroll, for example, I could see things like that as well.

Rishi Srivastava (27:15)
When I think about ERP, most of the time, the users of that ERP are within a single entity. And it’s not like the broker’s company’s user can be in the contractor’s company’s ERP.

Nyasha (27:29)
No, yeah, exactly. I mean, part of it, it’s like, you know, it can be, but from, I guess, like the business perspective off the ERP systems, it just really depends on what they’re really trying to solve for their customers as well. If they want to have, you know, a good insurance experience, it’s possible you can do it. And there’s a lot of value add, but only if your customers want that.

as well then yeah, like you can totally do it. But, you know, just building it because it’s cool. It doesn’t always work out really well.

Rishi Srivastava (28:04)
Yeah, yeah. And there’s merits to having specialized people and teams like you solving for these kind of workflows. Think about like ERPs, though. I these companies, especially construction accounting systems, they are living in 70s and 80s. know, they’re there. You know, the plumbing and architecture is so old that somehow surviving the web era, you know, and if we ask them to do what you’re this is probably going to be too much for these guys.

Nyasha (28:29)
Yeah, there might be a flavor of, I think, maybe technology companies that come up as, you know, kind of like the new incumbents in building ERPs of the future ⁓ as well. We see it already even in, you know, things like payroll systems, right? Like before it was like you have paychecks and ADP and now there’s, you know, companies like Gusto, Rippling Trades, you know, like ⁓ in construction.

So I can see that happening in ERP systems too in the near future. It’s just that those things are really hard for people to migrate from. There’s also specialized knowledge around, think of people who use Sage 300 and people who write reports for the systems. They get paid a lot of money because they have specialized knowledge around that system too and it’s configured.

you know, just for that company. So there’s a lot of customizations that occur. And I think sometimes people have the hesitation to move to new systems, not particularly because of functionality, but because of all this specialized knowledge, the migration, and sometimes even those new systems might not be as flexible for those companies to move on to them.

Rishi Srivastava (29:45)
Yeah, yeah. mean, EIP migration is just so painful. I’ve heard from so many.

Nyasha (29:49)
Yeah, exactly.

Rishi Srivastava (29:52)
So what’s your vision for how compliance, finance and technology intersect to build more resilient construction companies in the future?

Nyasha (30:02)
Yeah, I think that resilience is knowing your risk before it affects your business. Knowing your risk before it hits your project, right? Before it hits your insurance policy and you have a claim. Before that, insurance company denies the claim and that risk hits your cash flow because you have to settle.

whatever lawsuit there is or damages that you owe, because that’s risk transfer right there. So my vision personally is compliance becomes a real time control that helps you protect margin. It’s embedded in contract awards. It’s embedded in site access. It’s embedded in how you do payments. It is driven by artificial intelligence. And it’s shared transparently with ⁓

brokers, carriers, and subcontractors can benefit from the same thing. We’ll measure our success by ⁓ fewer surprises, fewer blocks, contracts as an example, faster approvals, lower claim exposure, and better relationships between general contractors, their subcontractors, and also the project owners.

And I think that when compliance data is flowing correctly between all those people, the trust is going to flow as well and reduce those friction points that we discussed and then teams can finish projects much stronger as well.

Rishi Srivastava (31:30)
This is my last question to you, Nyasa For construction CFOs, controllers, and ops teams listening to this podcast today, what is one lesson they should take away for compliance from you?

Nyasha (31:43)
Yeah, ⁓ compliance is not a check the box. We’ve got a thing. It is not also a system. It’s the thing that lives between whatever system you have and the team. It also has a business logic around it. So your business does things, but it’s not always going to be the same as what another construction business do as well.

Compliance is also not just like, hey, like I’m collecting a COI and I’m doing lien waivers, business licenses. It’s also pre-qualifying vendors. Are they compliant enough for us to put them on the project as well? Compliance is not a cost center. It is also a value add. You just are not charging for it on your projects as well, right? Like you’re only charging for your insurance, but the amount of time that you’re

your team’s spending on managing compliance for vendors because your owner say to, you know, shouldn’t be part of that project cost. And when teams think that way, then compliance doesn’t just become a cost center. It then becomes a value driver as well, because it would just take one embarrassment on the job site to damage your reputation. And so this is one of the lessons I would leave, which is, you know, compliance.

Rishi Srivastava (32:41)
Mm-hmm.

Nyasha (33:00)
is the thing between systems and teams.

Rishi Srivastava (33:02)
systems and teams and compliance joining them. Thank you so much for your time Nessa. I enjoyed this conversation.

Nyasha (33:05)
Correct.

Absolutely. And thank you for having us on this podcast.

Rishi Srivastava (33:14)
Gosh.

Rishi Srivastava (33:15)
Thanks for listening to Finance at the Job Site. If you found today’s conversation valuable, share it with a teammate and subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode. You can listen on Spotify or watch on YouTube. Just search Finance at the Job Site. Until next time, here’s to building smarter, faster, and more profitable projects.