Field Reality vs Office Systems: How Production Builders Really Manage Risk, POs & Daily Logs | Teimon Phillips (CAPM)

Rishi Srivastava (00:41)
Today, our guest is Teimon Phillips. Teimon, welcome.

Teimon Phillips (00:45)
Hey, thanks for having me, Rishi.

Rishi Srivastava (00:47)
First section is on your career plus field to office reality. You started in construction management in 2014. What did that first historic Reno Black History Museum project teach you that still guides you today?

Teimon Phillips (01:07)
Yeah, thank you. Yeah, so that was the Black History Museum and Cultural Center in Richmond, Virginia. My first project, I didn’t know what the environment was like of construction, especially from the project management standpoint. So I would say one thing that I learned that still sticks with me today is the the amount of time that you have to react to any type of discovery. You know, it’s something that you want to jump on immediately, whether it’s in renovation or

It’s in ground up construction. want to once you discover you have some sort of conflict You want to try to jump on that immediately instead of you know, writing it down to a list I mean, of course you can do that But when you write it down to a list you need to act on it instead of just you know Writing it down and thinking you’re going to get to it later

Rishi Srivastava (01:50)
Yeah, yeah, like some of these tasks, need to be acted upon immediately.

Teimon Phillips (01:55)
Sure, sure. it’s always not just because it’s time sensitive. It might be just because you’ll write it down and then you’ll just forget about it before you know it a week or go by. know, things happen, everyone does it. so it’s best to get the ball rolling on it as soon as you know.

Rishi Srivastava (02:11)
Yeah.

Yeah. Actually, there is an author who says that if you can do something in five minutes, there is no reason to postpone it. Just do it now.

Teimon Phillips (02:17)
Yep. I’ve heard that. I’ve

heard that before too, yes. One of my good friends, Casey Fablin, told me that a few years ago. If it takes less than five minutes, just do it. Don’t try to sit and wait around and do it.

Rishi Srivastava (02:31)
Yeah.

renovations to residential renews to ground up production. What changed most in your day to day decision making as you moved through those phases?

Teimon Phillips (02:42)
All right, so just spacing them off into three from renovations on the commercial side to residential of course I have more Direct interaction with with the the owner the person who’s purchasing the the service, you know in commercial We’re working with the owner. We will see them maybe once a month

And you know, we prepare the meeting and things like that. residential, our standard was to talk to them every day. So whether I saw them or not, I had to have that daily communication with the homeowner, just letting them know how the service was going. And into ground-up construction, it’s going to be totally different. It’s not about the communication, but I would say the amount of time that I had to actually

you know, work through my day in plan pockets of whatever type of work I wanted to do. I had a lot more flexibility to do that and ground up than I did with renovations.

Rishi Srivastava (03:31)
Yeah, it makes sense. Home owners are so nervous about their projects.

Teimon Phillips (03:36)
yeah, yeah, especially when it’s a renovation. They’re still living there for the most part, depending on what type of renovation it is. If you’re doing a kitchen, you know, they’re still living in their living room and their bedrooms. So it can be a pretty stressful situation for everyone involved.

Rishi Srivastava (03:53)
Where do you see the biggest quote unquote information gap between the job site and the office in production home building?

Teimon Phillips (04:03)
You know that that’s an excellent question. I’ll at least I will say from my experience right now. It would be the specifications from design get into the trade partners because in production build sometimes. Well, one of the good things about it is you can get into a rhythm. You know, you build the same type of house, you build them, you turn them out. But that can also be a bad thing because not all houses are 100 % the same. There’s small changes between this house and that house, depending on what.

a homeowner selected for it. So sometimes getting those intricate details to the trade partner to execute them correctly the first time. That’s I would say just one pain point that I can see right now.

Rishi Srivastava (04:43)
The specifications on a piece of paper, it’s hard to communicate them downstream.

Teimon Phillips (04:49)
Sure, sure. And if a guy’s like, I built this house 300 times before, which they have, there’s always, you know, each homeowner gets to pick something a little different. So it’s not always the same. So it’s easy for them to kind of miss things.

Rishi Srivastava (05:02)
If you could force the office to understand 1 PM pain point for a week, what would it be?

Teimon Phillips (05:09)
Ummm…

Well, all right.

There’s maybe two ways I can go on this. guess I will say, even though we have a design and we have drawings, it doesn’t always execute that way in the field. And it can be for a multitude of reasons. It could be from.

When you’re doing ground works and pulling measurements, there’s no walls that you’re truly working off of. So the guys, they can get pretty close with the numbers. You know, it could be where the framer is putting the stud. doesn’t, you know, there’s always that human error that we have to account for that they can’t truly see that from the office. You know, you would have to be in the field to understand that. So, you know, I guess it say it doesn’t always look exactly like how we designed it.

Rishi Srivastava (05:53)
Yeah, in the real world, the constraints are difficult to manage.

Teimon Phillips (05:58)
100 % you’re right

Rishi Srivastava (06:00)
The next section here is on tech forward PM plus systems thinking. You’ve been the software guy in multiple roles. What’s the biggest mistake companies make when implementing construction tech?

Teimon Phillips (06:15)
I would say the big one because, you know, when we’ll just use construction management software as an example, they get a brand new Shiny software. It’s great. They’re all excited about it. And they try to use every single feature that the software has to offer. That sounds like you’re utilizing the amount of money that you spent for it. But in actuality, you should be trying to implement the points of the software that truly are in alignment with your workflow.

and trying to change your entire workflow to work for the software that you’re getting. I would say that’s number one by far.

Rishi Srivastava (06:50)
Yeah, most companies just need to focus on a few features in the software.

Teimon Phillips (06:55)
Exactly. Use what you need and then if you want to implement something later you can do it but trying to do it all at once is, it’s, it can be a big, a big failure.

Rishi Srivastava (07:03)
Yeah. At Fabling Belt, you moved into Systems Manager. What triggered that shift and how did you earn buy-in from production plus office teams?

Teimon Phillips (07:17)
Thank you. So what it was is the company, like they hit a point where they really began to grow and they were growing fast and there became the need to have, this different types of software. For example, we needed to be able to ensure that everyone had a device, a cellular device that was working so we can always contact them.

GPS monitoring for a fleet because we had a fleet but when there was more people we got more vehicles and we just needed a way to have those type of insurances for ourself and You know, I would say buying it was kind of easy I had been around the company for a while and everyone kind of knew that I was the guy that was good with tech, know, I could I would help everyone out with their emails and Logging into things all the time. So it was

It didn’t take much buy-in because you know had been kind of doing it for at a small scale prior to the position switch so it was was pretty easy.

Rishi Srivastava (08:12)
Yeah. We run a construction accounts, payable automation company. And it’s always like the most technically sophisticated people. want them our champions. Someone like you.

Teimon Phillips (08:18)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. ⁓

thank you. Thank you.

Rishi Srivastava (08:29)
You built SOPs across departments, production, sales, admin, marketing, HR. What’s one SOP you created that immediately reduced chaos?

Teimon Phillips (08:42)
This is going to be very simple, but I think you’re going to get it. So when I was with the renovation company, everyone had to clock in for a specific job that you were going to go to. So if you going to go over here to work on a deck, you had to clock into that job. You had to also use the accounting code for what type of work you were going to be doing.

There was a different, I would say a range of different age ranges of people who worked in the field. The young guys could kind of do it. The older guys, they just couldn’t even figure out how to open their phones. So I developed the, not only the training video, but the, structured diagram just showing them what the process is for clocking in, you know.

From the time you get to a job site what to do when you’re leaving from that job site to the next one and I made it super simple it was you know short and to the point super simple and that allowed for accurate accounting for each job From that point for it wasn’t always perfect. You know, there was still little things here and there but from that point forward it changed the accounting for well for those renovation jobs

Rishi Srivastava (09:44)
So this new technology you and I take as for granted that we can understand them. For older generation, it’s tough.

Teimon Phillips (09:52)
It’s tough.

That’s true, man. You know, they didn’t grow up the same way we did. I’m from, I was born in the 90s. So growing up, you know, it was kind of where we had just got the, they were introducing kids to it young. So I got a little bit of where I didn’t use computers, but then I saw when they came. So I got kind of the best of both worlds, I would say.

Rishi Srivastava (09:58)
Yeah, yeah.

I’m an 80s, so I also had a little bit of head start.

Teimon Phillips (10:15)
yeah, I would say

maybe a little better because you know you were more developed than I was when they started to come around so you got a chance to truly understand what they were from the beginning.

Rishi Srivastava (10:25)
Yeah, thank you. What does good data in the field actually require? Habits, incentives, training, leadership, or software design?

Teimon Phillips (10:36)
Good data, I’m gonna put it to two things. would say you need to be able to have, so the training of course, to use whatever software that, or whatever way you’re gonna be communicating that data. You have to know how to do it officially. You have to know what the other person on the other end needs so you can get the best information possible. So I would say that and then also just the,

the discipline to set that time apart to be sure that you take the time to do those things like updating the schedule or updating the data, daily log, whatever data it is that you’re capturing, you need to make sure that you set that time every day, no matter what. So, so, so the office can get the information.

Rishi Srivastava (11:17)
This takes a lot of time to get the data from the field.

Teimon Phillips (11:21)
It does, it does and you do it in a multitude of different ways whether it’s whether it’s taking photos, it’s writing a log, it’s talking with trades, just knowing what’s happening now, what’s going to happen later. There’s a lot of ways and you’re right, it is, it’s very time consuming.

Rishi Srivastava (11:36)
The next section here is on POs, variance, and how money moves. Walk me through your current workflow. When you check off framing, how does that trigger payment and where can that process break down?

Teimon Phillips (11:53)
Excellent question and it’s always good when a construction company actually uses these features. So when I’m checking off of the framing task on a schedule, assigned to that task is the PO that is the PO for frame. So when I click that, the the accounting office sees that, this task has been completed. I can now send payment for this task to the trade. You know, the trade partner is assigned to it. We can all see.

you know where it needs to go. And it’s that simple. But the ways that it could break down, it’s not many, but obviously not checking off on a task and it’s two weeks later and we’re done with framing but no one checked it off. That’s how someone cannot get paid. Also, we have to ensure that the PO is actually attached to the framing task, you know, within the schedule. Because if it’s not there and I click off on it,

Everybody can see that the task is done But if there’s no PO the account person is not going to pay anyone because they don’t have any they don’t have any PO to reference Or it could be the wrong PO it could be on the framing task if the estimator doesn’t load the framing PO and they put a Siding PO

That’s where a break definitely happens. The wrong trade gets paid for the wrong work. you know, can be a trouble to work out.

Rishi Srivastava (13:06)
Mmm.

Right. What software do you use to manage this work?

Teimon Phillips (13:14)
We use Newstar currently where I am.

Rishi Srivastava (13:17)
Okay, new star is like a project management tool.

Teimon Phillips (13:21)
It’s it’s all-encompassing. So yeah, so you can get the project management features where you’re building a schedule using schedule templates But there’s also accounting features work for POs at the accounting department uses it’s a database as well where you could store You know plans etc

Rishi Srivastava (13:41)
Variance POs are where PMs feel real control. What are the most common reasons you create variance POs, and how do you prevent them?

Teimon Phillips (13:51)
I would say for me Variants P. Os come they come around the time where you’re doing the punch list. So when I’m pretty much complete on a home I Create a list for you know each trade to say hey I know you’ve already finished your work, but I’ve noticed that you need to tighten this up here You know, so we send that list out guys come back through a completed house

You know, some are better than other at taking care of what they do. But you know, there’s always going to be some guys who may damage something else while they’re working on their punch list. For instance, the electrician might go change a bulb in the shower, but they’re wearing muddy shoes and they’re standing on the shower and they scratch it, something like that. You know, I would then have to write a variance PO. In that instance, I know where to charge it back to because I’m using the electrician, but

When there’s multiple trades coming back in, it’s not always easy to determine, you know, I got to pay for this, what I need to cover it. So we’re writing the variance PO there.

Rishi Srivastava (14:49)
So we are basically moving money from one trade to another in a variance PO

Teimon Phillips (14:54)
Yes, you well not necessarily a variance is just i’m paying outside of my baseline budget, but if I know Why I have to do it like if i’m paying for something that the electrician damaged I could then bill the electrician For the damage to the tub in which I have to pay the plumber

Rishi Srivastava (15:13)
okay, makes sense

In production building, what’s the earliest leading indicator that a job is going to drift? Schedule, budget, trades or customer changes?

Teimon Phillips (15:26)
That’s a tough one. at least so from right now for budget At least and where I am budget doesn’t usually drift that much but the main thing that can do it is The number one expense and you may know this at the number one expense and when you’re doing production building It’s always gonna be the dirt moving the dirt because you can never well, you can’t account for what you need, but

If you ever need more than what your accounted for well of course that’s with everything. that’s the biggest thing that can bust a budget is grading, moving dirt from this lot. And if you don’t account for that properly upfront, you will know that probably by the time where you’re about to dig for the footing, because you have to set the finished floor elevation and then account according to where that would need to be. gotta at that point.

Try to envision a grade to see what you need and you’ll know from that point if you blew the budget on grading or not And I would say from the scheduling standpoint, we want a pretty tight schedule. The only thing that can truly throw out schedule Because we have such a good relationship with our trades that they typically up It’s never been an instance where trade is throwing me off, but the utility connection companies so in Virginia we have Dominion power

In my community, I’m using Columbia gas And the connection that I’m talking about is there’s already the backbone in the it’s already set in the ground But for each home, we have to run the secondary connection is where – dominion power is going to make their connection from their main line to the house I can’t truly tell them when to come The the best I can do is pass my electrical inspections and then they schedule it from that point. So

Rishi Srivastava (17:06)
Mmm.

Teimon Phillips (17:07)
If they have any issues to where they just decide they’re not coming or their schedule’s too full, that can just blow my schedule out.

Rishi Srivastava (17:17)
Yeah, you building a really complicated entity, know, and there’s so much dependence on so many things here.

Teimon Phillips (17:27)
That’s true. There’s a lot. And that’s why one of the most powerful tools a project manager can have is influence. You know, it’s not how good you’re to click off on a schedule if you’re guy that’s always going to do it. But being able to establish relationships with the trade partners, the utility companies, inspectors, anyone that has anything to do with the work.

Rishi Srivastava (17:36)
Hmm.

Teimon Phillips (17:51)
Establishing great relationships and being able to influence them to do what you need to do. You know, it’s a give and take it’s not just me trying to Make them do what I need but trying to figure out what we all need and how we can work together

Rishi Srivastava (18:03)
Yeah, that makes sense. The next section is on daily logs plus real productivity. You said the most efficient daily log isn’t end of day. It’s a 930 AM walk plus later verification. Why does that work better in the real world?

Teimon Phillips (18:24)
So, and to me, I think it’s better to, you know, you’re, so guys are getting in 6.30, 7 a.m., you know, they take 15, 30 minutes to set up whatever they might take. You know, they get to work 7.30 or eight. You give them a chance to get into what they’re working on. And then, then you walk around just to see what everyone’s doing, if they’re running through any trouble. And I always just like, I’m not taking a full log at that point. I’m just making a little note.

You know, these guys are actually here and this is what they’re actually working on. Just a small note. And, when you go back to actually to, do the log you’ve had a chance to not only confirm everyone that’s on site, you’ve also, you know, got to see exactly what it is that they’re working on. And you understand like the intricate details of what they’re actually doing. So when you’re making the notes, it’s just kind of like a.

What’s the word I can use for it? It just sparks my memory more when I’m actually doing the blog later because I’m going back to that note and I might say the electricians You know, they were wiring the panel. okay. Yeah, they were wiring the panel and then you know I know they’re gonna you know, put all their boxes up XYZ It’s just when you have that other touch point to go off of instead of trying to do it all at the end of the day I find you can remember more and you could capture more

more pertinent information.

Rishi Srivastava (19:47)
Also, when you see people working, you get so much about the context. ⁓

Teimon Phillips (19:51)
Yes,

yes, that’s true. And that’s another thing is a project manager is not technically an expert on everything that’s going on. So it’s always good to get in the field and literally ask questions like, hey, I’ve seen these boxes go up a thousand times, but what are you actually doing? And that’s, that’s where you get the key knowledge that’ll put you above, you know, other PMs who aren’t doing it.

Rishi Srivastava (20:14)
Yeah, the last mile.

is always, vacant

Teimon Phillips (20:19)
yeah.

Rishi Srivastava (20:21)
What’s your minimum viable daily log that actually helps the office, protects you and doesn’t eat two hours?

Teimon Phillips (20:30)
Bare minimum is who was there, number one. You count for all the trades that are there, because that’s part of it. Just a brief summary of what they did. if I know, use electricians again, if electricians are running wires to the receptacles, something as simple as they ran wires for the receptacles today. That’s viable. But also a photo. Photos are.

No matter what if you don’t have anything which isn’t good You always want to at least capture a photo of what’s happening which you can you know put the that’ll help you string together a photo over time of what was actually going on so Brief summary of what they did who’s there and a photo should should do

Rishi Srivastava (21:10)
how long that takes.

Teimon Phillips (21:11)
If I’m if I’m in rough-end phases you could probably do that in about 10 minutes 10 15 minutes You know, maybe five or six trades on site 15 minutes

Rishi Srivastava (21:23)
And not all the trades have to be on the site at the same time, right?

Teimon Phillips (21:28)
That’s right.

It depends on which phase you’re in, right? And if one trade causes a logistical conflict with others and you can’t have them around, you know.

Rishi Srivastava (21:37)
Yeah.

So when you’re building a home, are the first few trades who come in and start working on that?

Teimon Phillips (21:45)
First, well, I have graders come out to install the silt fence and the temporary driveway. So silt fence is just like a little three foot fabric that goes around my entire construction, which, around my construction area, that’s going to keep the sediment from escaping the construction site and getting into the water system. So they’re first.

Actual real work on the house is going to be the concrete sub because they’re going to come to dig and pour the footing for the home

Rishi Srivastava (22:14)
The last section is on voice to text plus the future of the job site. You use voice to text for texts slash emails, but not for POs. What would have to be true for you to trust voice for daily logs, issues, or cost related entries?

Teimon Phillips (22:18)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

I mean honestly, I’m all in on that I would love to do it but the functionality of how we put in POs is too many like fields to click down through so trying to use voice for that it would be a little inefficient maybe if I was doing it on my computer most of the times I do it on my phone because I’m just in the field doing it but if there was just maybe one field that I could just type in or click in

and then speak it out, y’all that’d be great. I love to do that because I use voice to text literally all the time. I send text messages, emails, just pretty much anything where I could just sit, speak and be done with it, I’ll use it for that.

Rishi Srivastava (23:14)
So let’s say there is a form you’re checking all these boxes on them, 20 check boxes. You can speak that to this technology easily and they know.

Teimon Phillips (23:19)
Hmm.

No, no,

no, I’m not if I’m checking boxes, but yeah, if I have to do if I have to click through maybe more than four fields I’ll just do it without and I’ll just type everything out instead of using the voice but if I can just click into one field and just you know speak everything that I need That’s what I’ll use. I’ll use that any day of the week. I love it

Rishi Srivastava (23:47)
okay, because the free form text you’re writing about, right? Like in the daily logs you’re saying, yeah, okay.

Teimon Phillips (23:50)
Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

Rishi Srivastava (23:54)
The last question is, if you could design the perfect PM tool for a production builder using your system’s background, what are the three must-have workflows it nails?

Teimon Phillips (24:07)
Alright, so just for starters, simple, like simple, like when I’m talking like one or two clicks, simple way to update a schedule in an app. You know, I don’t need anyone to have to go to an online base, you know, login, online platform to update. If you’re doing that,

To me it’s already no good to try to use in the field. It has to be an app. So, you know a simple way to update the schedule a And I’m gonna kind of bunch these two together because they’re both communication a simple way for daily log but also instant messaging if we had an instant messenger that Everyone in the company was all bought into where I could just simply type something out to the estimator when I have a question in the field

about You know, we should have this post on the PO. Why isn’t it on the PO? An instant messenger would be phenomenal, which I think that’s something that a lot of construction software is do have it But I don’t know how many people use it but if we could buy in to that that’ll be next level and of course just you know, easy to use easy to access database you know, I don’t want to have to go into s drive or

Sharepoint where I got to click through a thousand folders for To find some drawings just something that’s you know simple I think those are the three that’ll make the makeup PM super efficient in the field

Rishi Srivastava (25:34)
I think some of the newer AI tools are solving for those problems. Yeah.

Teimon Phillips (25:38)
Really, I’m, you know,

I need to do a little more research. haven’t researched and software in a while. You know, as you know, I used to be the guy to go out and learn about these new software to see what was good for our company. And it’s, I’ll be interested to see what’s out there now.

Rishi Srivastava (25:54)
There’s a lot out there. And on the accounting side as well as the PM side, a lot of things are changing. But you guys are busy too, right? I mean, you cannot go and check everything out.

Teimon Phillips (26:02)
Yeah, sure.

Yeah. Yeah.

Rishi Srivastava (26:08)
Teimon, thank you so much for your time. enjoyed this conversation.

Teimon Phillips (26:12)
Absolutely, Rishi. I enjoyed it myself. Thanks for having me

Rishi Srivastava (26:15)
Thank