EP 162

Paul Heming: Hello and welcome to episode 162 of the Own the Build Podcast with me, Paul Heming. Again, we are back in the studio. Chris and I will be returning to the future of contracting series today. And as always, I have linked in the show notes an article which I wrote this time on the topic of what can only be described as the dreaded tender analysis, tender evaluation, tender equalization, as I heard it called the other Day Process and how AI can impact it, what our experiences are as QSs, Chris, me and all of you guys listening, and what we as a business are going to do to shift the narrative. So as ever, Chris is back, our CVO, Chief Visionary Officer, he loves banging on about vision and a vision for a new place, a new industry. So welcome back to the show, mate. How’s it going?

Christopher: It seems like only yesterday I was here.

Paul Heming: Only hours ago, right? Yeah. But here we are. We’re back again after four long weeks. I pined for these moments of isolation with you in the studio, mate. So let’s talk about my article and I’ll explain the reason why I wrote it was to shed a light on what we are doing as a business to shift tender analysis and why the way that tender analysis works to date has been ridiculous. So I’m going to talk to you about my experience of sub – subcontracting and we were a huge curtain walling company, and when I would be doing my tendering, and often it was for install only contractors, but you would have BOQ with a couple of hundred lines of different items rang from different floor levels, different projects, cladding types, curtain wall types. All of this is really relevant to me, but that process will be really relevant to everyone listening, right? So we would have four tender returns back. I would have to go through the process and in that company that we had a standard tender analysis template and it was copy paste, copy paste, copy paste, copy paste. Then looking at the bottom and seeing if there was extras or if anything it has been qualified in or excluded out by various different contractors. And that this is just like the financial tender analysis, right? And so I absolutely hated it as a QS because I just saw it was a complete waste of time, could potentially make loads of errors. And to be honest with you, you talk about how long it took maybe for us, maybe 4, 5, 6 hours to do that tender analysis process. But you might actually be doing it over three weeks because tender one comes back on day one, tender two, day four, tender three, day 17, you know what I mean? So it would actually be something that you were doing forever. It felt like, and saying that when I was commercial manager, commercial lead in that company, I was absolutely adamant that it had to be done and it had to be done right. Because it’s as the manager, right? You’re like, I need this. It really gives you that clarity. But the whole tender analysis process, as I saw it was first tender price analysis, apples with apples. So you wanted to get that. And then secondly, tender compliance analysis. So what is the contractor’s suitability? What are they excluded? What are they not excluded? What their insurance is, what their accreditations, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And those two matters I honestly think would take typically at least a day for me to just equalize and get to a position where I could then say, okay, right, this is the circumstance. These are the four bids. What’s your experience of the dreaded tender analysis process?

Christopher: You’re just taking me to some real dark places. Paul.

Paul Heming: No one cares about QSs. These, we don’t know what we go through, guys. This is awful.

Christopher: Got the world’s smallest violin here. I mean, it was the task that no one ever wanted to do because I feel like the manual part that takes the most, which is a laborious task, is quite low value in terms of you’re getting a highly experienced, highly trained, expensive QS to join the dots. Is that—?

Paul Heming: Copy paste, copy paste.

Christopher: Yeah. I mean, it’s just not a good use of anyone’s time. What they should be spending their time on is more like the risk, understanding the rates, et cetera. It was how you’ve explained it. And you can imagine when I was working on a project, which could consist of maybe 40 packages, it’s a lot of tender analysis and some are easier than others, but then some are more way more complicated. Particularly when they may have, may or may not have allowed for spec. And you’ve got to really start digging into the detail, different sheets of paper. Have they allowed for this? Have they allowed for that? And getting underneath the skin of each quote is very time consuming and doesn’t feel rewarding at all. Really.

Paul Heming: Yeah, it’s funny because, so I was on with tier one contractor yesterday showing them what we’ve done and they were talking me through their challenges and talking me through their process. They called what I call the tender analysis, what I know you call the tender analysis, tender equalization. And just thinking out loud now, I’d never heard it called tender equalization. I actually think that the tender analysis and what we’re going to talk about today is two parts. One is tender equalization and one is analysis. Do you see what I mean? So the first point of call is get the four quotes together, line them up, equal them, get all of the prequel done, line up the insurances, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Same with the exclusion, same…

Christopher: Allowances. Yeah.

Paul Heming: Allowances. That’s the equalization process, right? Which is so manual and for all of the world, smallest violin QSs out there, it’s a nightmare, right? But its part and parcel of what we’ve had to do. But then, like you just said, there actually what you want to be paying your senior Qs, any QS to be doing is the analysis. But you spend so much time on the equalization, like hours, days that the analysis part actually takes a few hours. Like that’s almost a bit that you rush through because you’ve lost so much time.

Christopher: Yeah. And like you just said rush through, you make a concession or you might make a mistake because you burnt out and there might be a certain item within that quote that you haven’t quite like validated or that you’ve just thought, oh, we’ll deal with that, don’t worry about it. And it ends up being a big problem later on down the line. And that I think the industry is in this method, it likes to absorb energy from people—

Paul Heming: In the wrong spaces.

Christopher: In the wrong spaces. Yeah. And I think tender analysis or the equalization part is the wrong part. You want your QS to be adding value, them lining up the dots is not adding value. It is performing a heavily manual process that hasn’t changed for decades. And that needs to change.

Paul Heming: I completely agree and I’m going to go right to the heart of a ridiculous conversation that I had with the same tier one contractor, they said to me. So as part of what we do, we try and quantify numbers. And I know you’ve written a QS algorithm of what QSs spend hours on per project, which as sad as it is interesting honestly, and we’ll probably get to that, but this main contractor, commercial director, he said to me, we do 100 projects per year. We do 20 packages per project, roughly. All of these are on average numbers. I said, how long do you think you spend doing a tender analysis? Now what he said to me was a painting and decorating package, it’s quite simple. That won’t take huge amount of time, maybe three, four hours to equalize it. Then you do your analysis and that distinction between equalization and analysis is key. And then how long does it take you to do a CDP, complicated, M&E equalization, curtain walling, groundworks, all of these different things. He said those could take days. And so on average, he said eight hours, let’s say it takes a day on average to do a single tender. Would that kind of chime roughly with your experience?

Christopher: Yeah, I think so. Like, what that person was saying there is that some are easier than others, but getting into sometimes the M&E packages, there’s lots of spec changes there. And I think it would be fair to say about eight hours-ish as an average, if you’re going to draw a line through the middle, it would kind of come to that. But that doesn’t really, you know, there’s so many variables on a project with that QA.

Paul Heming: Yeah. Naturally, right? It’s hard. And these are all on average, right?

Christopher: Yeah.

Paul Heming: That is the caveat at the start. So a hundred projects per year, 20 packages per project, approximately, or on average eight hours doing tender equalization, that is a total of 16,000 hours of quantity surveying time, which based on the average UK salary of 58 grand a year, 57,500, that is half a million pounds that that tier one contractor spends exclusively on tender equalization. And I’ve, will hear people in the background going, well, yeah, this is what QSs do, but it shouldn’t be, it’s tender equalization, is not what a QS should do. Tender analysis is what a QS should do. And we have been looking into how we can solve this for, it’s kind of the jewel in the crown, isn’t it? It’s been our North Star. It’s where we’ve been looking at and what we want to change. Just talk to me about how you think the tender analysis could be in a utopian world.

Christopher: I’ve just been doing the maths in my head and I think I’ve probably spent 10% of my life doing tender analysis. So my vision for like what tender analysis will look like in the future, particularly with AI and what we are building as a company, is something that is doing all that heavy lifting for you. And I see it in a two stage approach. I feel like the equalization part, we will be able to do it in minutes. With the analysis part, you’re totally disconnected from what is the market rate today. I know the competitive tender should really give you that. But where’s your base rate? Where’s the baseline? What did you pay last time? You know, you’ve got to go dig through loads, loads of files. Maybe ask you a fellow QS, what did you pay recently for this? There’s nothing really showing you that. And that’s something I can see our system will leverage for these businesses and the risk analysis part. So there’s loads of packages that have slight and different nuance to them that get overlooked for it pretty much every package because you’re starting from ground zero, like we discussed in one of our previous podcasts where you start your project again and it’s from ground zero and you dig out your old scope of works and then you’re checking through, oh, I’ve allowed for that. Have I allowed for that? What our analysis system will be able to do is leverage the risks and identify allowances, exclusions, inclusions from previous projects to make sure that the QS hasn’t missed these items before letting the project.

Paul Heming: So what your view is that we’re going to aggregate all of the data from various different groundwork packages, and many package and those examples, right? And look at what the previous exclusions qualifications were and draw them out so that that actually becomes part of the analysis process.

Christopher: Exactly. I mean, do you want to get these things clarified and not be gray going into these contracts and agreements with people before they start on site? Let’s get it out, let’s get it fleshed out and make sure it’s robust and comprehensive.

Paul Heming: And so that rather than in this case, spending 16,000 hours of quantity surveying time or half a million pounds doing tender analysis, tender equalization, what we think main contractors, in fact, all it goes, PQS, main contracts QS, subcontract QS, we’re all doing it. So all of those guys can actually spend their time on risk and on value as opposed to on data entry. And it might sound absolutely mental to some people thinking the QS has really spent 16,000 hours in my company doing manual data entry and equalization. But we do, and it’s insane. And it just doesn’t need, it just doesn’t need to happen anymore. And what we are working on, in fact, what we have all but finished is a world where no matter what the package, the equalization is done, right? And where could we then take it with those qualifications and exclusives? Where do you, you are the visionary officer, where do you think that it should be in terms of like, let’s keep it really simple, let’s call it a groundworks package, right? Main contractor procures a groundworks package, they issue out their tender. When their prices are returned, what should the process be?

Christopher: So I’m going to give you a couple of examples of where I see tender analysis going and equalization. So quotes could come back in. So you’ve got a BOQ, pro quotes coming in more of a standard format, a bit easier to line up. But then we’ve got these off pieced, let’s say contracts and pro packages. So.

Paul Heming: What you mean to say that a subie will return a price that will not be in the format that you asked for, or will have a load of qualifications?

Christopher: I mean, it’s been heard of I think. I believe heard. Done that once or twice.

Paul Heming: Yeah.

Christopher: So let’s talk about like another world where it doesn’t come in like a standard format. We want to be picking that up and trying to aggregate that into the right line level where it’s, this is for foundations, we understand this. AI’s picked this up, so we can start picking the pieces together without having to do any manual process. Packages, such as M&E can be really complex and different. Standardization it is, will be harder to do. But there’s so many risk identifications, which I think the real value is going to come from by understanding these quotes, inclusions, exclusions. So let’s take an M&E package for example, that includes wet under the floor heating that’s going to need screeding. What you want to be picking up there from a risk perspective is who’s going to do the screeding? So you need to get that clarified. So when someone starts on site, when the M&E contractors on site, they’re like, when’s your screen is turn up? And we’re like, no, we’ve excluded screening. That’s down to you. That’s builders. And its things like that, or a dry lining package. There’s always access hatches required for, when you’re in flats and things like that, how many access hatches are that, have we allowed a provisional quantity at least just to have, so we’ve got a rate agreed, let’s have a provisional quantity and we’ll just draw down from it. Thinking about these things and having the proper analysis at that stage to add the value and summarizing it. Because some of it might already be agreed or what, however, but you’ve got to at least identify that from a risk perspective. So we’re saying, look, these are considerations you need to make and how comprehensive would you be and more effective would you be as a QS if you could just do your job.

Paul Heming: As ever you are a million steps further down, down the trail than I am. Because I see this astronomic value. There’s a quantities surveying shortage. We can save 16,000 hours for one company. Like I’m just thinking do, just doing the equalization is such a big piece of the puzzle that will just transform the way quantities surveyors feel about the job that they do, the enjoyment that levels that you get out of doing, doing your job. And also how main contractors, subcontractors, everyone performs. It’s just going to have a dramatic impact. I can’t wait to see that impact. But as always, you are way down the track and it makes so much sense. Doesn’t it? Actually what you’re describing is the machine can learn all of the challenges that you have had previously on packages. So you described a few with them M&E dry lining, et cetera, and actually start to draw those out and look at the exclusions, the qualifications, the allowances, understand from previous experiences exactly the challenge that we’ve had before and we’re working, aren’t we on analyzing and reviewing quotes as well as much, much more. So it always mesmerizes me, Chris, how you are way beyond my thinking. But that’s why you are in the role that you are. So there’s a lot of really interesting things that we’ve just discussed and let’s continue this conversation. But let’s first just take a little break.
So Christopher, let’s now talk about quantity surveying time and what are quantities surveyors spends their time doing. For QSs listening, this will probably resonate. For PMs, directors, people who aren’t QSs, who haven’t gone through the process, probably mesmerized by the amount of time that you’ve spent doing certain activities. And just talk to me, you built out what we’re calling internally a QS algorithm, which explains what a QS does on each single project and the number of hours it roughly takes. Talk to me about what that is and why you did it.

Christopher: Oh, well, it was a pretty exciting thing to do in a very sad way, but—

Paul Heming: Listen, actually, you are joking here, but I can assure everyone listening. Chris told me that this was the best thing he’s done in ages and he enjoyed it thoroughly. So what was it?

Christopher: So I took myself to back to some happy days main contracting, almost the start of my main contracting career and what it looked like. So I created a bit of a persona for myself, gave kind of what some, an idea of what the company size was, what their supply chain strength might be, and then I kind of start breaking down the tasks. So like it or not a, for QS, probably 60, 70% of it is just very package related. So like you almost like the cent point for a QS is just looking at the packages he’s got and then performing tasks in a very, almost like a linear, in a linear way. But it’s never, that’s never the case. So I took a typical project that we may have been working on, the typical packages we would’ve procured, gave him like a complexity level, a risk level, how long they would maybe on site for this kind of, for this algorithm. And then started plotting out each task, taking it from like A to Z for that package.

Paul Heming: So, task one being?

Christopher: Subcontractor selection.

Paul Heming: Okay, task two, being?

Christopher: Getting the tender documents, I think together, I’m trying to remember.

Paul Heming: Then you go through like tender process, mid tender meetings, blah, blah, blah, all the way to final account.

Christopher: All the way to final account, and then plotting those against the complexity risk levels, et cetera. And it would give me a rough estimate of how long I would be spending on those elements.

Paul Heming: And just so it’s clear, I’ve seen this behemoth document, but for instance, creating a tender on an M&E package, you’d have allocated many more hours than creating a tender on a painting decorating package. And same as you’ve kind of gone through it. So this was you not looking on average, this was you looking in depth at all the different steps, including payments, applications, et cetera, et cetera, for packages and allocating time to them so that you could understand how much time a QS needs to do a proper job. Is that right?

Christopher: Yeah, that’s correct. Yeah. So trying to give an accurate for that kind of particular persona kind of project.

Paul Heming: Mid-level QS. Right?

Christopher: Yeah. And that kind of like type of project. And then—

Paul Heming: We’re going to say the average Qs, right?

Christopher: Yeah. The average.

Paul Heming: And also it’s you. So definitely.

Christopher: Definitely below average, right?

Paul Heming: Mediocre Qs, maybe we should classify that.

Christopher: So, and then we lead into like the client tasks and all those things. And assuming a job runs well, and it’s almost a bit of an assumption of a hundred percent efficiency, right? Which we know people just aren’t going to be a hundred percent efficient. I certainly wasn’t. And then if you throw in a job that has more packages that they have to procure, they might say, oh, it’s only a couple of stairs or something, or it’s only a couple of ladders. You still got to follow that process. Through to the finish.

Paul Heming: Finally count.

Christopher: Yeah. Exactly. So throw in more like extra procurement levels compared to another project, then throw in maybe a job that isn’t running smoothly. Maybe the design information isn’t quite great. So you’re having more extension of times, more RFIs are getting raised from your subcontractors. Those, the time is just going to extend and extend. Then you throw in, the people are going to want to make their money off, you know the average salary of a QS was what? 57, 500. They’re going to want to make the most out of them and put them on another project or straddle another project that they’ve got to come do that process. You’re going to cut corners.

Paul Heming: But just so the summary of all of the QS tasks added up together came out to the fact that a QS needed to properly execute a project. This is a main contract QS needed 48 working weeks to deliver a job, right? And so 48 working weeks actually in some ways sits kind of rather nice, doesn’t it? Because when you subtract from a normal calendar year, your holidays and all those bits and pieces, 48 working weeks, you actually think, oh, that isn’t, that’s not bad actually. Yeah, QS probably, yeah, 48 working weeks might be a bit tight, but that’s fair enough. However, you then pile on top of that variations, change, all of these extensions of time things go wrong. Your boss wants you to go and work on another project. I was never on one project, I was, and again, I was subcontractor, so, but I would’ve been on five or six projects often. Sometimes you would’ve been on what, one or two?

Christopher: Yeah, we’d straddled like, almost like 1.5 periods where one would be closing out, one would be just starting or whatever.

Paul Heming: Yeah, exactly.

Christopher: But yeah, you’d be straddling too.

Paul Heming: Exactly. Yeah. I think most people listening will have been on one, one and a half or two at various different times. And in some cases that’s fine. In other cases it isn’t. And when I was looking at this algorithm as we called it, and I looked at what you’d done, I thought 48 working weeks, that’s not bad. But then I realized you were on two jobs. And so this kind of tells you the problem. And we’re going to link it back to tender analysis. We’re going to save you a huge amount of time on tender analysis, but difficult question for you to answer maybe. But you were a QS who needed 48 working weeks, which you didn’t have. And actually you were doing one and a half jobs. So my math is terrible, but 67 ish, right? Working weeks to do your job well, there’s no way. And as good a QS as you are, and I have nothing but respect for the quality of your experience and for the way you go about your work, how many times did you cut corners? And on that list of 20 activities, how many times did you say, well, I just do not have time to do X on this package?

Christopher: Quite often.

Paul Heming: Really?

Christopher: Yeah. I mean, there’s lots of areas to cut corners on as a QS. Whether that’s subcontractor selection.

Paul Heming: I’ll just go with Bob, I know him.

Christopher: Tender analysis is another area that you might cut corners on. You might not even look at the other quotes because you just think, well, I’ll just go with the cheapest and validate that and just take it from there and not even give any feedback to the other subcontractors and where they’re at. So you frustrate the supply chain and your existing subcontractors you’re working with, there could be all sorts of areas like client variations, just a general engagement. You’re going to make so many concessions because you’re stretched because of the high manual processes that are involved.

Paul Heming: Did you ever, again, difficult question. Did you ever feel like a corner that you cut impacted a project?

Christopher: I think there was one package I think I cut a corner on in terms of like maybe like risk distribution. That I gave them a big air handling unit that we could have purchased. We had a purchase order basically, we could have past and got that done separately, but I rolled it into their package.

Paul Heming: Well, in that time you do it.

Christopher: Real, without realizing what the risk was and that really properly assessing and it almost delayed the project. It was tight like days were in it and it caused a lot of stress in the team, a lot of unnecessary meetings and energy taken out of it, out of everybody. I could have just placed that order for the purchase of that and then got the air conditioning people to deal with the rest of it. And I could have just dealt with that part. But that was timing issues really. I thought lump it into there, I’ll let them deal with it. And then they hadn’t procured it basically, and then tried to come up with an alternative solution that wasn’t viable. And the M&E designer was like, no, I’m not having that unit. I want this one. And yeah, it was touch and go really?

Paul Heming: And so why are we talking about this, right? Why are we talking about this? We’ve been sat here talking on these four weekly episodes, Chris, talking about the fact that there’s a QS shortage, the fact that everything takes QS too long, world’s smallest violin for the QSs, right? But the reason why we’re talking about this is like, this is one of the key tenets of what creates problems on projects. Your QS, your vital resource doesn’t have the time to commit to procurement. And I briefly explained what I consider like tender analysis, tender equalization. You’re going to talk there about at times you might have to cut corners on tender analysis and tender equalization. What would you consider like world class tender analysis? What would like, when you could do it to the absolute best, it was how would you do it?

Christopher: In the current, in the state of Excel and Word and it.

Paul Heming: Yeah.

Christopher: Yeah. Okay. So—

Paul Heming: Because you’d have done it, right? You’d have done it on packages which were CDP, high risk. Your bosses were all over you. You’d have been like, this one, I’m going to nail it. How would you nail it?

Christopher: Yeah. Well you got, yeah, you won on a good audit trail. So obviously three, at least three quotations are back. Engaged subcontractors. I would’ve met them on site, made sure they return on time. So a couple of chasers. So I am, when I’m coming to the table to do my tender analysis, they’re all there ideally, be it bill of quantities, Paul, I do love a BOQ. Would be really, really nice and just helpful to have in that format, expressed that I really want them to do it in this format and don’t deviate from it because I need it. Need it.

Paul Heming: It saves you time.

Christopher: Yeah. It saves me time. So then let’s say in this ideal world, they come back in identical formats on the BOQ. It’s an easy process then for me to start lining it up. Please don’t send it to me PDF that I don’t have to ask to give it to me Excel. So please send it in Excel.

Paul Heming: Jpeg.

Christopher: Yeah, the screenshot on your phone, and then I can easily start lining them up. And then it’s about, so I’ve done this, the manual process a lot easier, but I mean, seldom did we have a BOQ or seldom did subcontractors return them in the state that we wanted to, but let’s say they did. And then I’ve done that manual processes then only an hour, let’s just say I’ve not had to chase anyone. They’ve come on time, they’re in the same format. And now I can start assessing allowances, inclusions, exclusions and really getting under the skin and just thinking, actually is this, they quite right for this project. I know there was a good upsell from them, but well it might be too big. Can you give me some references?

Paul Heming: Why they excluded that, that doesn’t feel right. Why have they got this?

Christopher: And it’s the adding value stage. And so it’s the manual process is only to like an hour, let’s say, but I could then extend that into the analysis stage and then actually start thinking more, can we actually value engineer this together and get a better, better end product for both of us and make more money. And that’s what my ideal tender analysis process would look like.

Paul Heming: And the point being that more often than not, well, not more often, I’m probably doing even injustice here, that at times you wouldn’t be able to do that or you wouldn’t commit to that because you weren’t doing 40, you didn’t have 48 working weeks, you would’ve had 96 or you were doing this. This, I guess, this is for the uninitiated who is listening to this, the person who isn’t a QS, you might think, ah, really, but this is the experience and this is not the only reason, but this is the reason why there’s scope gaps. This is the reason why you end up with disputes. You just explained putting a bit of equipment into someone’s package, which otherwise you wouldn’t have done, but you ran out of time. Right? And so I think we’ve all got to learn the why we’re talking about it, right? And what we want to change in the industry and what we want to change is our focus is exclusively your QS algorithm. 48 working weeks. Let’s take that and make it 44, 40, 36 so that a QS actually has time to add value, reduce risk, and make the project right. And that’s what we are doing with tenders. We’ll talk to you about how you can see that after, at the end of the show. With the way our business works now, Chris, there is people who are construction focused, you and I ex QSs and people who are not construction focused, and you are working on this tender analysis project, tender equalization project. What’s your experience like? What can we learn? What have you learned going through the process of building this product without or alongside people who are not construction experienced?

Christopher: It’s very enjoyable.

Paul Heming: Really.

Christopher: I love working with them because they don’t come from our construction background, they’re looking at it from completely different angles. They’re like, tell me the problem. Let’s understand the problem and almost don’t need to involve me. I can, I share my experience how I would’ve done it. And they pick holes in it and thinking, why do you do—

Paul Heming: Why does he do it?

Christopher: You’re using it telling word.

Paul Heming: For a million pound package. Yep. Sorry. Yeah, we are.

Christopher: Yeah. And then they, you can see them innovating themselves and how to make us create this solution based on like they’ll be speaking to existing clients. They’ll be speaking to myself, researching, the depth that they go into to then create this solution is so impressive. And it is really enjoyable getting a fresh set of eyes on a construction issue.

Paul Heming: Yeah. Because we think that the way to solve things is what our mindset has led to us. But people from finance, all these different backgrounds have completely different experience. So my final question on this, there is absolutely no, we are so proud of what we have built and I encourage anyone to come and have a look at tender analysis. I’ve asked this question probably to you, but I’ve asked it to many people who have been my guest before. And it’s AI and quantity surveying. We employ machine learning technicians. We are work building AI products to serve the Qs, not to work the QS out is my view. What’s your view on the way, and you are now engaged in it. You’ve done both, right? So you are perfectly placed to answer this. What’s your view, honestly on the impact AI will have on quantity?

Christopher: Better job satisfaction, maybe attract more people to the industry as QSs. I honestly think you not going to wipe QSs off. It’s a stupid phrase for people to actually even suggest because you need the experience to help actually connect it all and make it happen. What the AI’s going to do is empower QSs to make better decisions and where they can add more value. Whether that is, we talk about value engineering a lot, but what about the value that a QS could bring to relationships and building that with the supply chain, with the clients and then creating this bigger pool of people and companies to work with and for, and you can only do that if they leverage technology and we give them that time back to create those relationships and be more collaborative.

Paul Heming: And if I was to ask you, or I was to play devil’s advocate, now a couple of QSs have thrown this at me is AI could never equalize a tender to the level I can equalize a tender. How would you respond to that?

Christopher: Check out our software.

Paul Heming: Yeah, that wasn’t what I was asking, but I actually have taught to that point quite a lot. And I genuinely believe that software AI can equalize the tender far better and far more efficiently than a human, just lining it up, comparing prequels, comparing prices that absolutely, but it goes to your point, right? They can’t analyze it, they can’t build a relationship, they can’t negotiate the pricing, negotiate the T’s and C’s. They can’t do all of that. The Robots.

Christopher: Yeah.

Paul Heming: But absolutely without question they can equalize a lot quicker and a lot better than you can quantity surveyors.

Christopher: Absolutely. And I think that’s the important note is we can leverage the technology to improve efficiency, but we’re not going to take away that human aspect that you really need to like get into nitty gritty of the package and properly negotiate it and take it forward. Because software won’t be able to do that. Only humans can.

Paul Heming: Yeah. Yeah. And it goes back to that dreaded, that feeling that I said at the start, that dreaded feeling of, oh great, that I’ve now got that third price back. I’ve got to do that tender analysis. Imagine the feeling of getting the third price back and thinking, huh, now my tender analysis is done. And that’s what we’ve built and without crowing about it too much, if you are a main contractor, if you’re a QS department, you’ve got to get in touch, have a chat with us, we’d love to show you it. Whether that’s Chris, me or one of the team, we don’t usually do this at the end of the show, at the end of the show, but this is something which we are incredibly proud of and yeah, we’d love to show you. So we’ll put details in the show notes, Christopher, tender analysis, tick, who knows what we’re going to do next, mate. But thanks for coming on and sharing your thoughts as always.
Christopher: Thank you. Loved it. Speak soon.

Paul Heming: Cheers mate. Catch you later.