PPM Principles in Action: Bob Snyder III Explores Binsky’s Production Management Success

[00:00:00] Kristin Buettner Khuri: Welcome to PPI conversations, an opportunity to connect with leading edge thinkers and leaders. And discuss today’s pressing topics in the engineering and construction industry with your host, PPI executive director, Gary Fisher. We at PPI address the root cause of major capital project cost and schedule overruns through the research and dissemination of project production management and its foundation of operations science.

[00:00:33] Kristin Buettner Khuri: Enjoy the conversation.

[00:00:36] Gary Fischer, PE: So if you’ve ever wondered what life is like as a subcontractor, I’m receiving in of all those decisions made by well intentioned project and construction managers. Schedules are set, designs are completed, mountains of specifications are issued, project requirements established, and lots and lots of commitments are made.

[00:00:57] Gary Fischer, PE: All flowing downhill to a subcontractor who’s tasked with meeting all those expectations, plus makes a reasonable profit so they can stay in business. Well, if you’d like to hear what that world is like, stay tuned. Today, we’re privileged to have Bob Snyder, the third known to us as RB cubed from Binsky.

[00:01:16] Gary Fischer, PE: Binsky is a mechanical contractor. Typically one of those subs I just talked about. So welcome, Bob. I’m glad to have you here today.

[00:01:25] Bob Snyder III: Thanks, Gary. Really excited to be here today. It’s actually a RB three, but I kind of like RB cube.

[00:01:34] Gary Fischer, PE: Oh, it’s not cube. Okay. Well, I like cube. So there you go, we’ll roll with it.

[00:01:40] Gary Fischer, PE: Well, I’m really looking forward to hearing what life is like from your vantage point. You know, the waste you see in the system, how you handle them, the receiving end, all those things, what you think about it, and what Binsky is doing about the challenges you see with project production management. So let’s get started.

[00:01:57] Gary Fischer, PE: By telling the audience a little bit about who you are where you got started how you worked up your current role And what is your current role?

[00:02:05] Bob Snyder III: Yeah, absolutely So I my current role right now is I am a production coordination manager here at finski and i’ll get into a little bit more of what that role entails as we go along kind of my story is I started In the industry, really, I mean, we’re a fourth generation mechanical contractor.

[00:02:23] Bob Snyder III: I’ve been around this really my whole life. I was sweeping the floors in the tool shop, working as an intern and estimating in high school, going into college. And then from there, once I graduated college, I did a little stint and I moved and got my master’s degree in actual data science and Russian language.

[00:02:39] Bob Snyder III: So little different. Let’s say you’ve got your, you’ve got your master’s in data science. Yeah, so his master’s, it was actually primarily a Russian master’s with data science focus actually. So a little bit different, but after after I graduated, I wanted to get back into the industry and I came to Binsky.

[00:03:02] Bob Snyder III: There was a a job opened up where is I, I worked with my dad and he really approached me. He was like, Hey, can We want to start taking a look at all of our processes. We want to start automating it. At the time we were moving from a smaller fabrication facility up to a fab, a fabrication shop at 160, 000 square feet.

[00:03:21] Bob Snyder III: So relatively, so pretty large. And he wants to review all the processes. So I was charged initially and going and working actually in the tool shop kind of I with the same people that I used to work for in high school, which is pretty fun and review their processes and then start automating that process.

[00:03:40] Bob Snyder III: Really turning it from phone calls and people writing lists on napkins into something formalized requisition. So I went and I started through there, kind of got familiar with the company and about six months into it I got approached again. It was like, Hey Bob, this is kind of winding down. There’s this really cool thing called production system optimization.

[00:04:00] Bob Snyder III: You have familiarization with some processes internally here. Let’s start mapping our fabrication processes and actually look at the capacity and start optimizing them. So that’s really how I got involved in that. And I made my way out into the field more and they gave me a role of a production chain coordination manager.

[00:04:19] Bob Snyder III: So really what that entails is I have a bunch of field teams. I’m working on 10 jobs right now. Actually, I just got my 10th one yesterday. Working on implementing PPM and project production control out on site. So it’s been a really exciting journey.

[00:04:33] Gary Fischer, PE: Excellent. Well back up a little bit. Tell us a little bit more about Binsky and the kind of work you all do.

[00:04:39] Bob Snyder III: Yeah, absolutely. So we are a fifth generation mechanical contractor based out of New Jersey. We’ve done work kind of all over a little bit in New York, a little bit in Pennsylvania, but primarily in New Jersey. And really our focus and what we’re very good at is a process. So, and a lot of pharmaceutical piping.

[00:04:57] Bob Snyder III: So it luckily being in New Jersey, that’s really kind of our niche market. And we typically work with a lot of large pharmaceuticals installing the process piping. So that’s been a lot of fun. We also really initially kind of started out doing more like the schools and like apartment buildings and so forth.

[00:05:17] Bob Snyder III: But eventually we graduated and moved up into Working mostly at like medical facilities at universities and research facilities. So that’s really what we like to do in kind of where we see our really our business grow very well.

[00:05:30] Gary Fischer, PE: So do you, are you primarily subcontractor then?

[00:05:37] Bob Snyder III: Yes, we are exclusively subcontractors.

[00:05:38] Bob Snyder III: So well, we will always be working for a a general contractor or construction manager.

[00:05:44] Gary Fischer, PE: So as a mechanical sub, you’re really on the receiving end of lots of decisions, lots of commitments, a lot of stuff coming your way. What’s that world like? And what issues do you routinely see that affect your ability to perform your work and, and, and make a living?

[00:06:02] Bob Snyder III: Yeah, absolutely. So kind of, as we get introduced to this world of PPCs, you start to think about the world and the, and the job itself as a full production system from start to finish, really from idea all the way through that final installation and startup. So we go in with that mentality yet. We we have difficulties where the construction managers and general contractors.

[00:06:24] Bob Snyder III: Are not going in with that mindset and viewing it as a production system So a lot of times a lot of those decisions are already made for us on For example on the sequence of how they want us to install our work On really the duration and the capacity that they want us to be using for that installation.

[00:06:43] Bob Snyder III: Whereas they’re they’re not we found that It’s difficult when you’re not viewing the job as a whole production system to really play with those levers. Right. So we, we find that our, we have difficulties with like not necessarily with the schedule itself, but with the lack of flexibility and really not coming to being pulled to the table earlier to actually have that conversation with the owner about the actual design of the process.

[00:07:13] Bob Snyder III: And the project itself, especially the mechanical side. The reality is, is we’re mechanical contractors. We know pipe the best and construction managers and general contractors are great administrators, but not necessarily, they don’t necessarily understand the full scope of our work to the detail that is necessary to really sequence it out and try to save as much time and as much money as possible for the owner.

[00:07:38] Gary Fischer, PE: So what percentage of the time would you say you get? Hold into the front end of a project to provide your expertise to guide those kinds of decisions.

[00:07:48] Bob Snyder III: Oh, probably sub five percent, maybe. Five percent. Two percent. Really? Yeah. So, so we call that process design assist, and it’s relatively rare, but really the benefits of coming in early.

[00:08:01] Bob Snyder III: And actually designing designing the piping is, it’s tremendous, right? We see a lot working with the owner alongside the construction manager as a team to design this process. We found that we have been incredibly successful at really like looking at the work from day one, right?

[00:08:21] Gary Fischer, PE: So that’s a big area of a waste, if you will, that, that robs the owner of time and money.

[00:08:27] Gary Fischer, PE: What else do you see in the system that robs the owner of time and money?

[00:08:30] Bob Snyder III: Yeah, I think managing capacity and the whole idea of really just earn value in general, money spent doesn’t does not, unfortunately does not equal job completion percentage. So we, we find that, construction managers and, and a lot of these projects that we work on, want to see a lot of work in process in the field.

[00:08:54] Bob Snyder III: Okay. Right. They want to be looking at the work and being an investing really heavily in the front end of the project. Meanwhile, there’s no real conversations and no analytical really running any analytical models on what our capacity should be. And, and how much is this with actually the work in process, hampering our productivity.

[00:09:15] Bob Snyder III: So I think that is a big time and money waster on site that I personally see.

[00:09:21] Gary Fischer, PE: So do you see yourself getting pressured to advance work that shouldn’t be advanced to get the number?

[00:09:30] Bob Snyder III: Yeah, yeah, and a lot of that is it’s, it’s throwing men at open spaces without understanding the how capacity directly impacts your productivity.

[00:09:42] Bob Snyder III: For for example, we’re working on a project now, a pharmaceutical project, and we’re doing a lot of the fabrication. And we’re fabricating two pipe pipe racks a day. Right now at our current capacity with two crews, they want to pull up the job, which is absolutely okay with us. We can do that.

[00:09:59] Bob Snyder III: We’re going to throw a third crew on and you’d expect that a three crews, three pipe racks a day, right? It’s actually running PPC and running the control aspect of it. We’ve been able to pull the data and found that we’re actually like making 2.7 pipe racks per day now. So it’s just a direct impact of putting more capacity will lower your productivity overall.

[00:10:20] Gary Fischer, PE: That’s a good, that’s a great, that’s a great example. So how’s your GC responding to that? That feedback.

[00:10:28] Bob Snyder III: And yeah, so it’s kind of difficult to get the general contractor and the construction manager to the table to have these conversations and that’s really what we want. And we see kind of this evolution of the next step is bringing in because the reality is we can only control our work.

[00:10:44] Bob Snyder III: We can only control our small production system. And there are many other subcontractors on the job. So it’s very hard to coordinate with other people. Subcontractors, if they’re not running PPC project production control on the job. So we found that the general contractor is not necessarily receptive and can view us as being defensive.

[00:11:05] Bob Snyder III: When doing this, whereas the reality is we want to be progressing, we want to pull them into the conversation and really sit down and do scheduling with them and go and look at the actual look at all the individual process centers and look through the job through the lens of a production system. So I have a, an example of the kind of, of a project that we’re working on.

[00:11:27] Bob Snyder III: It’s actually funnily enough, it is the same project. So. We went in early and we’re sitting around the table. More or less it’s a large underground underground plumbing, piping project where it’s double wall, stainless steel containment system. So it’s very complex piping, unfortunately due to the nature of the work of the pharmaceutical, all of the dirt was irradiated.

[00:11:52] Bob Snyder III: Or not irradiated, but it was is contaminated by former waste. Right. So doing the underground, we’re sitting down and having the conversation they’re proposing to us, like, okay, so we’re going to go take the dirt. We’ll go dig it up. We’ll go get rid of it. Then we’ll refill in with new dirt. And then you guys can go in and you can dig holes and then put in your piping like that.

[00:12:12] Bob Snyder III: And we were sitting there and we were thinking, we’re like, that doesn’t make sense. And initially the project was 150 days. We’re like, that doesn’t make sense. What if. You pull the pipe out and we actually build your underground above ground and then refill it back up and they’re like Oh, that’s a great idea So we developed this modular system and we were able to go sit down and run I think working with our team I ran, I think six to seven different scenarios based on different, capacity and rates for for the installation ourselves and we were able to pull that 150 days down to we’re estimating 40 days actually now.

[00:12:49] Gary Fischer, PE: Wow That’s huge.

[00:12:53] Bob Snyder III: Yeah, it’s it’s so it like coming. I guess the question it still falls around like how receptive is the the GC they love the idea initially and we decided to go with it. Yeah, yeah, we go and and because we kind of were at that initial point of part of the scheduling process, we’re going to running all these different scenarios and presenting different dates with different amount of investment.

[00:13:17] Bob Snyder III: If you put 750, 000 into the project, you could pull it up one week. Or, but if you put in 2 million, you can only pull it up nine days and so forth. And really kind of the reception on that has not been as engaging as we would have liked it to be. It’s not coming to the table and talking about it and like what the best solution is.

[00:13:36] Bob Snyder III: So it’s just pulling the data. Sounds like you’re making progress though. That’s a that’s a really good example. Yeah, absolutely And we’ve been running the PPC. We put our fabrication in control as well Which is a really daunting process and we’re we’ve mapped out the job to about the 15 minute mark.

[00:13:56] Gary Fischer, PE: So, oh hang on to that thought.

[00:13:57] Gary Fischer, PE: I apologize here a little bit. So how did you become aware of production management? What is your story there?

[00:14:05] Bob Snyder III: Yeah, absolutely I became aware of it through my father who was exposed probably about 2 years ago and really was exposed and took him a while to kind of understand it and get in touch with the right people. But at some point, one day he came to me. He’s like, hey, we’re going to map our fabrication processes.

[00:14:24] Bob Snyder III: It’s called production system optimization. I’m going to put you in touch with some guys and we’re going to start talking about it.

[00:14:30] Bob Snyder III: So really trial by fire.

[00:14:32] Gary Fischer, PE: And that was it. You got thrown into it and there you go.

[00:14:35] Bob Snyder III: Immediately, Gary, immediately. And there was no real turning back. I really just kind of soaked it in.

[00:14:41] Bob Snyder III: I, my background in doing that data analysis. I love that we’re starting to quantify our work and I really enjoyed actually talking about the work itself. Which is, I feel like something as an industry, we’re not as good at as we should be.

[00:14:56] Gary Fischer, PE: Which is really remarkable coming from someone that does the work.

[00:15:01]Bob Snyder II: Yeah, I know. I know. It’s fascinating.

[00:15:03] Bob Snyder III: Yeah it’s kind of, and I’ve, I talk a lot, a lot about this is over like the last 20, 30 years as we we’ve seen ourselves. And our industry turned into more of an administrative apparatus than anything. And I think a lot of that is in response for growing technologies the increased administration, construction management, the increased administration and demand from the client.

[00:15:29] Bob Snyder III: And well, we’ve turned and become like these expert administrators, right? Submitting requests for information and getting all your submittals in understanding your spec, doing your change orders, all these things. We got very, very good at. But the one thing that we started to work fall away from is the actual work itself and growing people and as members of our company to actually help run the men in the field with alongside the superintendent and alongside the foreman.

[00:15:56] Bob Snyder III: So that’s been really kind of something that we see in our field and going on this journey and talking about the work is we’re seeing more than just profitability. Increased our ability to finish projects faster and increase our rates, but it’s really like creating this culture shift in our industry that’s been really a fascinating byproduct of it.

[00:16:17] Gary Fischer, PE: So talk, talk more about that because you know, these are, these are the problems you’re addressing in industry and in your work through production management. So tell me more about how it’s affecting the culture on your jobs.

[00:16:30] Bob Snyder III: Yeah, absolutely. I mean that this is one of the biggest surprises for me and something that I did not expect and really a byproduct of it all is that Bringing in the foreman and talking about the work is we’ve seen the young people that we were putting in charge of this task of implementing PPC on a daily basis, grow tremendously and learn like 5X, 10X of what they could have learned.

[00:16:55] Bob Snyder III: I mean, I was down in one of our job sites the other day and I started this journey in October and I was talking to the foreman. And sitting down with them, actually reviewing a future project that I had worked and mapped out the really how it’s going to be built and reviewing with them. And I was telling him, it was like, when I came on day one to this project in October, I didn’t know pipe had a hole in it.

[00:17:17] Bob Snyder III: And now I can go into this point where I’m helping you actually design how we’re going to install it over a course of months. Something that if you’re not talking about the work every day takes years to accomplish. So it’s really. We found it incredibly beneficial bringing younger people into the industry, starting to talk about the work really from day one and growing them to understand how pipes actually installed.

[00:17:43] Bob Snyder III: So one day that they, as they progress their careers, we can change it and turn them into really, really amazing project managers that have experience working understand the work and are also excited to work with construction managers and hopefully clients at some point.

[00:17:57] Gary Fischer, PE: Yeah. So, so I want to make sure I caught that because this sounds like a really important point.

[00:18:03] Gary Fischer, PE: So this is helping you accelerate the transfer of knowledge from people that have been doing the work for years and years and years and years, hands on doing the work, to less, or new to career, less experienced folks. By mapping the work processes, they get to walk through it with people that are very experienced and they get a deeper understanding of how the work actually needs to get done.

[00:18:26] Gary Fischer, PE: Is that what I’m hearing?

[00:18:27] Bob Snyder III: Yeah, it’s the mapping is where it starts, right? Because then you’re starting to understand the area completions and what the sequence of installs, but actually sitting down and running a daily cadence with the men and on a daily basis, talking about the work. And a lot of the times, I mean, we say we love red X’s because because that’s data points for 90 percent of the time, it’s not.

[00:18:50] Bob Snyder III: It’s not the guy in the field who’s working hard’s fault that something wasn’t done. It’s our fault as an organization for not setting him up for success. Whether or not that be through other subcontractors, construction managers, it’s our job as, as, The mechanical contractor be able to help coordinate that, right?

[00:19:07] Bob Snyder III: So bringing these young people in to talk about all those issues and talk about the work every day, it’s been, it’s been a really fun process. And we’ve seen, I’ve been so impressed by the growth of my team over Just past like few months really more than anything.

[00:19:21] Gary Fischer, PE: So are you starting to find yourself the library of standard work processes that You you’re able to draw from for that next one to get started with

[00:19:29] Bob Snyder III: Yeah, so we’re starting to really build that out.

[00:19:33] Bob Snyder III: For our installation paths We’ve found really really for for our fabrication build out a lot of standard processes on double wall containment the issue is we don’t make a bunch of stuff of all containment, so it is, it might be, they might be one of the standard processes, but we’ve looked at our process of like receiving fabrication, bringing it to the site bring it to the area of install, building out those level of standard processes, putting a standard process for joint installation, and really, It’s a growing, it’s an ever growing list, and it’s an ever evolving process as well.

[00:20:10] Bob Snyder III: As we get better at quantifying the work and understanding our rates, we can of course update those. Hopefully, I mean, we see ourselves, we sat down at the beginning of this job for the fabrication, and we were brought in the form, and like, how long does it take to do a six inch stainless steel weld? He’s like, roughly four hours.

[00:20:30] Bob Snyder III: By doing this, by mapping the work and running standard processes on that, we were able to quantify that it’s actually taking us an average of an hour and a half. So it’s like double the amount of time. It’s, it’s, it’s crazy the results.

[00:20:45] Gary Fischer, PE: So you’re using Production Control, you said, on a job right now.

[00:20:49] Bob Snyder III: Yes.

[00:20:50] Gary Fischer, PE: Tell me more about what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and what kind of results you’re seeing with it.

[00:20:56] Bob Snyder III: Yeah, absolutely. So right now we’re actually running Production Control on 10 jobs right now.

[00:20:55] Gary Fischer, PE: Oh, wow.

[00:21:00] Bob Snyder III: So, because we have many smaller smaller projects, and we want to try to run Production Control on every single one.

[00:21:09] Bob Snyder III: So what that involves is we have our project engineers, or we call them Project Production Controllers project production managers kind of interchangeably working, mapping out the job and then holding the field accountable to hit their daily expectations. So on a few of our jobs on the larger scale ones, we are running daily cadences but on some of the other other jobs, little smaller jobs, simpler jobs, or if in there in the earlier phases of that BIM engineering virtual design, we’re going and running on a weekly cadence.

[00:21:42] Gary Fischer, PE: And how are you using it to manage your work in process?

[00:21:47] Bob Snyder III: Right now we’re using so we actually, the really cool thing about being a subcontractor is we’re kind of our own internal supplier. So we actually are using a con whip signal to manage the amount of work that the fabrication as it goes out, right?

[00:22:02] Bob Snyder III: Because the conditions of the site are ever changing is if you don’t get something done today, it might push your fabrication three months down the line a week, right? So, and what we’re doing is as opposed to going and in the past, we’ve gone and said, we’re just going to fab the whole job in one shot.

[00:22:18] Bob Snyder III: We’re using a con whip signal. Whereas if we only start the process of what we call production engineering, that’s actually looking at the work itself, bringing in the field and understanding where do you want the weld? Something as simple as that transform your install, will cut your install time by half, right?

[00:22:37] Bob Snyder III: So bringing them into the conversation and then Going and doing the manufacturing. We’re only doing that at when we really at our last responsible moment for when it needs to be done so that we can ensure it gets on site. And as soon as it’s on, it goes up and manage our working process like that.

[00:22:55] Gary Fischer, PE: Yeah. So it sounds like production management’s really changing the way you guys do business or doing business.

[00:23:01] Bob Snyder III: It’s been a dramatic like organizational journey that we’ve started and we’re going to keep going through because it’s really hard, but but it’s the results are amazing.

[00:23:14] Gary Fischer, PE: So to summarize, if you will, I’m sitting here new to this.

[00:23:19] Gary Fischer, PE: Hey, Bob, tell me, why are you getting any value out of this thing? I’ve heard a lot of talk about it. You know, what difference does it make in your bottom line?

[00:23:27] Bob Snyder III: Yeah absolutely. In our bottom line, it’s, I think you can make about twice the amount of money. You can build probably in roughly half the time.

[00:23:36] Bob Snyder III: Just by doing this and the big thing about managing your work in process and starting to put production control on your projects Is you’re really able to manage your investment as well, right? it’s trying to move away from this idea of money spent equals job completion right and Understand that your investment doesn’t need to be up front and you don’t need to build up all the materials and spend it all Once you can go and actually Maximize your investment and optimize the rate, really the rates of install and how fast your project can be done.

[00:24:10] Bob Snyder III: So coming in and my words to owners will be going and working with companies that are thinking like this and working and thinking about your projects like this as actual production systems. And how do we bring in the best companies to work for us who want to view this as a production system and want to implement PPC.

[00:24:31] Gary Fischer, PE: Those are, those are pretty fantastic results. A lot more money, half the time. Managing cash flow in a significant way. So, so are you getting some attention from the other subs on your jobs? Are they looking at it like, hey, what are you guys doing over there?

[00:24:49] Bob Snyder III: It’s, it’s interesting so, because, well, we subcontract our people as well.

[00:24:52] Bob Snyder III: We subcontract our sheet metal and our insulation. We’ve got, we’ve started to bring them into the room a little bit. To have these conversations, but I don’t think just yet, Gary, to be honest, I think It’s I think we’re going to need some more time still until we’re going to get really that full attention From the construction manager and we kind of like to be low key about it, right?

[00:25:17] Bob Snyder III: And not floundered and really because we can’t change the culture of the job site in one go We have to get this right for ourselves first really but we did we have brought it to the attention of some other mechanical contractors and They’re really, really sitting in the room with sitting in the innovation on an innovation committee meeting, presenting this to them and talking about the work we’re doing.

[00:25:40] Bob Snyder III: They’re all amazed by it. So I really am excited to see how this develops in our industry.

[00:25:46] Gary Fischer, PE: Are they amazed in like a good way or amazed in a watch your mind’s way?

[00:25:51] Bob Snyder III: A little bit of both. I think definitely a little bit of both. They’re like, you guys are tracking how many welds you get in a day or how, how many bolts you can, how quickly you can screw in the bolts.

[00:26:02] Bob Snyder III: You guys are crazy, but I think they’re really impressed as well because they see that the application of this manufacturing mentality is what we really need to drive towards to start to improve our industry as a whole.

[00:26:15] Gary Fischer, PE: Man, it sounds like you’re learning a lot through this initiative, both personally and your company.

[00:26:21] Bob Snyder III: Oh my goodness, it’s yeah, I think really understanding the work has been a big unlock for me. And it kind of happened really recently where I was able to sit down and go and look at drawings, things that I’ve never really been trained on, and just by talking about the work and going through this process, just knowing how to do it and how to build it, it’s really, It’s really been a very, very fun process and the people at the Productive Production Institute are very nice.

[00:26:48] Bob Snyder III: Everybody’s great really in this world. So I’m really excited to kind of explore more and learn more.

[00:26:52] Gary Fischer, PE: Yeah, I know me personally. I, it changed the way I looked at drawings just like you said and I started to ask myself Could I build that? Could I under even understand it? Yeah. And I got to admit, you know, maybe half the time I couldn’t even figure out the drawing to, I don’t even think I could build this if I needed to.

[00:27:12] Gary Fischer, PE: You experienced a similar thing?

[00:27:16] Bob Snyder III: Occasionally, you know, it’s kind of before work, it’s all relatively repetitive, right? Putting up hangers, putting up piping, testing the piping and so on and the vice, it’s all relatively repetitive work. It’s really understanding where you need that for the professional expertise The man who’s been doing it or men or women who’s been doing it for 40, 50 years, right?

[00:27:37] Bob Snyder III: Is like, how are we actually going to sequence building it? And how do we flow our crews from one area to the next so that you’re not just throwing capacity at a wall. Right. So that’s, it’s been a lot of fun. And one fun thing that I’ve kind of learned as I, as I go as I go through this is I, in the past, when I started this program when I would walk a job site, I would always be looking up.

[00:27:59] Bob Snyder III: I’d be looking up. I was like, Oh, that’s installed. That’s installed. Okay. Now, when I walk aside, all I’m doing is I’m looking down. I’m just looking for a working process to see how we’re doing on the ground.

[00:28:09] Bob Snyder III: Let’s lay it on the ground. Yeah, exactly

[00:28:11] Gary Fischer, PE: That’s where your time is yeah.

[00:28:13] Bob Snyder III: That’s where the money is.

[00:28:16] Gary Fischer, PE: Yeah, it sounds like this exchange of experience from more experienced people to younger folks or less experienced folks is something you didn’t expect anything else come up that you really didn’t expect to get from this journey?

[00:28:31] Bob Snyder III: Yeah, that it worked. I didn’t expect that. Yeah, that’s one of the big things that I didn’t expect initially. I thought the, I thought, I thought the returns would take a lot longer to start seeing the results to start seeing. Whereas I was shocked by how quickly we were able to go into some of these jobs, turn around turn around our jobs, hold our own men accountable, start holding the construction manager and other subcontractors accountable for making sure they’re clearing our constraints so that we can go and hit our, our milestone dates, right?

[00:29:06] Bob Snyder III: I think there was a really, this kind of that, that like immediate turnaround was, was something that really shocked me. And it’s been really exciting to see and kind of energized me to keep driving forward.

[00:29:19] Gary Fischer, PE: That’s really cool. So very short term, cause and effect. Implementing PPC in just a matter of a week or two weeks, you’re seeing results.

[00:29:29] Bob Snyder III: Yeah. And you can’t really dip your toes into it, unfortunately. It’s something that you got to go all in as much as you can to get those results. Right. So, and, and to be honest, we failed on some jobs doing this too, because it’s very difficult. And we’re really starting to see our, hitting our stride over probably.

[00:29:48] Bob Snyder III: Since the start in October, so we’re about six, seven months in, right? Something like that. We’re starting to hit our stride at this point, and we’re starting to take on new jobs as projects have finished out, and starting really just developing that production system as soon as we get the the award on day one, and that’s been a really fun, exciting process to see that turn around.

[00:30:09] Gary Fischer, PE: So you’re starting to take into account when you make a proposal, that you could get better performance this way and and bid that way?

[00:30:18] Bob Snyder III: Yeah absolutely. And that’s actually been a little side project and part of my job is, I’ve been given information for bid proposals and they’re like, can you, can you map out how this is going to be installed based on here’s all the information you need.

[00:30:32] Bob Snyder III: Yeah, so it’s been a really fun and new part of my job is. I’ve been actually like at that estimating process when we’re estimating jobs Going and giving being given like the information the drug and say hey bob.

[00:30:44] Bob Snyder III: Can you map this for us? Can you map this in running scenarios so we can provide that to the client before we even get this job? And it’s been really, I mean, I really enjoy it. I love just sitting around on my computer and drawing process maps and kind of geeking out a little bit into it, but I think it’s it’s a lot of fun to go look at the project before it even starts and try to get in and have that conversation, give the owner of the information that, hey, based on your current schedule, this doesn’t work, but here are three suggestions that I have to make your project work and more profitable.

[00:31:18] Bob Snyder III: So really bringing us in as a company early to do that, I think is something that we would like to be involved in more.

[00:31:25] Gary Fischer, PE: Yeah. Well, that’s really cool. So what do you see next for PPM and Binsky?

[00:31:33] Bob Snyder III: Just got to keep going, Gary, every single, every single day. It’s really, it takes a long time to fully implement.

[00:31:40] Bob Snyder III: We are still working through jobs that we still have jobs that are not running PPC. So I think in the near future, in the next one or two years, we’d like to fully move into all jobs running PPC and have all the process processes documented for that kind of what’s next for. Where we would like to go is we kind of we’re right now.

[00:32:00] Bob Snyder III: We do a lot of work in pharmaceutical. We’d like to start looking a little bit more at energy transition and getting In touch with some of the owners to look at running ppc on some of their facilities that are being built across the country and then data centers as well. It’s kind of an ever expanding industry so, and really, I know we’re, we are located in New Jersey, but we’d love to kind of extend and extend this idea of PPC and run it with maybe local, local subcontractors and try to take what we’ve learned and from our experience and really bring it out, out of our bubble here.

[00:32:36] Gary Fischer, PE: Yeah, yeah. So where do you see yourself in five years or ten years down the road?

[00:32:41] Bob Snyder III: Ooh myself?

[00:32:42] Gary Fischer, PE: Yourself and your company, where do you see your company?

[00:32:45] Bob Snyder III: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Myself is I really am enjoying this. Five years, ten years I love Binsky. It’s a family company. It’s kind of been my home and my coworkers have really turned into my family.

[00:33:00] Bob Snyder III: So being a part of that and watching us grow and get better at this and the end. Even, really, it’s, it’s hard to see that far in the future because we’re so new to this and the results are so stark and drastic. That it kind of shows us like where can we take it next right, right. Does that actually involve doing the construction itself.

[00:33:21] Bob Snyder III: Does that involve working with owners and construction managers to try to help implement this philosophy. I I think there’s a lot of possibilities and opportunity out there. So really excited about it.

[00:33:32] Gary Fischer, PE: It’s a fact, so if I if i’m getting bugs in here, I really appreciate the time you’re investing with us share your experience. So if I’m somebody brand new to this, just heard about it, didn’t have the ability to somebody said, this is your job. Now get over it.

[00:33:88] Gary Fischer, PE: But you’ve got some advice to somebody that’s just learning about this, just being exposed to it. What’s your advice? What do you do? How do you make sense of it? How do you understand it? And they want to learn more. What do I do?

[00:34:02] Bob Snyder III: Yeah, absolutely. Well, the first thing, so I actually I’m running our internship program this summer and one of the and the internship program is actually directly related to implementing PPC on the job site.

[00:34:14] Bob Snyder III: So I’ve been talking with these people and they’re like, what do I do to like get this information? I always direct them and tell them. First thing you do is you go to the Project Production Institute website, you check it out, you start reading some of the materials. I always recommend them the book Built to Fail by Todd Zabelle.

[00:34:31] Bob Snyder III: I read that book and kind of had a lot of what I was seeing in the field just kind of clicked and made sense. So just really, and, and the one thing is, as I kind of tell is just be curious. We don’t know what we don’t know and ask questions and just be open minded to think about things differently because there’s decades and decades of accumulated knowledge and Just a tradition that exists within our industry that we have to look past and we have to look at to change to see What’s not working and what can we do about it?

[00:35:04] Bob Snyder III: Right? So just being curious and having an open mind.

[00:35:07] Gary Fischer, PE: Stay curious read get your hands dirty learn by doing no substitute for that.

[00:35:14] Bob Snyder III: No, unfortunately not. I know I wish there was a magic pill, you can take it just know it all but the only way to know is to fail, right? so.

[00:35:24] Gary Fischer, PE: Hey, you guys are doing something pretty unique with your intern program this year.

[00:35:28] Gary Fischer, PE: Tell us about that I it’s the first I heard about it a few days ago, from your dad. So tell me more.

[00:35:35] Bob Snyder III: Okay, great yeah, so so this summer in the past we’ve brought interns in kind of it’s done they’ve done surveys of the company and and i’ve got an estimate and stuff and what we based kind of on our experience of how young people in our company, our young project engineers on the sites are learning is we want to create and curate an internship program to bring in interns and assign them directly working for a project engineer.

[00:36:00] Bob Snyder III: So we’re working for them. They are running PPC on a daily basis. And the goal is I want them to walk away at the end of the summer to know and understand the work. And one of the things is kind of. The challenges that I would like them to start to look at is I want you to see what’s wrong on site. What do you see wrong and how can we go and reanalyze our process?

[00:36:21] Bob Snyder III: How do we remap the job and our sequence of how we’re installing to start installing quicker and resolve those issues. So I’m really excited. It’s going to be a fun process. And I think we’re starting June. So excited to talk about it more.

[00:36:36] Gary Fischer, PE: Hey, would you be open to perhaps, so these interns run they’re already starting and they run through summer?

[00:36:41] Bob Snyder III: Yeah, so they’re starting June to August.

[00:36:48] Gary Fischer, PE: June to August what would you and this may not need to be in the reporting, but what would you think about having an interview with your interns after the summer? Oh, that would be great. Give me the opportunity to talk with them and just see what they’ve learned and what they’ve, what they’ve acquired through the summer.

[00:36:59] Bob Snyder III: Yeah, that, that would be great. Yeah.

[00:37:06] Gary Fischer, PE: I think this is really a brilliant idea. You guys have come up with, it’s a really a good way to transfer knowledge that, early career folks, engineers in particular. Really need to acquire how the work is done.

[00:37:20] Bob Snyder III: Yeah, it’s and i’m excited for it because I know that they’re all mechanical engineers. Who’ve never held a pipe wrench before but I want them to learn and understand and that’s that’s how we grow people.

[00:37:33] Bob Snyder III: How are we going to grow people? You don’t know the work, right? Anybody can file a change order do an RFI. So but not everybody can know how pipes actually are installed. So i’m really excited for these kids.

[00:37:43] Gary Fischer, PE: So is there anything that I didn’t ask you that you’d like to share with our audience?

[00:37:47] Bob Snyder III: No, I have nothing else to add, but it’s a lot of fun and really excited to kind of get out there and keep spreading the message.

[00:37:55] Gary Fischer, PE: Yeah. Well, I appreciate you sharing so freely of your experience in an honest and transparent way. It’s very much appreciated and I think our audience is really going to benefit from hearing a little bit about it, getting a taste. Of how it’s transformed the way you’re doing work and the kind of results that you’re getting, that’s that’s just remarkable stuff. So thank you very much for your time, Bob.

[00:38:32] Bob Snyder III: Of course. Thank you very much. It was a lot of fun I really really love this stuff and I was looking for a platform to talk about it. So very excited But thank you very much Gary. Appreciate it.