Examining the K-12 Sector

[00:00:00] Brad Ducey: Welcome to the Construction Insiders Podcast, where our host Jessica Busch talks with industry experts about new trends, best practices, and how to successfully deliver construction projects in today’s market. Whatever your role on a project, we think you’ll find these discussions interesting and worth your time.

[00:00:20] Jessica Busch: All right. Thank you, Brad. Today we are gonna sit down and we are talking about education once again. Only this time we’re gonna be looking at K-12. We have Jeff Holstein, Kunal Shah. They are two of our best experts, most knowledgeable experts in this sector specifically. So we are excited to sit down, hear from them about what is going on in K-12, what to expect in the future, and how we’re navigating this currently.

So thank you both, gentlemen. Hopefully today we can have a insightful conversation about what you’re seeing, your experiences, and how we move forward. So thank you.

[00:00:58] Kunal Shah: Thank you.

[00:01:00] Jessica Busch: Alright, to kick this off, Jeff, I have a question for you because we’ve been hearing a lot about this. It’s not going away in the south, which is where you focus.

When we’re talking K-12, we’re hearing still a lot about CM-at-risk. What are your thoughts? How is that going and why is it still so popular?

[00:01:19] Jeff Holstein: First of all, we have to think about where we’re working right now in both North Carolina and South Carolina, which is where we focus. And in North Carolina it’s been going on for quite some time.

But here in South Carolina, only in about the last 10 or so years has it been an accepted delivery method. Prior to that, everything was design-bid-build. Which gave rise to the emergence of program and project management while firms like ours were very popular.

I guess if you’re looking at pros and cons, the pro is that it gives the school district an ability to select based on qualifications as opposed to waiting to bid day to find out who their contractor is gonna be. On data we have in our experience is that there’s a price premium associated with being able to pick your contractor.

It can be very difficult to really get an apples to apples comparison, however, because rarely is the same type project bid, same location, at the same time, but not too long ago, we were able to get what we think is an excellent comparison of school district that we worked for in the upper part of the state.

We were the program manager and the owner wanted to try to do at least one project CM-at-risk, because he knew some of his colleagues were doing that in other school districts. And so we were using prototype construction there. That simply means it’s the same design replicated over and over. So we competitively bid, design-bid-build, an elementary school in early October of a particular year.

About six or seven weeks later, right before Thanksgiving, we bid the second elementary school. Once again, it’s a prototype. Now the numbers that I’m gonna discuss have nothing to do with site work because site can be different from location to location. This was just the building itself. Both of those buildings were right in the a million dollar range.

In fact, they were within a couple hundred thousand dollars of each other. At the same time this was going on the third prototype elementary school was making its way through the CM-at-risk process and we were about four months away from getting the CM-at-risk price. Fast forward to April, we get the GMP, which stands for Guaranteed Max Price.

And you can edit this out if you want to, but I’m gonna say there’s nothing guaranteed or max about it.

[00:03:53] Jessica Busch: I don’t think we need to edit that out. That is just the truth, right?

[00:03:58] Jeff Holstein: But at any rate when we got the GMP from the contractor, it was like $25 million, plus it was five and some change million over what the other two were bid just five months before, and of course, the owner was very surprised at that. He felt like he couldn’t dare take that number to his board and asked him to pay $5 million more for a bid. Now listen, that’s 25% more. Now I’m not here to say that it’s always gonna be a premium of that size. I’m sure it would vary from time to time, day to day, place to place, but it was a little too much for that owner to stomach, so we went back to the contractor and tried to work with him looking at some cost savings and measures. So after three or four weeks the contractor came back with about $400,000 in savings. That didn’t put much of a dent in the $5 million difference. The owner asked us to essentially pay the CM-at-risk for what he had done through that date, and put it back out onto the bidding market. And when we did, the number came in almost exactly what it did five months before. In fact, I think the price was right between the price of the first two projects that we had bid back in October and November of the year before. So rarely do you get that kind of apples to apples comparison.

The only other one I would mention if you’d like to hear about it, is down in a lower part of the country, lower part of the state that is. We were working with another school district and we were doing two projects, both of which were additions, renovations. One of them was a lot more complex, and I’ll discuss that one more in a minute after I go over the numbers and tell you why we chose CM-at-risk.

The other one was design-bid-build, and after bids were taken on both or the guaranteed max price and then the bids, we decided to do a division by division comparison. What do I mean by that? A job is divided in the divisions of construction. You have concrete, you have steel, you have HVAC, you have plumbing, that kind of thing.

So when we looked based on the contractor’s schedule of values, when we looked at what we were paying for each one of those divisions, it was consistently higher on the CM-at-risk side. Now, in some cases it might be 30% higher. In other cases it was only two or 3% higher. I’m convinced that was because of the relative cost of each one of those divisions. In some cases, we were probably getting some economy of scale. In some cases we were paying through the nose. But those are the best, most recent examples. We have to demonstrate that there is a premium associated with CM-at-risk. The difficult thing to try to communicate to a K-12 owner is how much is it gonna.

If it’s two or 3%, then maybe they’re thinking, Hey, our ability to select our contractor is worth that. If it’s 10, 15%, then I think the question becomes, is it responsible use of taxpayer money?

[00:07:06] Jessica Busch: In talking about responsible use, the two 3% in terms of transparency with the community, that might make sense to the community when we’re talking 10, 15, 20, whatever it is, percent above, that is not maybe the best use of taxpayer money.

[00:07:21] Jeff Holstein: And if they can hire a program management firm at two, three, 4%, then you see the spread there.

[00:07:29] Jessica Busch: As an owner advocate.

[00:07:30] Jeff Holstein: As an owner advocate.

[00:07:31] Jessica Busch: Really oversee, overseeing that.

[00:07:32] Jeff Holstein: Correct.

[00:07:32] Jessica Busch: Okay.

[00:07:32] Jeff Holstein: Correct. Now I’ll just continue if I could

[00:07:35] Jessica Busch: Yeah.

[00:07:35] Jeff Holstein: To talk about , the CM-at-risk delivery method. I don’t want the listener to get the wrong idea. We’re not against it. We think there’s a place for it. For example, if a project and the one I described earlier that the addition renovation was on a very small site. The schedule was going to be very difficult to meet. So it had a series of complexities about it that made you, whoever you were, wanna select your contractor.

We, as the program manager, wanted to select the contractor. The owner wanted to select the contractor. The architect wanted to select the contractor. We wanted to know who was gonna build that project, because, the level of complexity was such that we didn’t wanna leave it to the sort of hardware

[00:08:13] Jessica Busch: You needed that control.

[00:08:14] Jeff Holstein: Absolutely. Absolutely. Our sort of overriding philosophy, if it’s a brand new school on a new green field site the owner is going to get the best bang for their buck using a design-bid-build method, perhaps with pre-qualification. Yes. Which I’ll talk about in a moment in utilizing a project management firm like ourselves.

Now, I mentioned pre-qualification.

Is a technique we’ve used and we think it sort of, it’s a good middle ground between a complete design-bid-build where any bidder can show up and turn in the bid and the CM-at-risk delivery method because what we do is we will receive qualification packages from general contractors that are interested in bidding the project and we may receive six or eight packages, but we may only pre-qualify with the owner’s help, three or four, perhaps five general contractors to bid the work. That way these GCs know who they’re competing against. They don’t have to worry about an unknown contractor coming in and low balling the project. And it gives, I think, the owner some comfort that they know who’s bidding the project as well.

So we’ve utilized that on a number of projects over the last 10 years or so, provided that the owner’s procurement code allows for that. Some may not, but that’s always a question we ask early on in the life of a building program.

[00:09:45] Jessica Busch: So really trying to mitigate that risk of price increases, cost increases from the very beginning.

[00:09:51] Jeff Holstein: Exactly. And not having a bid get turned in, relatively unknown contractor who then comes back to you a week later and say, Hey, I left out such and such. It’s worth, $800,000. And then you have to throw his bid out and go to the next little bid. And all that is time consuming.

[00:10:08] Jessica Busch: Which is money.

[00:10:09] Jeff Holstein: Which is money.

[00:10:10] Kunal Shah: And we use that a lot in West coast as well, so basically design-bid-build with pre-qualification. It’s standard in West coast as well. And as you mentioned, if you have a complex project, you want a contractor with special skillset set, we put that in criteria requirements, and that would be the criteria of the shortlisting, three to five contractors, and then they can go ahead and beat that job.

[00:10:32] Jessica Busch: To make sure that shortlist has the experience. There’s no surprises down the road.

[00:10:38] Kunal Shah: Yes.

[00:10:38] Jessica Busch: Interesting. We’ve talked a lot about what is popular in the South right now. Kunal, I’ll switch it over to you. About what we’re seeing in the West and it sounds like there are some differences in how things are handled.

[00:10:51] Kunal Shah: Yes. So West usually, we use project delivery methods like design-bid-build with pre-qualification.

Design-build is pretty popular there too. And we also use lease-leaseback. So lease-leaseback is basically a method where, you are going to, again, it’s related to pre-qualification. We’ll last for the pre-qualification packages from the various contractors.

Then we, along with the district staff, will shortlist the contractors. We will interview them and then we’ll end up selecting one subcontractor who would provide both pre-construction and construction services.

[00:11:22] Jessica Busch: Okay.

[00:11:23] Kunal Shah: We use that a lot. But as far as project management is concerned, in West, we use two different models.

One is staff augmentation. The bigger clients usually use staff augmentation. They’ll come out with the job acquisition where, and with the fixed hour rate. So there will be pool of consultants who can submit the resumes and they will shortlist few candidates, they’ll interview and a particular candidate would be hired.

[00:11:47] Jessica Busch: So that’s something very different that we haven’t heard about in the South. The staff augmentation part?

[00:11:52] Kunal Shah: Yes.

[00:11:52] Jessica Busch: Okay.

[00:11:53] Kunal Shah: And then the other one is CM Agency. So again, if it’s a smaller client, they will hire team of consultants. So that’s where they will request proposals from PM CM firms will provide the proposals.

They are again shortlist and interview and come up with a qualified CM PM firm to manage that project in that particular method, we’ll provide a team of people at with time and material. So we’ll have fixed hourly rates over a period of time and that would establish our overall contract amount.

So as far as, like one of the pro I see for the staff augmentation is for the bigger clients, provides them flexibility they can bring people when and as required. And try to get best talent out from the market through different firms.

[00:12:36] Jessica Busch: Because when you’re doing staff augmentation instead of one firm competing for that lump sum, it can be multiple firms with individuals in their expertise from different, across different firms?

[00:12:46] Kunal Shah: Yes.

[00:12:46] Jessica Busch: Working together.

[00:12:47] Kunal Shah: The only con I see there, as a client, you’ll be hiring an individual, so you won’t have a firm who would be accountable. So I know you are hiring individuals, but typically that is done by bigger clients.

[00:12:58] Jessica Busch: Mm-hmm.

[00:12:59] Kunal Shah: They have their policies and procedures in place. They have their standards in place,

And they have staff in place too to help.

They have staff. Yeah.

[00:13:05] Jessica Busch: Okay.

[00:13:05] Kunal Shah: So the CM Agency the pro I see usually it’s done by the smaller clients and that they want experts like us to come on board, help them set up their design standards, their standard operating procedures, project management plan, and they can get individual accountability as a company accountability because all team members in that team would be from Cumming.

[00:13:25] Jessica Busch: Interesting. Okay. So two very different approaches.

[00:13:28] Jeff Holstein: Yes. It’s just something that’s not used very much in either one of the Carolinas. We actually got our first staff augmentation assignment a few weeks ago with a Midlands South Carolina School District, one person for about six months. So we’ll get a chance to see how that works.

[00:13:43] Jessica Busch: So it might be coming this way.

[00:13:44] Jeff Holstein: It might be, but historically we’ve been asked to provide lump sum contracts for all PM services. And I think depending on your point of view, you look at these things as to whether they are pros or cons. I think the pro from a school district standpoint is they know on day one how much they’re going to pay for our services for two years, three years, four years, whatever, the length of the program and they know that number’s not gonna change unless they add to the scope.

[00:14:13] Jessica Busch: And it’s stability for the consultancy and its stability for the district.

[00:14:17] Jeff Holstein: Absolutely. There’s a comfort level there, I think, on both sides of having a lump sum contract. So yeah, it’s a lot different than what Kunal is used to, but we would certainly welcome staff augmentation to come this way.

[00:14:30] Jessica Busch: Won’t turn it down.

[00:14:31] Jeff Holstein: Not at all.

[00:14:32] Jessica Busch: So changing directions of the conversation a little bit. Talking about just the general market, the volatility we’re seeing on the construction side of things in general, those daily changes. What are your teams focusing on in terms of trying to mitigate that risk for the day-to-day challenges we’re seeing .

[00:14:51] Kunal Shah: So it’s a really hot topic right now, post COVID. We have seen a lot of volatility in the market.

[00:14:57] Jessica Busch: And it’s not going away.

[00:14:58] Kunal Shah: Yeah. For example, lumber prices skyrocketed. Steel prices skyrocketed.

But, one of the thing with Cumming, we have Cumming Insights and we get the market trends on monthly basis, which provides us a good gauge to see how the market is going to act. The other thing is supply chain and logistics impacts are huge right now.

If you wanna get HVAC units on West Coast, it’s six months out.

[00:15:21] Jessica Busch: Six months to get HVAC.

[00:15:22] Kunal Shah: Switch gears at 12 months.

[00:15:23] Jessica Busch: What was it before these issues?

[00:15:25] Kunal Shah: So before those would be like, HVAC unit would be like maybe two months.

[00:15:30] Jessica Busch: So it’s four months we’re adding on just for HVAC. Interesting.

[00:15:32] Kunal Shah: Switch gear might be three months. It’s doubled or four times in certain cases. We were thinking it would go away once we are out of COVID, but the situation is still the same. So the other thing is visual display boards, which are called marquee signs. Like they’re four months out. Education sector projects uses them a lot.

[00:15:49] Jessica Busch: For the classrooms?

[00:15:50] Kunal Shah: It’s like outside,

[00:15:51] Jessica Busch: The drive-by,

[00:15:52] Kunal Shah: drive-by signs,

[00:15:53] Jessica Busch: Even things at that level.

[00:15:55] Kunal Shah: Yeah.

[00:15:55] Jessica Busch: Are just, okay. So timelines have been skewed still?

[00:15:58] Kunal Shah: Yes. So what we do, we try to purchase these items directly as much as possible, rather than waiting for the contractor to get on board.

So for example, in California we have CMAs contracts, which are like, pre-negotiated contracts by state of California. So district can use those and try to procure these materials or equipment beforehand. I’ll give you an example, we are planning an HVAC project.

Basically it’s set among 17 sites and there are 900 units that we are going to replace. It’s going to happen in summer of 2023. What we did is during design phase we started contacting the manufacturer that we used for HVAC unit. We walked all those sites along with the designer and the manufacturer.

We came up with a complete list of inventory and exact model number. We are also able to get his price locked in. Then he started in good faith manufacturing those units. Now we are gonna have contractor on, we already have a contractor on board. Come summer, these units will be available. If we would’ve waited for the contractor to come on board there would’ve been no way we would have this units.

[00:16:56] Jessica Busch: So you’re locking in prices?

[00:16:57] Kunal Shah: Yeah, locking in prices ahead of time. So they’re available in summer so we can get the projects done in summer. At Cumming, cost is our roots. We do a lot of estimating. Every phase of design start like S D D, cd, we do estimates and we keep on constantly checking that we are within budget and every estimate is going to have an escalation, which is going to be from all the way up to meet point of construction.

Let’s say if design gets impacted and midpoint of construction gets pushed out, we recalculate escalation accordingly. Most of the times these escalation would be able to absorb some of the volatility in the market.

[00:17:33] Jessica Busch: Talking about, escalation and things, looking in terms of forecasting, what are you putting into the contracts now to help everyone?

[00:17:39] Kunal Shah: We always put the standard contingencies, so there’ll be contingency for construction, which depending on type of construction, if it’s a brand new construction, might be five to 10%. If it’s modernization, it might be 10 to 15%. That will take care of construction changes related to enforcing conditions, errors and omissions, owner changes, or any agency related changes.

[00:18:00] Jessica Busch: Have those changed? Have those numbers changed in the last year or two?

[00:18:05] Kunal Shah: What has changed is escalation.

[00:18:07] Jessica Busch: Okay.

[00:18:07] Kunal Shah: For example, we were carrying 4% at time. We were all the way up to 10%, and at times we were on top of escalation. We were having market condition factor to that. So that has changed a lot. But contingencies typically, they’re for anything that can go wrong on project. And those are typically still the same. We still use the same contingency percentage, but additionally we use design contingencies and project contingencies too, just in case for any design cost overruns or soft cost overruns, so. I’ll give you an example, of alternative things we do.

So I did talk about cma. So we’ve been trying that a lot. We are trying to do more and more of owner furnish, contractor installed items. So one thing with that is, we can basically lock in prices sooner. We can have equipment available on time.

And, we don’t have to pay any overhead that a contractor would charge on that. Then sometimes we even go owner furnace, owner install. So for example, like we are. Three uh, synthetic track and field project this year. So last year when we were planning the project, we came to know the prices of both installation and materials are going to go up.

We went to the CMS contractor. We found a company that we wanted to hire this for. So we were able to lock in price for all those three fields, both material and installation last December, now we have contractor on board. We are already in production line. The material will be arriving in summer and we’ll be able to deliver the track and field.

[00:19:28] Jessica Busch: Now as a project manager, you’re seeing the kind of pre-construction, all of the pre-planning is even more important, and you’ve been seeing more reliance on you guys and your team because you’re literally out there from the beginning locking these prices a year in.

[00:19:43] Kunal Shah: Yes.

[00:19:43] Jessica Busch: Before the GCs on board.

[00:19:45] Kunal Shah: Yes. So that is change for sure. Before we would be relying on GCs on this kind of things. But because of the longer timelines and volatility in pricing,

[00:19:53] Jessica Busch: Just financially doesn’t make sense. So now just on your plate.

[00:19:56] Kunal Shah: Yeah. We just wanna make sure that we are being creative and locking pricing and materials.

[00:20:01] Jeff Holstein: If I could go back just for a moment to the volatility question, I’d like to add something. I agree with everything Kunal said. That’s not unique to the West Coast. We’re seeing the same issues over here.

[00:20:11] Jessica Busch: Okay.

[00:20:12] Jeff Holstein: I think one of the things that gives us an advantage perhaps over our competition is that we rely heavily on our own cost management team.

We’ve got hundreds of estimators that constantly stay abreast of the changing construction cost, and they’re able to spot those. And so we may perhaps have an advantage in being able to advise owners that, hey, you know, six months from now, sheetrock is gonna be out of sight, or whatever the building material may be. The other thing that I think we look at is the, just as you mentioned Kunal, some of the early packages for years now we’ve been doing early site work packages, which can give an owner two advantages number one, they save the markup of the GC on the site development contract. Number two it improves the schedule because we can go ahead and prepare along with the architect and engineer the bidding documents for the site work.

while and the site work can begin while the architect is finishing up the rest of the design documents. And so when the project is finally bid, the site is ready to go and the contractor can move on. Those are the kinds of things that we’re constantly looking for as a way to improve both schedule, quality, budget, and everything else.

[00:21:23] Jessica Busch: And just to adapt to the current,

[00:21:25] Jeff Holstein: Whatever the situation is. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:21:28] Jessica Busch: Interesting.

Okay, so talking about adaption, always looking forward, forecasting. How has programming changed in the K-12 sector?

[00:21:38] Kunal Shah: Programming has changed a lot, for now, I like to say it’s like iPhone generation, so everything is in technology.

[00:21:45] Jessica Busch: Yep.

[00:21:45] Kunal Shah: Technology has changed a lot. In classrooms now we have high technology, maybe like audio visual, we have high end projections, smart board and, everything is taught through technology. We need to provide wireless access points throughout the campus so they have proper network coverage.

The other big thing is flexible learning space. So nowadays, teacher wants more flexible learning space than traditional, conventional

[00:22:09] Jessica Busch: just sitting in a desk in the same spot all day.

[00:22:11] Kunal Shah: Yes. We use 21st century furniture, which is like easily movable so they can lay out the classroom the way they want. Provide them more collaborative environment. Like many of my schools, we have this bifold doors, which is like garage doors. So you can open the door and, you go in the courtyard in California it’s usually sunny. But we have shade structures outside learning areas, they take classrooms outside into the courtyard so that

[00:22:35] Jessica Busch: keep kids engaged

[00:22:36] Kunal Shah: Yep. So that, and then security is a big thing. We have to think a lot about security. Fencing, we are fencing all of our school sites, controlled access, intrusion systems, security cameras throughout. So it’s lot of things have changed from before and, we have to think about all this upfront during programming phase and planning.

So we need to make sure we have good design standards upfront, and also we wanna make sure that we include all this in our financial planning. We are going to establish our budgets on basis of this. We set aside diff a budget for FF&E, which is furniture fixture and equipment.

We work with the districts and make sure all these things in programming phase are properly identified and properly funded. So there are no surprises and it’s transparent and it’s collaborative.

[00:23:21] Jessica Busch: All while technology is changing on a daily basis. You’re trying to plan for it.

[00:23:25] Kunal Shah: So to catch up with technology, that’s that’s very interesting because, like a life cycle of a project before it goes into construction might be a couple of years.

To catch up with technology, it’s a constant challenge. So we try to do as budget as,

[00:23:36] Jessica Busch: but keeping that budget line

[00:23:38] Kunal Shah: Within the budget, in line too. Yeah.

[00:23:40] Jeff Holstein: Yeah. Again agree with everything he said. I felt like I just walked out of a programming meeting somewhere in South Carolina.

And the only thing I would add to it is I think the clients or the owners have gotten more sophisticated over the last 10 years, whereas 10, 12, 15 years ago an owner may have said I know I need an elementary school here, and I know I need a middle school here. Now they’ve become a little more willing to do what’s called a facility study prior to trying to set a bond referendum. Not that they didn’t do it 15 years ago, but we’re seeing more of it now. Where, and it’s actually a service that Cumming offers. We’ve done 15, 20, maybe 30 of them in our existence.

[00:24:19] Jessica Busch: For different districts?

[00:24:20] Jeff Holstein: For different districts, yes. And so what we end up doing is walking each building, sometimes we may employ engineers and architects to help in this endeavor where we then try to determine the educational capacity of each school based on metrics in the learning community. Oftentimes that can inform or better inform the actual needs of the school district. So maybe some of the assumptions that they made weren’t exactly right.

Maybe if at this elementary school, your core spaces media center, lunchroom, things like that are big enough to handle an addition. Maybe there’s an addition to this elementary school and you don’t need to build a new whole new school. Yeah. Again we encourage those kinds of studies before school districts decide exactly what bond referendum amount needs to be.

[00:25:03] Jessica Busch: Yeah. I think just anything, the more information you can have, the better your decisions are.

[00:25:06] Jeff Holstein: Sure. Yes, sure.

[00:25:07] Jessica Busch: And decisions equal money.

[00:25:09] Kunal Shah: Yes.

[00:25:09] Jeff Holstein: And oftentimes these need to be done a number of months in advance, because if November is the is the vote day,

[00:25:15] Jessica Busch: Ballot day.

[00:25:16] Jeff Holstein: Yep. Ballot day.

[00:25:16] Kunal Shah: Yep.

[00:25:17] Jeff Holstein: Then by July or August, the number needs to be set.

So sometime early in the year, that study needs to take place.

[00:25:24] Kunal Shah: Yes.

[00:25:24] Jeff Holstein: And be completed by April, May so that the discussions and debates can begin so that the number can be set by July or August so that the referendum can be properly voted on by November. So that’s the goal.

[00:25:38] Jessica Busch: Interesting. That’s all I have for you guys.

Looking through my questions here. I think you guys have nailed them all. Is there anything in closing that you guys would like to bring up? Just look forward to next November?

[00:25:49] Kunal Shah: Yeah, it’s just plan. That’s what I would say. And, especially for the bond, you like, I completely agree. With Jeff, we do the same thing. We call it facilities master plan. Come up with the amount that we, the school needs and there’s a lot of planning that goes in there. We go out, do the community meetings get, basically you, it’s all dependent on the polling. You need to get 60% for board.

[00:26:11] Jessica Busch: The community behind it.

[00:26:12] Kunal Shah: Yes.

[00:26:12] Jessica Busch: Be behind it. It feels like you guys are being transparent with that number.

[00:26:15] Kunal Shah: Yep.

[00:26:15] Jeff Holstein: We only need 50.1% here, so I’m glad of that.

[00:26:18] Jessica Busch: And what’s the number you need, Kunal?

[00:26:19] Kunal Shah: It’s about 60%.

[00:26:20] Jessica Busch: 60%.

[00:26:20] Kunal Shah: Close to 60.

[00:26:22] Jeff Holstein: There would’ve been a lot less school building going on in the Carolina and said that

[00:26:25] Kunal Shah: 55 to 60.

[00:26:26] Jessica Busch: So we found another difference between the West, east. There we go.

[00:26:29] Jeff Holstein: No, I think, it’s been a fun conversation. I think we’ve covered a lot of ground and it’s interesting to find out and how many similarities there are and then again, how many differences there are. But ultimately we’re all pulling and pushing in the same direction.

[00:26:40] Jessica Busch: Same end goal. Awesome. Thank you both. Enjoy the rest of your afternoons, and hope to talk to you guys soon.

[00:26:46] Kunal Shah: Thank you.

[00:26:46] Jeff Holstein: Thanks again.

[00:26:47] Brad Ducey: If you enjoyed this episode of Construction Insiders, we encourage you to check out our website at cumming-group.com, that’s cumming-group.com where you can find our full knowledge library under the Insights tab. It’s all great stuff. We’re really passionate about it. We hope you’ll check it out. Thanks for listening.