Construction Solutions - Devon Romero

(upbeat music) - Hi, welcome back to another episode of the Design and Construction Management podcast. My name is Talia Hedrick. - I am Brother Peterson. - And today we are happy to have Devon from Construction Solutions. And Brother Peterson is gonna give you a little rundown. - Devon Romero is from California. He started school at BYU Idaho in January of 2022, studying construction management. He recently graduated December of 2024 and was promptly hired by Construction Solutions as a pre-construction manager. Devon has been working with them for more than a year now. Welcome to the podcast. - Thank you. - So tell us a little bit about your journey. Why did you choose construction solutions and how did you get to where you are today? - Well, so it started out, I always knew I wanted to be in construction ever since I was a little kid. I loved Legos, kind of a cliche start for my career. So that was what set my site on construction management and BYU has notoriously one of the most recognizable construction programs. But yeah, so very notable, I came up here and loved it. The classes have been great. I loved the classes I had the most lab times and stuff like that. You're able to actually experience construction, not just learn and read about it. And I think that was pivotal. Especially since you do require the two internships in order for you to actually graduate. And those internships were also really helpful for me, I actually built homes. I was with, actually I'm gonna give a plug for them. H&M, Aston Homes, and they were great. They actually were a huge part of the reason why I was able to have this success. I learned so much, I built like three homes with them. Like from the ground up, we was concrete excavation all the way to finish. And it really helped me understand the inner workings of a construction project and how to actually do the different traits. I did tile, I did flooring, I did framing, I did so much of that stuff. And as what I am now a pre-construction manager, I understand a project better and I'm able to better account for the different costs. And some of the things that typically will slip by, I'm able to have a better grasp of those different elements and scopes of work so that we can better profit from a project and we don't end up having those costs overruns. I was interested in construction solutions because I had an Elder's Quorum president in my YSA award that he worked with them for a while and he highly recommended them. I also ran into a guy that I was TAing alongside and he also had worked with them. He built the Wendy's next to Walmart up here in Rexburg and he just spoke praises of them. And so I was gonna do everything I could to get an internship with them to find out for myself if this company was worth the salt. I got an internship thankfully, which it's a very coveted position. We constantly have students asking us for internships and it's like, sorry, it's really competitive. And so I was grateful to be able to get an internship. I started July of 2024 and my plan was to start that internship while taking some classes, finish up, graduate in December and hopefully roll right into a full time position starting in January of this year. That just so happened to be exactly how that happened. But basically one of the cool things that happened was it wasn't looking like it was going to end up taking place. And that was around October time. We just didn't have any available superintendent positions. But after I had already been working with them for a couple of months during this internship and I knew I loved the company. It was everything that a company tells you about when they come up here for the career fairs and stuff. It was exactly that, but they didn't have to say it. It was just, it was a family feel company, very flexible, they're very understanding, they're very big on. It doesn't matter if you make a mistake, just learn from it, correct it and improve. So they're very understanding, very patient and they're very constructive. They're very honest with their feedback and they'll say, this is what you need to do to improve. This is the best way to go about it. And so you can take that, you can run with it and you can develop yourself as a person. They really believe that as you grow as a person, it will just, it will by effect benefit the company. So I just knew right away from that internship, I wanna work here, I love this company. It's great, it's a wonderful learning environment, it's a wonderful work environment. Unfortunately, it was looking like it wasn't gonna actually happen. And I kind of went into this knowing it was gonna be unlikely, Jim, one of the owners, that there's three owners. So Jim Turner, Jared Turner and Eric Wall. And Jim was the one that's on the side of operations and he was like, I don't really have a room for a position available for a new superintendent. We just don't have enough projects to warrant an extra new superintendent. We already just recently hired a new superintendent. Someone actually, I was in a study group with in one of my classes. So, I was a little disappointed, but also was grateful for the experience. And then by the time I was getting to December, I started getting nervous because I don't have a job. We had an apartment complex that was less than ideal. We were having some mold issues. And so I was like, we need to move. We didn't know where we were gonna move to. We need a job. I don't know where I'm gonna get this job. So I signed up for a solar sales job, was not into it at all. It was just gonna be what I did to get by and struggling with it. And a week before graduation, I get a call from Jared Turner. So I hear you've been looking for a job. I'm like, yes, what does this mean? And he was saying, one of our estimators recently left. And we were wanting to see if you'd be interested in considering that position. And at first, I didn't know what to think 'cause I'm like, I don't want to be in the office. I wanted to be on site. I wanted to see the progress of the building. I wanted to be involved with the subcontractors. And I started thinking about it. I'm like, I better just say yes. And that's actually a piece of advice I'd give any student is just say yes to opportunity, even if you want to be picking best options and stuff like that when possible. But sometimes an opportunity just presents itself. Just say yes, don't be afraid. And so that's basically what I did. I obviously set up a meeting with him. We talked more about it. We talked about what that would look like, what the responsibilities are. And he was like, we want you to be an estimator for our company. And so I did end up taking that job. And we also ended up finding an apartment complex around the same time, similar situation, with like a week or two ahead of time. It was just like, oh my goodness, this stuff could not have lined up more perfectly. So it was really cool because that to me was a testament. We were praying very diligently for these things to work out and to find what the path forward was. And the Lord clearly took matters into his hands and he made it happen. And I know it's where I'm supposed to be. And it's such a humbling experience too, because I was so stressed in the moment. I literally just, it was, I Jesus, take the wheel moment. I was like, I'm going to do everything I can to work hard to find opportunities. I'm going to talk to all the companies. I'm going to put myself out there. But ultimately, whether or not it works out is out of my control. So I just kind of like left it to him. And it absolutely did work out. And I was a really humbling. And I felt a lot of love from my savior at that point in time and since as well. Yeah, that's such a cool story. I'm so glad that worked out for you. I'm curious how you, because you interned for them before you went on his full time. So how did your day-to-day as an intern compared to your now day-to-day as a professional? So because I did my internship all on site, I basically tutored alongside Trevor and Travis. They're two of great superintendents that we have on our company. And basically, I was helping them with logging daily activities. So it was a big part of what we do as a superintendent would be documentation. Because everything in every photo that you have, every log that you have is proof to the owner of what's being done on the house. If there's any disputes about who did what, what caused what conflict, you have it all written down. It's like, nope, you can see right here. I took photos on this day. Concrete was not done. So you guys are liable for liquidated damages, because you extended this beyond the deadline. Just by us, explaining things to you. So that was a part of it. Safety walks, we helped with RFI sometimes. Trevor and Travis both, they were giving me the plans and said, hey, there's this issue. There's this thing that we're planning for next week or the week after. Figure it out. Put your head into it. And that's exactly what I did. And it was really satisfying to be able to say, hey, I studied this page of the plans and was able to understand what each thing meant. And I was able to measure things correctly and deliver on what the plans called for. So that's a good taste of what we did. It was pretty diverse though. I mean, sometimes you sweep clean job site. It's safer. It shows that your intent on even the little details. It's a good sign as a manager. So that's kind of a good taste. Yeah. So as a newly professional in the field, or what would you say the biggest challenge you face so far is? I think the biggest thing, and I think everyone's going to deal with this, is just knowledge as someone that's new to the industry, you're going to have limited ability to talk with people because it's a different language. You have to relearn a whole new language in order to communicate with subcontractors, architects, engineers, project managers. So it does take some time, but it's doable. And it's not even the most important thing. It's not like it's a prerequisite for you to do well on a construction project. It's just one of the challenges, one of the roadblocks. But the only way to break through that hurdle is to just do it, just to struggle, just to-- it's in the mission you talk about, like, speak your language all the time. You just need to do it. Once you jump into it, you'll just find yourself suddenly a year or two later. Hey, I understood that question. I comprehended what the subcontractor needed help with, and I was able to help them and deliver on that. And that's one of the most satisfying things is when there's successful communication going on between that. And I guess also to connect that with your last question, I didn't really cover how it differs from my office role. I would just say the office role is a much faster paced and high view of what you do as a superintendent. And you're not managing subcontractors the same way. So instead of studying plans for months on end, sometimes up to a year, for a project, you're studying plans for a couple days a week, and then you're bidding it out and getting numbers from subcontractors. So it's a lot more fast paced, but there's some similar principles between the two of those roles. Yeah, for sure. So I'm also curious kind of on the opposite end of that, because there's a lot that you don't know when you go into the industry as a professional. But what is one piece of advice or something that you learned while you were during your time here at BYUI that you kind of have relied on or found yourself being like, OK, yes, I do know this throughout your career so far. I'd say it's a couple of different things. So it's tough to narrow down to one. The biggest thing is to not be afraid to admit you don't know something. And they shouldn't. If someone does this, this is not the right way of approaching the issue. But someone's not going to tell you, oh, because you don't know this, you're not qualified to be able to be part of our company. That's the whole part of training. It's catching up to speed on the knowledge gap. If you're willing to ask questions, you've unlocked the door for expanding your future potential. So that's one of the most important decisions is, am I going to ask? Am I going to inquire? Because that's what we've been told in scripture is that's when the door opens is when we ask. And it's so true. It's true in all industries. So this is universally applicable. But you have to put in the effort and be comfortable with being uncomfortable, be comfortable with being vulnerable, admitting that, hey, I don't know what that means. And then asking your tutor, asking your superintendent, the person you're shadowing, what does that mean? Getting that knowledge and applying it. And one time, you'll recognize that you're able to sometimes come up with the answer on your own. And then you can kind of double check, hey, is this the right way? Did I think that through correctly? Sometimes you did, sometimes you didn't. You get to calibrate your performance at that point. And I think you learn it a lot better once you're actively engaged in the process. If you're just drifting through the process, you're not going to go very far. Most industries, I would say, aren't set for you to just ask what you need to do, go do that, and just wait until you're receiving further instructions. You need to be a go-getter. You need to be dutifully seeking what's the next step, and then pursue it, lock in, and acquire it. So asking questions is a huge part of that process. And then eventually your knowledge expands, and you're going to be able to be a tutor for someone in the future. You're going to be able to be in that role. Yeah, that's so important. And I think having that passion as well, kind of what you were speaking on a little bit, but having that passion to learn and to want to be better is so amazing. So I'm curious, maybe as having fresh your eyes on the industry, what kind of technology maybe are you guys using? But how do you personally see maybe trends coming in in the next five or so years into the industry? And maybe your work at construction solutions specifically. Yeah. It's interesting. There's a lot of tools that are getting AI features right now. They're still kind of in a fledgling state. So we don't really use those too much. You know, sometimes it can be helpful using like chat GPT for different things. You can have it like bid level. It's not perfect. I mean, it's just like if you had it rate, write an essay for you, like it'd make a lot of errors. But what it's really good at is condensing information. So if you want to like learn something really fast, or you want to see, what am I missing? This is, you can like, it's really good for editing. You can say, I have this plan. But what are some things I might not be thinking of? So you can use tools like that. Honestly, the thing that we use most of all is we use SmartBidNet, which is what allows us to send out bids to subcontractors. So that's like how we network with our different trades people. And then we also use ProCore as one of our main softwares. For those that don't know, I didn't know what ProCore was when I was a student. It's basically what allows us to do all those daily logs, all those-- the documentation that I was talking about earlier. You can load in safety, walks, and whatnot. What things you're looking for, making sure you're checking that there's fire extinguishers every 75 feet, making sure there's no frayed extension cords, things like that. So you can make all these-- it's literally an all-in-one construction softwares. You can do everything from estimating to project management, billing, all this stuff. It's really incredible. So it seems to be the trade standard for construction management software. And then we also use Excel a lot as an estimator, as pre-construction. We are using it to log what bids are the lowest bid. Or sometimes owners are picking someone that's the better contractor, just capability-wise, even if they're a little more expensive. So we log all that in, and that's how we compile our cost that we can give to the owner and say, this is how much this project's going to cost. It's going to be a $10.5 million building building. Yeah, that's so cool. It's crazy to see how much has already been helping and assisting people in the industry and yeah, it's only going to get crazier and more helpful from here. So construction solutions came about in 2010s. They've been around for about 15 years. And it started out with Eric Wall and Jim Turner. And then later, Jared Turner ended up joining as well. And they kind of knew each other ahead of time. Obviously, Jim and Jared are brothers. But they worked alongside each other. Jared and Eric were in the same company before. And they decided they wanted to start their own company. They saw some of the efficiencies that they were seeing in some of the other companies where it's like, why are they doing it like this? This doesn't make sense. You could just fix it like this. And then everything would go so much faster, so much smoother, which is something we're really well known for is quality and really good timeliness. We're really good at delivering projects on a fast timeline. Is that why they call themselves constructionists? Yes, yes. We literally have that in our marketing information. It's like, this is the reason we named our company this is we're all about fixing the problems that currently exist in the construction industry. And it's sometimes really simple stuff, too. It's just you get stuck in how we always done it. We've always done it this way. So they're all about thinking about-- I think it's trade secrets. Well, part of it is a lot of the geniuses is in the owners. Like some of our superintendents, they know because they've been working alongside them for long enough. But we'll come to them with like, hey, how do we do this? And they'll be like, well, this is pre-engineered mental building and then they can break down the process and explain the value compared to other ways you build. So part of it's just they've got decades of experience under their belt. So I wouldn't be able to speak too much about that. But they're super helpful whenever we have questions being able to just ask them and clarify some things. And then part of it, too, is like we help speed up the construction process by just driving the design phase. Because that's where a lot of the delay happens. So I've actually been involved in that. I can personally attest to that. If you help keep designers accountable and say, hey, this was the date that you agreed to that you're going to have this part done. You're going to have your 25% drawings done. If we don't have that on time, it sets us back for the rest of the design phase. And we actually saw that with-- I was designing an oil change facility in Rexburg. It's going to be going in next year. And it was really cool to be able to see that process and how it succeeded at getting a on-time delivery of the plans. And actually, it was cool because my company was letting us know that that was the fastest we'd ever delivered a design project before. So it was just a testament to their simple ways that we believe in the philosophy of polling instead of pushing. So we all get together as a team. We say, we do this with our subcontractors. When can we get this done? How can we make it happen within this time frame? And then all you do is you just say, OK, remember, this was what we agreed to. You just hold them to the thing that they already proposes a solution. And honestly, it works really well. Because now we're at an equal playing field. We're not superior to any other group. We are team player alongside a bunch of other team players. And we're working together. So one of the big things that helped construction solutions to explode was we actually did a-- because before, they were really small. They were just basically a couple of friends working together. They had a couple of superintendents. And they got a deal with Pizza Hut. They bid on a project. It was a renovation. And they literally just knocked out of the park. Pizza Hut was like, hey, we've got 110 other locations that we'd like you to do this for. You OK with going to California and Washington? This is an Idaho company, a small Idaho company. And they're like, yeah, again, saying yes to opportunity. So they did all of those 100 company buildings that they just renovated these Pizza Hut. And that got them on the map. And so ever since then, we've been known for our restaurant building. And it's been almost a false assumption that that's the only thing we do. We've done tons of medical. We've done tons of government work. We've done financial institutions, offices. We've done stuff for Beard St. Clair. They're a lawyer firm. It's honestly so cool to see how far we've come. And actually, just recently, we've landed a couple of school projects, which is a very tough industry to break through. So that's a very exciting new opportunity for us. And that's basically construction solutions story to the best of my knowledge. And it's been pretty inspirational to see how they came from nothing. And they've come so far. And now this year, we're close to $40 million in revenue. And growing at like a rate of about 20% year after year. So pretty awesome to see that. Yeah, that's amazing. So you mentioned how you guys work for a lot of name brand restaurants. And as I was looking on the website, I was impressed by your guys' resume. And I'm curious how you guys build those relationships, but also maintain them as well. Part of it is that Jared, Jim, and Eric are very interconnected with the community. So they know a lot of the owners. And they were like, hey, look, we'll do this. We'll do a project for you. Give us a shot. And then once we prove ourselves, if you like us, keep us. And that's exactly what happened. Most of our work is return clientele. They'd know who to go to. And they don't even bother bidding with other people. Like Frontier Credit Union is a great example. They are like, we are their sole contractor. We've built so many different locations for them right now. We're building a $10 million four-story headquarters building for them over in Boise, even Meridian. And that project is super unique. It's got a cross-laminated timber building. And basically, the best way I can describe it is it kind of comes as a pre-engineered kit. And you kind of just assemble the whole thing like a 3D puzzle. But it's going to have these exposed structural wood timbers that are cross-laminated that are going to be supporting the whole thing. And I didn't even know that was possible. I mean, this is a four-story building, not quite a skyscraper, but it's a big project. And for having these timbers be the structural support, it's a fascinating thing. And it's actually one of a kind in Idaho. It's been used-- it's technology that's been used elsewhere, but it's new to the state of Idaho. So things like that have been really awesome opportunities that we've gotten from those good client relationships. Be add McDonald's, Wendy's. There's quite a few-- you've been seeing lots of grand peak projects going around. That building that's right across from Costco down in Amman. That one's a building that's very notable of ours. That it's a $15 million medical facility. And it's got some really nice finishes. And they're just about wrapped up with that. They finished that in November. That's awesome. Has the company seen like an influx of projects that they've been doing as the area surrounding Amman and Amman itself have been growing and increasing in population? For sure. Yeah. That's one thing we're trying to get involved in in the future is in the multi-family, because that's been a huge thing. Right now they're at capacity. So I don't know what opportunities there are in Idaho Falls. But at least outside of Idaho, Idaho as a state is growing. And so we're probably going to be getting involved in some of those markets and stuff like that. It's kind of just inevitable. I mean, construction is the precursor to growth. If a city's going to grow, you better bet it's construction that's going to hit that first. We're hearing all of the behind-the-scenes news ahead of time of what's going where. There's a Home Depot plan for Rexburg, which is kind of crazy to think about. So there's a bunch of different-- these projects that companies come out to the general contractor and they're like, hey, we want to build this. And we're the first person they're going to, or besides architects, they're going to design the facility. It's really cool to see that direct impact. And actually, one of my favorite things is there's a school down in Fort Hall that we're building. It's the Chief Taggy School on the reservation. And it's just so cool to see how important that building is to the kids. It's a pre-engineered mental building. So same thing, kind of similar to the CLT building I mentioned earlier, comes as a pre-designed kit. You're just assembling the kit. And it's one of the fastest ways to build. And us, it's one of the most cost-effective ways at that scale to build a project. And so we're setting up this school for them. We had to fight to keep it under budget. It was such a struggle. We got it under budget. We were getting it built. And these kids keep coming over. They're like, when's that school going to be done? We're so excited for it. It probably feels like an internity for them. It's a seven month project. It's just so cool to see how they're getting a massive upgrade on their facilities and how that's going to directly impact these students. I almost kind of brought me to tears when I saw these kids talking about it and their administrative staff relaying some of these sentiment that this is going to change their community. This is a whole nother opportunity for these kids. It's like, this is why I joined construction. It wasn't, it's not just a job. It's not just a thing you can do. And title you can put on your resume. This is community building. This is the future. And so it's just an inspiring career. And I'm a type of person that I have to be inspired by what I do. That's the only reason I'm doing it. That's the motivation. Yeah, that's beautiful. That is such an experience being able to hear those sentiments from those kids. And yeah, it's definitely going to be such an exciting experience for them as well. So I'm curious. You mentioned the kids a couple times. How frequently do you guys use those on projects? So it's something we go to quite often. It's not cost effective for a smaller project. So the smaller you build, typically, you're going to stick with just traditional stick frame with just wood. But when you get to those bigger projects, that's where steel and pre-engineered metal buildings start becoming a much more valuable asset. Another thing we utilize is tilt up concrete. So for students that don't know, we basically either temporarily make a slab, which we will form the walls on, or we can pour the floor of the building first, and then you can pour the walls on top. So what you're going to do is you're kind of going to build the concrete wall while it's laying flat. You're going to put up these forms, fill it with concrete, block out openings for doors and access panels and windows. And then what you're going to do is this giant, really heavy, really heavy. So they get these cranes, these giant, sometimes 20, 30 foot tall panels of concrete are going to get raised up, and they slide into a slot in the earth, and then they just line up and click into place. That's how all those giant Amazon warehouses get built. They're all tilt up concrete, because it's one of the fastest ways to get buildings built. So even though the materials are pretty costly, it's going to save you a lot on labor. So they get these really big buildings built with pre-engineered metal buildings and with steel and with tilt up, and it goes really fast. So that's the reason we actually build with them quite a bit when we have the leniency when owners are not like, here's a plan, build it like this. Then we tell them, hey, you can save so much money if you just go with these, again, construction solutions. These are the solutions to solving your budget problem. Just go with these alternative methods. It's actually one of the things we did for that school down in chief taggy. So it's just, this is an alternative. This is how you can get your project under budget. This is reasonable, you can do it. And this is the way forward. So we use that a lot. And we have a partnership with Teton West. They're one of like, they're the big dog when it comes to pre-engineered metal buildings and they're based out of Rig B. So we work with them quite a bit. That's super interesting. Kind of going back to the solutions aspect of your guys' company. Do you guys have a team that's constantly looking for better solutions or ways to get things done, or is it more of an employee kind of collaboration? You suggest this to someone, and then they may be considerate. Kind of depends on a project by project basis. It's probably the superintendent and the project manager. And then like I said, Jim Turner, he's involved in operations. So he's regularly visiting job sites and stuff. So between the three of them, they're figuring out all of the problems for the building itself. When it comes to a company, Jared and Eric play a bigger role on that. And it kind of just depends on what department it's affecting. If it's in pre-construction, Eric and us are working alongside-- we have Andrew Pelton as our other pre-construction manager. And we three are typically focusing on that pre-construction side. But there's other departments in our company that they get emphasis as well. And whenever it pertains to the whole company, usually it is the CEOs that are getting together and collaborating and figuring out what's the solution, what's the 10-year look ahead. And they've been the ones that have been talking about trying to find ways that AI can benefit construction. Because everyone's using it. And so all it does is it basically makes you a lot more efficient at what you're pursuing. It doesn't do the work for you necessarily. It just helps you get to the solution faster. But you still have to put in the same amount of work. It's just you can get more solutions from it. So anyway. But basically, they've been doing things like that and going to conferences where they're talking about the latest and greatest in construction solutions not our company. But just general trade revolutions and technologies. And so that's something we're currently looking for is instead of just using Excel, we're looking at a couple of different estimating softwares. We're getting big enough to where we can actually justify getting something like that, where it'll do takeoffs. Some of them do use AI to calculate distances and material types and stuff. And you can basically really quickly do a takeoff inside of your estimating software, and it will pour over to your concrete. And so instead of it being separate entities, it's all just unified. And it can help make it a lot more efficient. So they're kind of the ones that are on the leading edge of discovering those new technologies. And then aside from technology, a lot of construction is pretty consistent. You still can use the same strategies that worked 10 years ago and 20 years ago. It's just sometimes they get applied in different ways. Or sometimes they kind of-- they're paired with some of those new technologies to be faster and better. So you mentioned earlier how when you were looking to get an internship with construction solutions, and it's super competitive. So what aspect of the company do you think kind of gives it that edge that so many students are like, oh, I want to do that. I want to work with them. Like what gives them that? Reputation. Yeah. For my personal experience, it was the friends that I had that talked very highly of construction solutions. So I do think-- I mean, we were very consistent on our internship program. And I think it's one of a kind, the fact that you can literally sit down with Jim Turner and be he's like, what do you want to learn? It's like, wait, you're not telling me I need to go to this project? It's like, nope, what do you want to do? Do you want to learn office? Do you want to learn field? Do you want to learn-- I personally told him I wanted to learn startup and close out, because those were the two hardest parts of a construction project I had to learn in school. And so I got those opportunities. I got to be there for when those events were taking place. To the best of their ability, obviously, they can't make impossible things happen. But if a project's available that is around that phase or has that element that you're looking to learn about, we had a guy who he's like, I want to learn curbing. How do you install curbing? I want to see how that happens. So for a day, he got moved to a different project when they were pouring curbs. That's how flexible they are. So it's really cool to see that. And because we have such an amazing and active internship process, people go home and they tell their friends. And the word just gets out. The other thing is we're really close to Idaho Falls. So as a student, thinking from a student's perspective, it's like, hey, I can commute 30 minutes, and I can stay in my approved housing. And you can save on rent. And so there's a couple of different benefits on that level as well. Most of our employees that work at construction solutions have graduated from BYU Idaho, a lot of them are members. So there's a similar culture there as well. And it's just got that you just can tell there's something different. So they're very fair with their compensation and stuff like that. And I think the other thing is we're such a small company that it's just limited on how much space we can have. So I always feel bad. Well, I talked to so many students on the career fairs and during the bankwits and all this stuff that I'm like, man, there's such a great talent out there. And I just sometimes want to hire them all, want to give all of them an opportunity. And it's just sad to admit that there's only a couple of people we take per year that we can assign to a job. And it still makes sense. But we're very active with that. And so that's why I was telling people, get in the line. Because it's a tough thing, but get in the line. And eventually, you'll probably find yourself up at the front of the line. Because we're always booking internships like two to three semesters in advance. Yeah, that's so awesome. It's always nice kind of having that want and need of people that want to come and work. There's great talent up here. Yeah, especially with the program here, it's really awesome. And definitely sets the students up for success. Kind of my last question for you. Just maybe a little advice or tips that you have for students looking to get into the industry. And maybe people kind of in the same spot as you that are new to the industry and are new professionals. And just what you have to say about that. I think the biggest thing I've learned over these past four or five years has been, just don't limit yourself. I think that's something that I've personally struggled with is you have this vision of what you can do. And I guarantee you, you can do a lot more than you think you can. Most people, they're not tapping into their full potential. So improve yourself, read lots of books, learn things that you don't know. That's the tough thing. You don't know what you don't know. So find it, go out there and dig, hunt for it, like it's a precious gem because it is. And so a little example to give real quick is I was talking with Brother Heward on campus. I was his TA for one of his classes for building systems for a couple of semesters. And I was talking with him and I was like, I want to be in construction, but not commercial. I was going to do custom residential. Like high-end custom residential. And he was like, have you ever thought about doing commercial? And I was like, yeah, I don't really want to do that. I just thought of like boring buildings. I didn't like boxes. Nothing with character in it. And he's like, you should really consider opening your horizons. Don't limit yourself to just, I want to do this one narrow scope, this one narrow field. And I walked away from it and I'm like, you know, he's right. I need to, I need to branch out. I need to hear more possibilities. So that's where construction solutions entered the picture. And I wouldn't have this job if it wasn't for that advice. And honestly, I loved it. I can't see myself having done any better picking a different company. And it's all because of mentors, of my parents, of friends and family, that I was able to get this far. And so you're standing on the shoulders of giants. You want to be humble, but also recognize that you have great capacity. You have great potential as a child of God. To go out there and do great things. That's the whole mission of this school. These people, these students, these teachers, all of them, we're going to go out and we're going to become leaders in 10, 20 years. So do the best you can. Work hard. Don't limit yourself. Just keep a wide view. Stay open to possibilities, and have a vision of great potential, because that's exactly what you're capable of. Yeah, that's awesome. Thank you so much for your time today. We appreciate you coming on here. And it was so fun getting to know you and your journey, as well as a little bit about construction solutions. Like what, thank you. Thanks for having me on. Of course. [BLANK_AUDIO]