Gareth McGlynn [00:00:04] Welcome back to the preconstruction podcast. Today’s episode is with Darrell Torres from the West Coast. He is the preconstruction executive with Clark Construction among a host of other things. Darrell discusses the importance of communication, the nuts and bolts of estimating, planning and scheduling, and the importance of following your passion within construction. This is a great story of someone from Denver, Colorado, with a passion, drive who was hungry to succeed.
Gareth McGlynn [00:00:36] He had a construction family who pushed him towards it and they were pretty successful. But Darrell did it his own way. He did it differently. He didn’t do the traditional craftsman degree internship. His skill set was more aligned with the data organizing and being able to communicate and build relationships. So he did this to grow his own career.
Gareth McGlynn [00:01:01] As always, a big shadow to our main sponsor, Beck Technology.
Gareth McGlynn [00:01:05] If you haven’t checked out their Destini Estimator, which is an integrated estimating software. Please visit www.beck-technology.com Before we hear from Darel, I am delighted to announce another partner. We are partnering with the largest preconstruction and estimating conference in the US. It is, of course, the Advancing Preconstruction Conference, which will be in Las Vegas from November 3rd to November 6th. If you haven’t got your ticket yet, please go on the website. I will put the link below and please put in the code podcast.
Gareth McGlynn [00:01:47] You will receive a 10 percent discount. Here is Scott to tell us more.
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Gareth McGlynn [00:02:42] Darrel Torres, welcome to the preconstruction podcast.
Darrell Torres [00:02:45] Thank you for having me. Pleasure to be here.
Gareth McGlynn [00:02:47] Thank you, sir. Well, listen, we were having a good chitchat all off line there. But let’s let’s jump into to the listeners and the people watching for the anybody that doesn’t know you. Give us a quick overview.
Darrell Torres [00:03:01] Yeah, give me a brief synopsis, if you will. So got 20 years of experience in the industry, started 20 years ago working for a local general contractor in Denver, Colorado, really learned the industry there. Before that, I was in the operations side of commercial real estate learning kind of the ins and outs of buildings, how mechanical systems and electrical systems work and in what areas can be modified and so forth. And then moved into that opportunity with a local general contractor, made a couple of moves along the way. And in here I am now and in Southern California, in the L.A. Office for Clark Construction, as an executive working on projects all up and down the West Coast for US partner with architects in Seattle. I pursued projects in San Francisco, Los Angeles, obviously Orange County in San Diego in that role.
Gareth McGlynn [00:03:50] Very good. Very good. Well, let’s let’s go back. And how important was that, those early days in the operation, say, learning the ins and outs and the real the real small, small details within a building?
Darrell Torres [00:04:04] Yeah, that really is invaluable. You know, and there’s a lot of different ways to gain that experience. Some folks would take a more traditional path than I did with a college education, as many of our hires do. And we bring them into the office and then we look for those opportunities to give them a rotational turn out in the field and then give them the choice. Would they like to be in operations or would they like to join us on the front end? But getting that experiences is invaluable to take it from being more of an intellectual exercise, if you will, to to understanding really the constructability in having ideas that you can also challenge your design partners with to to kind of foster the partnership with them and come up with a solution that’s not only affordable, but thoughtful in the objectives of the End-user, because it really is.
Gareth McGlynn [00:04:54] I mean, I’m I believe that there’s definitely a happy medium with both, obviously the traditional education. But more importantly, the guys that have been been on the trade, started as a carpenter, started even as a labor, worked their way up. Those guys have got a lot more of an understanding of what goes into an estimate or a bed. That I think you almost need one of one of them in a fight mounting.
Darrell Torres [00:05:22] Yeah. No. Well said. And remind me of recently sitting in our project office in San Diego, was going over some analytics and data with one of our project engineers. He asked me where I got my MBA at.
Darrell Torres [00:05:36] And I said, what would I do if I didn’t have a college education? Is that I’d say relying. And that’s the truth. And this is what I told him.
Darrell Torres [00:05:45] I said I would never denigrate or downplay the commitment to financially, especially the hard work and dedication that it takes to get a degree that is admirable. That takes a lot of work. But you can’t necessarily equate a degree with intellect. Right. So taking what you’ve been given, whether you have a degree or not. And at every opportunity, looking for those chances to grow, to learn from the folks around you to to kind of absorb whatever information is put in front of you, to talk with the designers, to understand the owners. I mean, I think that’s really what what rounds out. So getting that degree certainly is invaluable, but certainly not the only path.
Gareth McGlynn [00:06:28] Absolutely. And I think there’s a misconception, especially for the guys on the ground, whether it’s a carpenter or a joiner, an electrician, whatever it is that they don’t see themselves. They would like to see themselves within a GC and in that preconstruction manager position. But they think they need a degree, whereas you don’t really. As long as you do the fundamentals and you understand that and you grow in it in a methodical way, then the opportunities are always there.
Darrell Torres [00:06:54] And there’s so many opportunities now when you think about, you know, just challenging yourself and learning about things. If I had stayed static when I got into the industry 20 years ago, I would’ve been left behind a long time ago. Right. So that’s constantly. I mean, there’s so many opportunities, whether it be through the software developers, through your own organization, Clark does a fantastic job of offering online training, as well as in-person training to all of us at various levels of our career. So really, really latching onto those opportunities, because regardless of how you got into the industry, you can’t stay static. You’ve got. You’ve got to kind of train yourself and educate yourself along the way.
Gareth McGlynn [00:07:31] And it’s a big thing now. I mean, with Colvert. A lot of the mid junior image and senior altimeters are reaching out to me and saying, this guy’s obviously I’m not as busy as I was or maybe I’ve been furloughed. What would you recommend in self teaching courses? Certifications. There’s so much out there. But you’ve got to almost have a pass in your head far right. This is where I want to end up in the next five or 10 years. What are the small steps I need to take to get there?
Darrell Torres [00:07:59] There is, yeah, I would agree. And first and foremost, the one thing that I was recommend to our young folks, even my own children, quite frankly, is find something you’re passionate about. Right. If you learn about something that interests you already, it really becomes effortless because you’re so, so absorbed in it. So I encourage them to find out if it’s if it’s lead and get them you at GDC. And if it’s women in construction, there’s we have plenty of folks in white ops in our office in this fantastic opportunity there. The Urban Land Institute and the Design Build Institute of America, that’s one that I had just recently as I discovered. Stay at home waters came down. It’s been difficult for me to find, you know, time because it was a three day course to get DVOA certified and they they started offering classes online. So I recently took that. Yeah. I was like, oh, that’s fantastic. So they would take that. And now that the testing centers are open again, I can go in, start to get test myself to get VBA certified so you’ll find something that you’re passionate about first and foremost. And the opportunities are there. Lincoln Learning is fantastic as well. Has purchased that for all of us. So we all have access to LinkedIn learning within the company to tap out into other sources of information.
Gareth McGlynn [00:09:21] And was it always, you mentioned, find that passion? Was it always construction for you?
Darrell Torres [00:09:26] It was, you know, even as a kid. I mean, my dad in was so handy and I was the oldest. So I always ended up going along with Dad to fix things or do things we had to make in southern Colorado and built a barn and it just kind of fell in love with it. My brother is a master electrician. I have a couple master plumbers in the family. So we’ve always been building and putting things together. I often lament that I wasn’t more of a craftsman because of how handy my dad and brother are and how easily they put things together. And I think I realized early on that maybe my skill set might a little bit more with with the data and thinking about how I’m organizing things and those sorts of things.
Darrell Torres [00:10:08] But, you know, we all find our path at some point.
Gareth McGlynn [00:10:10] So it looks at some of the stories L.L.C. could be fully integrated.
Darrell Torres [00:10:17] I’d have to get him out to the west, goes out, because I’m not going back to the snow because I’m unfunny.
Gareth McGlynn [00:10:23] Denver. Denver is one of the hubs at the minute that where we’ve got a lot of work on probably three or four hours. Charlotte, North Carolina. Denver. Nashville, Tennessee. But Denver. How important. And it’s it seems as if on the operation, say, then the two construction, four, four, five, six years. It sounds as a perfect cannot pass into the interiors. Then from the interiors, ident into the corn shell. Did you always kind of when you were in the interior, say, you know what? I can’t wait to do my first grown dock project.
Darrell Torres [00:10:57] I didn’t a Nissan Leaf. It became, you know, very interesting, as you see cranes going up in the metropolitan area early on. But when I went in, I was green. You know, I remember sitting down with my first set of drawings and the president, the company of the time acappella.
Darrell Torres [00:11:12] He sat down with me with colored pencils and a scale, you know, and literally some started to take off with our desks were huge at that time because other had to be able to flip the pages and get through it. And I remember looking at that set of drawings on how in the world all of this. But, you know, you kind of start with those baby steps.
Darrell Torres [00:11:32] And again, if you have a passion for something, if you if you’re hungry, if you want to find other opportunities, it becomes available. And although I outgrew that opportunity, I look at it fondly today. I can go back to Denver. I saw obviously my family there. My wife still has business there and in California. So we get back quite a bit and I can go sit down and have a beer with with any of those guys and reminisce and tell stories about power. We came up in the industry.
Gareth McGlynn [00:11:57] It’s Soho’s, California. How was that transition? Because I know obviously it’s a different kind of market to Denver. It sounds as if not yet in your current position. You’ve got a big, big, big area to cover. How difficult is that?
Darrell Torres [00:12:13] You know, it it is and it isn’t. I mean, it’s all about maintaining perspective and really utilizing the resources that are available to you. So obviously, the scale of the projects that I work on here is something I wouldn’t have dreamt of 20 years ago. You know, it’s not uncommon to work on something that’s four or five, six hundred million dollars with Clark that, you know, we take on anything. And that’s the exciting thing about it. An arena, high rise, a student housing project, a hospital, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. I mean, you could just just iconic projects had changed skylines and the way cities operate in the way people live. So, yeah, that that in and of itself could be overwhelming. But understanding that you’re a part of a team and how to structure and empower that team. I think that’s been the most important tool that I’ve had to pick up in this transition because one person couldn’t possibly just run with a project size in the front end. And so, Clark, we’ve actually moved away from that term even of preconstruction and restructured our business to have what we call a project development side in a project delivery side. So kind of further blurring the lines between the front end and the actual operations team so that individuals can kind of flow between those two areas, if you will. So in project development, when I do go to pursue a project, I could have as many as 10 to 12 project engineers, schedulers, a field super on there working with a song, constructability quality control people, design managers working on that. So it’s understanding what each of those individuals assignments are, where their strengths are, and then working with them so that I can kind of get a package assembled to then interact with the architect is really the last two years I’ve been working exclusively on design build projects. So typically the architect is under us in that type of arrangement. Finding that delicate balancing line between not squashing their creative juices, but also beholden to a budget.
Darrell Torres [00:14:25] Right. I don’t want to be the guy that always says no.
Darrell Torres [00:14:28] So you better have some you’d better have some alternative ideas. If those architects are going to want to keep working with you as opposed to just saying you can’t do that, it’s like, how about we try this? And then, you know, putting that whole thing together and in presenting it to an end user, whether it be L.A. County or L.A. Metro or or UC Hastings or UCSD or some of the projects that had an opportunity to work on out here.
Gareth McGlynn [00:14:51] Right. And it seems as if design build is becoming sexy again. It seems to be it’s come to be color back very, very strong. What’s that? What’s that mean? It sounds as if you’ve got a passion for design, though, that is actually fired delivery method. And why is it so? Why is it come back a ways? It’s so good, especially for the developer, but also yourselves at the agency.
Darrell Torres [00:15:12] So for the personal side of that first. Yeah, I love it. I really enjoyed it. And to this day, I still take, you know, my wife and I think it’s me. My son is twenty five, our daughter’s twenty two. But when they come around and we see a project that I worked on, I still get into me the design. What’s so neat about the design though is like that was my idea.
Darrell Torres [00:15:33] Yeah. I told him, I told them to move this entrance over here. They wanted to do this facade this way. And I said, no, no, let’s let’s do this and this little. We can still afford it. But but, you know, you’re still gonna get the look that you want sort of a thing. And so they may roll their eyes, but that’s still excites me to drag them around and shown those things.
Darrell Torres [00:15:50] So, yeah, design build, I think is really neat because of the opportunity you have to influence. The design and also, quite frankly, make the decisions early on in the process, right? The curve is much different from design, build, build, where a lot of those change orders and decisions are generated. Because you didn’t have the constructability reviews, you didn’t have the discipline. Look at the schedule. You didn’t look at alternate means and methods because it was kind of all done with just the owner and the designer. So getting to embed ourselves in the process and the most recent project that I’ve I’ve been working on is that UC San Diego is actually a progressive design bill. OK. So the project manager has a seat in our trailer. The architect regularly comes down from Seattle and spent every other week with us before we were we were quarantined, if you will, or locked up, you know. But since then, we’ve utilized things like zoom in in Google, meet in teams and you name it. We probably all use different platforms, mooches to accomplish our work still. But, yeah, that really dynamic environment decisions happening, real time changes being made to affect the outcome earlier as opposed to later.
Gareth McGlynn [00:17:02] Yeah, getting that a lot of Jeezy’s they’re becoming more genuine. It comes to this. I mean, design, bold, progressive, sounds like another another real good collaborative approach to to to ease and risk management, to make sure the budgets are on time listening. If you bring I we always called a three legged stool. You’ve got the architect, the owner and the general contractor. If we can get them speaking more and collaborate more so that everyone knows exactly where they stand. There’s no surprises, no big change orders. It can only be good for the industry. From a GC point of view, there’s a lot and I know you’re conscious of not calling the preconstruction, but there’s a lot involved in preconstruction. And, you know, as a preconstruction executive, what would you say is the most important part of your role? Is it the actual numbers they are estimating, say, the value engineering, the crop contracts, the scheduling, the planning and logistics? What would you say? Is that the real core to what you do?
Darrell Torres [00:18:01] Right. And that’s the really neat thing about what we do. Is that even in the time that I’ve been in the industry in 20 years, the role has become so much more broad. I mean, it just used to be about sitting down with some colored pencils and counting things off and making sure you didn’t you didn’t have any scoped out and turning in a proposal to now where we get those opportunities to weigh in on the designer or, you know, the logistics or the means and the methods of a project. I would say currently for me personally in my role, if I had to boil down to what was the most important is communication, regardless of the hat that I’m wearing, if I’m putting together a conceptual estimate, if I’m working with a design partner, if I’m presenting to an owner or just sitting down and having a conversation with them, it is working on not only speaking to them in a fashion that gives an assurance that I know what I’m talking about and the clerk is a contractor for them. But I often say that we can all pat ourselves on the back almost endlessly with.
Darrell Torres [00:19:04] With construction talk, I kind of have these terms that we use that we love to impress each other with.
Darrell Torres [00:19:11] But at the end of the day, if it falls on deaf ears, if your audience doesn’t understand what you’re saying, then it’s really a little value. So really understanding who you’re speaking with and tailoring your comments to that individual is key. But, you know, I didn’t start there, obviously. I started with the nuts and bolts of estimating. And then I learned about scheduling and then I learned about design, you know, so it’s not as if you just can jump in at this level. It really I liken it to the analogy of a craftsman. You know, someone doesn’t become a master electrician, a master carpenter overnight. Oftentimes they take a very disciplined approach to it through a stewardship, if you will, or an apprenticeship where they learn parts and pieces of it and then take tests along the way. They measure their knowledge until it all comes together. So really, you know, when when one of our young people comes into the office, whether it’s a new hire or somebody transitioning from the field to the office, I encourage them, members of my team to to find out what drives them again. What did you excited about your job? And let’s find the opportunity to get you into that role. We had a young gentleman just a couple years ago. I think we’re out of town on a conference. And at that point, he was working as a project engineer. We had him at the beginning stages of doing take offs and in scoping some contractors and working directly with our trade community. Him and I were sitting in the back of an Uber or something heading to the airport. And he goes into this 10 minute discussion about data, how he loves the potential of data in construction and what it can do and what it can be leveraged for. And so I encouraged him. Let’s find an opportunity to pursue that. So we meet regularly as management and we talk about our people in the roles that we want to get them in. And Clark has a very active virtual designing construction platform.
Darrell Torres [00:21:07] And we found him the opportunity.
Darrell Torres [00:21:10] Now, I walk by his workstation at this when he’s there again before Cobbett. He’s been going back and forth between Washington, D.C., Bethesda, Maryland, where our corporate offices are in California, working with our top minds and to the point where we now have a new platform, which we call kohta, which stands for construction data that’s working towards becoming its own kind of revenue center for Clark. I like my workstation. I don’t even Hassans happening. He’s really working with things like algorithms to be able to make a model regardless of what architectural firm generates it and decode it intelligently into something standard that we can use in the platform that we use, which is we’re transitioning right now to the back to Sweeney platform, which I know you know those guys stuff that said Mr. Carroll and The Voice. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, yeah, stuff like that. But I would you would never I would have never thought was was possible, but it all spurred from a conversation that him and I had. Now wasn’t me solely that put him in that role, but just talking with other managers about it and giving him the right opportunities. And now he’s that’s what he’s doing pretty much full time. And that’s pretty cool stuff.
Gareth McGlynn [00:22:19] All that that kind of brings me to my next question. The whole data destiny, which you guys are transitioning to right now. How important is technology becoming in your role, not only your role, but was in preconstruction and even operations?
Darrell Torres [00:22:36] Now that that is true and, you know, it’s invaluable, quite frankly. But you’ve heard me talk a bit about that idea of a craftsman. And I like to think that as we’ve seen our positions evolved over the years, that we really can become a craftsman, if you will, of our trade. And I use the analogy of a true craftsman. If he were to take a master carpenter and you asked him to build you a cabinet and you gave him tools that were 10, 12 years old, maybe a little knecht, a little thing he’d be he’d rework on and he put it together. And you probably have a fine cabinet. Now, if you take me in and said here don’t to build a cabinet in here is the state of the art tool, CMC machines, everything you need.
Darrell Torres [00:23:22] I could probably put together a pretty decent cabinet. Conversely, if you take that craftsman, give him the state of the art tools and ask him to put together that cabinet for you.
Darrell Torres [00:23:34] Now you come up with an heirloom, right? Something that you could perhaps pass on from generation to generation. So while we can accomplish the task at hand with tools that are maybe a little outdated, maybe we’ve we’ve worked a few formulas for ourselves.
Darrell Torres [00:23:47] We got our little database off in our hip pocket that we made the. That are handy. Right. Give us the tools that are state of the art.
Darrell Torres [00:23:56] And then you see what the work product ends up being. So it really is a marriage between the two of the technology as well as, again, getting back to the idea of communication. Teaching your people how to present themselves, how to how to relate to the end user. You put all of that together and then you end up with someone that could do something really neat.
Gareth McGlynn [00:24:18] Yeah, I love it. And how is the roll out with Destiny and working with the bank or oppose it? How is it progressing? Are you guys late? Yes.
Darrell Torres [00:24:25] We are so some.
Darrell Torres [00:24:27] Some officers are ahead of others, obviously spearheaded by our Bethesda, Maryland headquarters.
Darrell Torres [00:24:33] So they’re pretty fluent in it and they’re teaching at Slowpokes on the West House how to catch up with them.
Darrell Torres [00:24:40] But yes, we are in the middle of our beta test of it now, kind of doing it in mirror, if you will, on some exams or projects. And we fully expect to have it rolled out by the end of the year.
Gareth McGlynn [00:24:50] Fantastic. Exciting times. Is there anything else to excite me when it comes to the preconstruction that maybe the V.T. seen and then say the things? Is there any any tool that you like using yourself when it comes to presenting to clients or working with developers?
Darrell Torres [00:25:06] Yeah, well, the symbolism valuable, right? We use that quite a bit. We have a dashboard now that we work in conjunction with our our department or BDC department, Virtual Designing Construction, which is located right next to us on our floor. And we embed one of those individuals into every pursuit or project that we we’re working on both dashboard as soon as we get a model, will generate the quantities for us. Right. Especially the big things that we’re we’re always looking at verifying, like the cubic cartridge of concrete square footage is the big checkboxes. And you can check off, you know, a real quickly. So that best made it just that much more nimble, as we all certainly appreciate that the the demand for information is a lot more immediate. It used to be. And so, you know, we should we should be able to accommodate that. And that’s that’s what we strive to strive to do that.
Gareth McGlynn [00:25:58] It’s as though, you know, you were involved last week on a panel on the business night with a few developers and the West Coast. How was it? What were the big takeaways and how do you see us getting back to the full steam?
Darrell Torres [00:26:15] Yeah. So out here in California, we were deemed essential from the get go. And so the task at hand was, you know, how do we keep construction moving? And really, that’s the big question was regardless of if we were looking at the office or the project site, it’s just simply how do we get our people to feel comfortable? Right. Because they got to feel safe. If they’re going to be able to come to work and be productive and really came down to two things, and that was communication and education. So are executive leadership. Did a fantastic job of communicating the plan. Right. And we have two very different environments, obviously, with those working in our project development teams in the office and then the project delivery teams out in the field. But as far as relates to the project sites themselves, you know, having things like temperature scanning station setup. And then we found that it’s a little easier or less intrusive, if you will, for those gentlemen as they’re walking onto the jobs site to go to a computer station and just verify that they don’t have any symptoms, that they haven’t been exposed firsthand to someone that has symptoms, that they understand the protocols for the job site, which involve a face mask, it’s six feet distancing, making sure that they wipe down anything that they have access to, to hand sanitizer and those sorts of things. Then, you know, you look at even the man lifts. We’ve reduced the capacity on those to where, you know, less than half of what you normally do it would take up. So that has caused us to stagger to start times for a lot of the traits our project out that North finds living and learning at UCSD. We can have as many as a thousand tradesmen on that job site as we’re racing towards completion here in the fall. Massive job. Wow. And so, you know, to consider that at two days we’ve had eight cases of the koban, 19 honored job sites, none of them are Clark employees. It was our trade partner, vendor related. But the real success there is that it didn’t spread, but they didn’t. It didn’t shut down the job site. Right. Because of these protocols, because. Hey, wait a minute, your temperature’s high or make sure you got a mask on or keep the distance, those sorts of things. Now, that doesn’t say that it hasn’t impacted productivity rates. Right. Things have gotten a little slower. But what we’ve seen at this point is none of our subcontractors have come back and ask for a change order to have to deal with this. So today’s the things that we’re doing are reasonable enough. And we’re stopping the spread on those job sites, too, where we’re able to kind of honor the contracts that are in place now if they get a little more onerous restrictions. Well, we’ll have to cross that bridge when we get there. But right now, things are holding pretty steady. And then as it relates to our offices, Irvine in Orange County, our L.A. office is really the biggest one on the West Coast. We had all of our managers. We all came back on the 1st of June in full force just so we could get used to the protocols, the directional signage, how to use the break room. We all had our own supplies laid out for us at our desk, even as as my nute, as our own dry erase pens, you know, personal, personal ones.
Darrell Torres [00:29:23] So we weren’t we weren’t extending. I mean, just leaving them up at the board.
Darrell Torres [00:29:27] So those sorts of things, that really thoughtful approach to it, making sure we all have masks, maskin sanitizers and things like things down. And then a couple of weeks later, we started Gynt, June 15th, welcoming our employees back, but we did so again in a rotational basis. So we keep it a unbox spreadsheet, if you will, of that office. All of our offices where we’re monitoring the headcount each day. Right. And it’s filled out for the month. So we’re we’re trying to maintain it at about 50 percent capacity. Right. That way we allow for every other seat, no more than four people in a conference room that used to be 20 sort of thing, so that people feel comfortable, they can feel empowered, get back to work. We can be. And we proved we can be productive in this environment virtually. But, you know, I like it a little bit to doing your job with your hand behind your back. There’s a reason that we have the big offices, the the job site trailers, the open floor plates, so that we can we can look over to one another and go, hey, did you think about this? Because so much of what we do is interconnected and it overlaps. And so, I mean, you know, the trade manager that’s handling drywall to to make sure he’s communicating with whoever is handling the exterior facade almost, you know, fluidly. So we have had to be a little more disciplined in our approach to collaboration and working around that to make sure that we’re we’re covering all the bases.
Darrell Torres [00:30:54] But ultimately, we’re getting it done just a little bit slower and we’re getting as many people as we can in the office in a safe environment. That’s the most important thing.
Gareth McGlynn [00:31:03] Yeah, and that’s a slow and safe ones. Arrest. Yeah. Do it if she schedules and so be it. As long as everyone understands it. As you say, everyone’s communicated. And what was the Cana share during that business conference that developed press warchest kind in you asking when can I get a decent price from a table in here?
Gareth McGlynn [00:31:24] What what was the general consensus for that? Had they got plans in place?
Darrell Torres [00:31:30] Yeah, that really is the million dollar question, quite literally. In some cases. Yes. So almost instantly, I think once the restrictions were were were made public and everybody saw we’re slowing down, we started hearing from owners like should I rebid those things? Should I put it on the shelf? How long should I wait? Those sorts of things. I went into a deep dove on understanding the steel and aluminum markets because I have a huge project that was all Kirkwall tons of aluminum. And the owner was thinking, well, hey, luminance might be coming down. We can maybe. A bunch of money on this. But learning about the Shanghai Exchange Exchange now, how metal is traded in those sorts of things and what we can trend there. Our viewpoint, especially in Southern California, though, is that with kind of the micro economy that we have with the 2028 Olympics, the expansion of the L.A. metro line and all the work that they’re doing throughout L.A., there’s some big projects on the horizon. Right. We’re just finishing up the shortly here, the arena for the football teams in Inglewood and the Clippers are on their heels with wanting to build a new arena. So so L.A. is certainly has a pipeline of work that’s a bit unique to it. I would say. So what we’ve advised our clients, those that are looking to take a pause, if you will, or find the opportunistic time to buy, is that we really see that the fourth quarter of this year and maybe the first quarter of next year is going to be when you’ll find those best buying opportunities, if you will.
Darrell Torres [00:33:08] We don’t expect that labor, Rachel, regrets. They didn’t even do that during the Great Recession.
Darrell Torres [00:33:13] Right now, the unions, the tradesmen, they worked hard to establish those prevailing wages, and rightfully so. So they’re not going to get back on. Those materials tend to be holding steady. And one of the things I did think about when I took a deep dove, deep dove into aluminum was that with less construction, there’s less scrap and so much of that is recycled. And so consequently, what they’re seeing is with less kind of product coming in to be recycled, pressel, dead. But if you look at Shanghai Exchange, it’s already pretty much rebounding. China still has aggressive growth targets as well. So they’re consuming quite a bit of materials. And so ultimately and then oil is starting to climb back up. Right. We all enjoy the inexpensive gas there for a while, but then it looks like it’s here to stay.
Darrell Torres [00:33:58] So I don’t. Materials. Looks like they’re going to rebound.
Darrell Torres [00:34:01] Labor is going to be. So really is going to be right where subcontract, how hungry they’re getting, where they’re looking at their their profit margins and those sorts of things as a standardly review. Definitely.
Gareth McGlynn [00:34:15] It’s definitely exciting times. It’s it’s it’s challenging times over the next six to 12 months in California. But it’s signs with the pipeline and the big major projects especially. I mean, you’re sitting in a prime location in a great position and a great company club. It sounds as if the next five to 10 years are going to be an exciting thing. And Clava especially.
Darrell Torres [00:34:34] Yeah, absolutely. So we’re going strong with our Los Angeles County Museum of Art project turned down the portion of the existing museum and the new museum, which is designed by Peter Zumthor in Switzerland in conjunction with Asselin in New York, is going to span Wilshire Boulevard, the actual display gallery, while the museum.
Darrell Torres [00:34:58] So Wilshire is iconic in the rendering.
Gareth McGlynn [00:35:02] I look forward to seeing that.
Darrell Torres [00:35:03] I encourage you to look at it because there is not a 90 degree angle on the thing. It’s all concrete and it is challenged. I mean, it’s been in project right in the front. And that project is we’ve spent at least two and a half years on it right now built into it.
Gareth McGlynn [00:35:16] So that’s that’s the one that you want to be speaking to your kids about.
Darrell Torres [00:35:20] Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Gareth McGlynn [00:35:24] Well, we’ll touch in on that as well. And all kinds of different techniques, different models. What is the strangest the most challenging thing that you’ve ever been asked to build?
Darrell Torres [00:35:38] Well, bluffing is kind of Museum of Art is definitely up there. But I certainly wasn’t. Again, it takes an army to put something like that together. One of the funnest, most off the wall probably that I was involved in was for Google in Boulder, Colorado. And they had taken a big box store, I think was like a Best Buy or something that went out of business. Two stories. And that’s where they were going to spearhead their their team to develop SketchUp. This was a while back. Right. And that’s where they partnered or did SketchUp. So they do a fantastic job of, you know, when they get a big spike like that, a big, big office absorbing the local community into the design. So we have in the atrium a two story technical climbing wall, rockwool rock-climbing, which I’d never obviously built before. So we subcontract that, subcontracted that out. One of the coolest models to date that I’ve still seen because they brought it in, you know, one twentieth scale and they could take out every part in peace and show you I was going to attach. And the technical roots the different climbers could take.
Darrell Torres [00:36:42] They obviously had the full catering kitchen.
Darrell Torres [00:36:45] One of the iconic spots in Colorado is Red Rocks Amphitheater, where everyone from the Beatles to Elvis Presley played. It’s just an amazing spot to take in a concert. But in there, kind of mess hall, if you will, open area. They had a full rieper graphic done of Red Rocks.
Gareth McGlynn [00:37:05] Oh, wow.
Darrell Torres [00:37:06] Backwell all. And then they set up kind of a big karaoke stage for the people if their acting, singing and pretend that are red rocks.
Darrell Torres [00:37:13] And then a couple of days are really jolly.
Darrell Torres [00:37:16] We had over over three miles of climbing rope. In the space as kind of a design feature where it would fly. And so this is where we use beam even early on. Missing ductwork and penetrations in those certains sorts of things would fly around on eyelets throughout the space. And it came down into the middle of a space and created this soft huttle room for them where you kind of part of the ropes to get into it. And then the coup de gras was.
Darrell Torres [00:37:43] They’re Google don’t run the real estate firm on this project wanted to have a really unique hotel room on the mezzanine top level. And he loved the Volkswagen vans.
Darrell Torres [00:37:55] And, you know, the little Volkswagen ad challenged us to find one of those.
Darrell Torres [00:38:02] So we found one, took the engine out during the oil out of it, put out a big section and hoisted it up with a forklift under the second floor, turned the front seat in the driver’s seat around to face the back and put some lighting and had to drop a sprinkler head into it back to the roof. And now that was the one that was one of their hotel rooms in the back and forth all the way.
Darrell Torres [00:38:23] I mean, it was just like anything you could think of. They wanted to challenge us with the. Now, there was one I remember at Google.
Gareth McGlynn [00:38:29] They seemed to do. That’s it. That sort of things. I mean, I would love to actually go and visit that.
Gareth McGlynn [00:38:33] That would be nice and.
Darrell Torres [00:38:35] Maybe able to find pictures of it. You know, it’s pretty cool.
Gareth McGlynn [00:38:37] And make it. And the other thing that I kind of wanted to touch on just before we finish up here and I and it’s something that we always can ask, especially someone in your position and what would you give your your twenty two, 23 year old self any advice that the pastor and to our younger listeners.
Darrell Torres [00:38:54] Yeah. And so it’s funny because I oftentimes asked my wife, this pundit, I become the old guy.
Darrell Torres [00:39:01] A lot of the folks on my team are in that age group. My kids are in that age group.
Darrell Torres [00:39:05] So I guess I’ve got a bit of experience relating in dealing with them. But I would I would tell them what I what I tell them now is, again, find something that you’re passionate about. If it’s the data side of it, of its design, you know, management of its scheduling, whatever it is. Find something that gets you up in the morning. They could be excited to go to work. The other thing I share with them, especially if they’re coming from, you know, an active college campus or they’re transitioning from the field to the office is to maintain a healthy physical routine. What we do is stressful and we’re sitting in front of of screens all day and we’re in high pressure meetings. We’re making decisions that, you know, cost millions of dollars. Right. Oh, that’s a tendency to weigh on you. You’ve gotta find a healthy release, you know, to do something, whether it’s hiking or riding a bike or just going to the gym regularly find a way to get that life balance work life balance figured out early on. Because if you let it get too far away from you, it’s really hard to invent kind of a routine 10, 15 years down the road. So I was fortunate. The fact that I just always, you know, being in Colorado, we were always outdoors and doing some mountain biking or hiking in that. So that sort of lifestyle has always been. And that’s what appealed to me about Southern California into a year round.
Darrell Torres [00:40:28] So finding that healthy release really, you know, keeps a sharp and and energized.
Gareth McGlynn [00:40:33] It does. It keeps a sharp especially. I would have a sports background. I would play professional soccer for about twelve or thirteen years. So I always try and keep on top of it, but I find when I don’t do that. For instance, Jerkovic, all I did Jerkovic was drink tea and biscuits. That’s all I did as far as I can see. And it just it started that it started to get to me really, really dead, just mentally, physically. And everything. Just until I kind of got out of that and got back into my proper routine. I never felt this sharp. So that’s that’s what I mean, again, especially in the West Coast. I mean, the weather is all about outdoor, outdoor, Levon as well. And then within within Southern California, is there a good black community where you live? Because we do relocate a lot of people to that area. What would you recommend? What areas would you recommend? What’s what’s good about life in Southern California?
Darrell Torres [00:41:28] So we’ve been fortunate. We’ve lived in northern San Diego County and now in Orange County, southern Orange County, about 30 miles north of there, but also coastal communities. The nice thing about that, especially where I’m out now in South Orange County, is I spent most of last summer co-located at Aslam’s office in downtown L.A. pursuing a project for L.A. County. You could drive five minutes to the train station, take the train, which you dropped me off in downtown L.A., and then take the subway a few stops to get to their office. So, you know, it’s tough to deal with that commute. We cover so much ground out here. So finding a way where, you know, I can be in L.A. in an hour and a half on the train, but I’m working the whole time. Right. I’m usually on a table in accomplishing something there. I’m an hour from San Diego. That’s what’s really appealing about kind of being where I’m at and in southern Orange County. So working to kind of locate yourself where you can you can efficiently cover, you know, some of that ground is certainly certainly been a benefit.
Gareth McGlynn [00:42:32] Let’s get the latest. Well, listen, Daltrey’s thank you so much, sir. Really appreciate your insight and wish you and Clark all the best. The next three or four years, it sounds as if you’re going to be a you’re going to be a busy man.
Darrell Torres [00:42:44] We’re going to be busy. But I really wouldn’t have it any other way.
Gareth McGlynn [00:42:48] Well, listen, we may get catch up maybe in 12 to 24 months and find a tie. The other projects are progressing and what you’re working on next.
Darrell Torres [00:42:57] Absolutely. Enjoy it.
Gareth McGlynn [00:42:59] Thanks, Darrel. Appreciate it.
Darrell Torres [00:43:00] You bet.
Gareth McGlynn [00:43:15] A big thank you to Tara for comedy, speak with us. What I got from our chat was hope Darrel created his own path. And I also could feel the gratitude he has for the construction industry for giving him such a fantastic career, first and foremost, but also a great lifestyle in California. He epitomizes how important it is to be able to communicate and build relationships within construction. And let’s be honest from any other industry for that matter. And it just opens up so many doors of opportunity.
Gareth McGlynn [00:43:46] Thanks again, folks, for listening. Stay safe. And as always, there will be more to come soon from the preconstruction podcast.
