The people business: Mastering the art of relationships as a project manager

Show Notes

On todayโ€™s episode of โ€œThe Building Code,โ€ Zach and Charley are talking to Tom Henning, director of construction management at Westminster Canterbury Richmond. Tom has an extensive career in the industry that started when he was in college. After graduating with a degree in field engineering, he worked for several companies managing projects and even owned his own construction company for over five years.

Tune in to the full episode to hear more about what it takes to be a successful project manager and how building relationships is a key component.

What is one thing youโ€™ve learned after so many years in project management?

โ€œWhat I’ve learned with all my wisdom is that you should be humble enough to say, โ€˜Look, I’m not the smartest guy in the room.โ€™ And that’s what you find as you get older. You don’t want to be the smartest guy in the room. I want smart guys doing the work. You know what I’m trying to say? What I want people to look at me as being smart for is I get the right guys doing the work. That’s where you’re smart. I think that only comes with experience, and it also comes with just good people skills and working well with folks.โ€

How has Buildertrend helped manage so many renovations at the same time?

โ€œI actually have a Westminster Canterbury renovation tab job that everybody has access to, and you pop that open and it has a schedule in there of all my bids, when they’re due, what apartments they are and what time the pre bids are. Going to Buildertrend University though I learned, not only can I do that, but I can actually have them put the bids in. I truly believe it’s the Buildertrend organization pieces that I’m using, that helps my guys just stay dialed in. The Schedule feature alone is phenomenal. You just notify guys when you update stuff, and they’re tied into the schedule. The plumber gets an update that, โ€˜hey, we didn’t pass an inspection, so you’re going to have to come back tomorrow.โ€™ It’s phenomenal.โ€

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Listen to the last episode of โ€œThe Building Codeโ€ to hear more about what itโ€™s like starting a remodeling business in a booming construction industry and how tech is making it possible to achieve a work-life balance.

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Transcript

Zach Wojtowicz:

Welcome to โ€œThe Building Code.โ€ I’m Zach Wojtowicz.

Charley Burtwistle:

And I’m Charley Burtwistle.

Zach Wojtowicz:

You’re looking at me like that intro is a little too energetic.

Charley Burtwistle:

That intro? That was one of your weakest intros of all time.

Zach Wojtowicz:

This guy wants to handle the intros.

Charley Burtwistle:

No, no, no. You let me do that one, and you never let me do anymore. But it is good to be back in the studio with my favorite people. Beautiful Friday afternoon. Zach, how are you doing?

Zach Wojtowicz:

Good, man. Hey, we’re about to hit the weekend. It’s a beautiful day outside. Hard to complain.

Charley Burtwistle:

Absolutely. The guest that we have today, Zach and I have heard a ton about him. He was at the last Buildertrend University, and he left as a local legend.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. Shout out to the production crew.

Charley Burtwistle:

They find the absolute best people of all of our 20 โ€“ 30,000 customers.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Schmoozing it up with the customers, down at the Blackstone in Omaha. If you don’t know about it, you should.

Charley Burtwistle:

You got to check it out.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Got to check it out. Come to BTU.

Charley Burtwistle:

Buildertrend.com.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Should we dangle that carrot? Come to BTU, end up on the pod.

Charley Burtwistle:

It has worked multiple times for sure. Okay. Zach, tell our listeners out there who we have on today.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Tom is out in Richmond, Virginia. He’s got a ton of experience in construction, so I’m really excited to get him on here, we’ll talk a little bit about his business, how he uses Buildertrend. Talk about his life and what brought them into construction. It’s going to be really cool.

Charley Burtwistle:

Absolutely.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Tom, welcome to โ€œThe Building Code.โ€ We’re obviously super excited to have you here. You were just in Omaha for BTU not that long ago. For our listeners, why don’t you tell us a little about yourself and how you got started in construction, and why not, talk about BTU?

Tom Henning:

Sure. Real quickly, thank you very much for having me. It’s an honor to be here.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Of course.

Tom Henning:

Love the background and the โ€œThe Building Code,โ€ just everything I’ve learned about you guys. And would tell you that I got my start in construction in college, actually. I used to work in grocery store in the summer times, and I started studying civil engineering in concrete and studying all this stuff. And I thought to myself, I better get some experience doing it. I went to a general contractor that was local in Virginia and got a job in it. It was one of those, you know when you start a job in a restaurant, you’re like, “Okay, I’ll see tomorrow.” You’ll have an apron or something, but you’re starting tomorrow. Well, a construction company’s different. It’s like… Well, I got to put you on something. I got to pay for you.

And I was thinking it’s like, well, can’t put me on a job tomorrow? Nope, I’ve got to … The guy actually was bidding a job, and my first job was a law office, and I had to do this TI work. What was neat was my first superintendent I worked for was one of these crafty guys that could hang doors, set tile, just did everything. Worked with his hands. And it was funny, he was big, so overweight. And you saw this guy, how in the world does he do all this stuff? And he did. He just was one of these guys, he just figured out, even as fat as he was he could get things done. And then he had a skinny guy that was his helper, he did a lot of good stuff, and his name was Tracy. That guy is probably five years older than me. Now, remember, I’m like 19. This guy is 23 with four kids.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Not wasting any time.

Charley Burtwistle:

Hey, he knew what he wanted in life.

Tom Henning:

Making $5.50 an hour or something like that. I was looking at Tracy, it’s like, “How do you make it work?” He says, “I’ll show you.” He showed me the beauty of side jobs.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I thought you’d be like, and then I had six kids by 23.

Tom Henning:

Yeah, that’s right. I would make more on a Sunday than I did all week working at $5.50 an hour. But I learned quickly through construction that I didn’t want to go that route, I wanted to understand how to manage it. And so, I went through, finished up college. And I did this through graduation, actually graduated and worked again until I started my real job. All summer with a graduation degree for $5.50 an hour digging ditches. I’d already graduated and everything, had my degree, my diploma and everything. The guys were laughing, we got a college graduate digging ditches here. This is awesome.

But my first job was with Turner Construction Company down in New York City. I was at a Ritz-Carlton Hotel. I was a field engineer. Right out the gate, you go out there, and I’m laying it out with my surveying tools and all this stuff and working with people. What I found was you’re trying to find tools to coordinate your work. Back then, we had fax machines. You didn’t have email, you didn’t have digital cameras and YouTube videos to look at to teach you how to do something.

And so, you had to really pull on people that were experts, and they would teach you this stuff. I found it’s the honey vinegar kind of thing. I could be a jerk and say, “Well I’m the boss, I’m the hammer, everybody else is a nail.” But what I found was I was more of the humble side. And I still do this today, I go to a permit office and say, “Hey, I’m trying to do a building permit for this job, and what do I need to do?” I actually sit down with the reviewer, and they actually look at things and say, “All right, Tom, you need this.” Versus a typical person walks in and says, “This is what you asked for. Here’s your check, give me my permit.”

It’s like, no, I go the other way around. How do you give me the permit? And then, I find doing that, over time I’ve developed a lot of relationships with these folks that I’m almost like an expediter now. Because they know I’m going to do what they need to get done. I do the same thing with my subs. I actually worked for my vendors. And that’s what Buildertrend was able to help me do.

And just progressing through the years, just to tell you my background, for the listeners is that I did a Ritz-Carlton, and I went to Fisher Island down in Miami, worked on a bunch of condominiums down there. All these projects were multimillion dollar jobs, very fast track. Worked seven days a week oftentimes. And that’s just what you did back then. There was no balance, you had to get a job done. We got the Ritz-Carlton Hotel because we told them we could build it in 18 months. 18 months, 450-room hotel, and there’s nothing there. All of a sudden I have a hotel. And I’m driving these guys to the airport, because I was a low kid on the totem pole. The executives were busy, going golfing and stuff. They said, “Tom, take the rich people back.” I had a half an hour in a car to talk to these guys about, “Hey, what do you do?” And so, I started learning what owners were like. I started trying to take an owner’s attitude with construction when I’m being a contractor. What would an owner do almost, right?

I’ve carried that throughout my whole career. And then progressing from there I went to Miami, then I went to Cincinnati. And then Cincinnati’s where I got my chops, that’s where I learned how to estimate, build subcontractor relationships. My boss in estimating told me I had to take a vendor out to lunch once a week. He said, “I’ll approve the expense report. You buy lunch. They’re not buying you lunch, because they’re teaching you something.”

I found when I did that, they really opened up, because I wasn’t expecting something from them. I used to tell them that. I said, “Listen, when you bid a job to me, it’s double secret, I’m not telling somebody else what you did.” And then I also went with this attitude of proprietary knowledge. My job as an estimator I looked at as, when you look at these set of plans, you’re finding the booby traps that could hurt these guys. And you need to tell them about the booby traps.

What I found with them coming back, they might come back to me and say, “Hey Tom, I saw these other two traps. Did you see that? By the way, I figured them out, and here’s the thing I want to do to address it. And I think this is what’s going to help me get the job.” I’d say, “That’s awesome.” And I’d lock that in, put down my qualifications and all that jazz. If they were the low bidder, that’s what I used as my stuff and all that jazz. But I did not call this competition and say, “Hey, did you see those other two booby…” You know what I’m saying? Because of that relationship, what I found is I got guys that I can pretty much call up on a phone call, and they’ll do a job for me, and they’ll just take care of it, they’ll get it done. And it’s the right price, and it’ll stand up.

That’s what I’ve developed at Cincinnati. And my last job there was a big old stadium, and we were pouring 250 yards of concrete a day. I had meetings with Baker Concrete at 5:30 in the morning, and meet all the way up to 6:30 in the afternoon. Just different things going on, job site stuff going. But something of that magnitude, you just saw these decisions, and you just had to work with smart people and all that. That’s what I did. And then I went to a smaller company, moved to Richmond once we had our kid. And my son George now is 20 something. Yeah, he’s 20, in college. My daughter just started Virginia Tech. I’ve got two kids now in college, and now it’s back to me and my wife again, I’m laughing.

I had a business for a while doing construction company. I did remodels. And all my jobs, architects brought their work to me because I took care of them. What I mean by taking care of the architects, was I wasn’t trying to show them how dumb they were. I remember, I had a superintendent company one time all proud. He said, “Hey Tom, man, I just went to the owner and showed him how dumb his architect is.” I said, “Do you know what you just did?” He said, “What?” And I said, “You just got us fired.”

He goes, “What do you mean?” I said, “Because when you call the architect a dumb-dumb, you’re telling the owner he’s a dumb-dumb. Because oftentimes he’s hired the architect, and then the architect had to pick a contractor to do the work, which happened to be us on this job. And now you’re showing … That’s not a good way to play ball here.” And so, I’ve started coaching my teams as I got into more management, the project management side. That, “Look, it’s our job to not make these guys look good, but help the job go well.” And then, I’ve even been taught by some guys that a job is often like a patient. And what does the job need? If you look at projects this way, you come back and say, “Well, that’s interesting.”

It’s not, Tom Henning wants this, it’s what the job needs. It becomes impersonal. So, that way the clients don’t get managed. It’s like, “Look, it’s what the job needs. I don’t want this; it just needs to have happen.” And so, when I started my business and used Buildertrend, I used to tell residents that I’m interviewing with, I’d say, “Look, the biggest surprise is no surprise.” And these guys, they look at me like, “What are you talking about?” I said, “Construction is Murphy, and you’re going to be surprised.” It’s almost a weird turnaround, but I’ve found that my clients, it’s almost like an Easter egg hunt.

They get all excited and they go, “Tom, here’s a surprise.” And it’s going to cost them money. But they’re not mad because I told them this could potentially happen. That I would be surprised if we went through your entire remodel and everything went as planned. That would be just amazing. We all talk about this in our industry, that’s got to happen. Anyway, getting back to the experience, what I’ve found in life is that if you take the time to show people that you care and that you genuinely really want to do their job, and you’re compassionate about what you do, and you have good folks working for you, it’s just a fun day.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I love that. That’s really great insights.

Tom Henning:

That just wraps me up a little bit. But that’s how I got to where I’m at now, working as a client.

Charley Burtwistle:

The one thing we have to touch on before we go any further in this interview, and Zach knows what I’m going to say.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I know exactly what he’s going to say.

Charley Burtwistle:

Zach is the biggest Cincinnati Bengals fan.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. I was like, what do I need to know about Paul Brown Stadium? How do I get in? Can I meet Joe Burrow?

Charley Burtwistle:

Are there any secret tunnels that you know of?

Tom Henning:

I was so excited when Joe Burrow was from that area. It’s like you knew he was coming back to the Midwest and was going to play for them. And do you know, they were so close for the Super Bowl.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I was there. It was a great memory and then it was the worst memory, Tom.

Tom Henning:

Right. It’s like the best, worst, right? But Bengals fan big time.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Love it.

Tom Henning:

In fact, for you โ€ฆ

Zach Wojtowicz:

First who day on the pod. There we go.

Tom Henning:

Here we go.

Zach Wojtowicz:

But we’re losing all our listeners right now. I love it.

Tom Henning:

That’s the baby right there, man.

Charley Burtwistle:

You moved to Virginia though. You lived in Cincinnati โ€ฆ

Tom Henning:

When I had my son, my folks lived in Roanoke. I grew up in Roanoke, Virginia. And my wife was an Army brat, and her dad retired up in Woodbridge and was government contractor guy. He lived up in Northern Virginia. Richmond was this town that we said, hey, it’s close to a lot of things. The beach, Charlottesville. My wife went to UVA, I went to VMI, which is in the news lately with a lot of crap going on right now. It’s crazy. But what I’m saying is, but what all this did for me was getting back to Virginia is where I grew up. It’s like you guys being in the Midwest, it’s what you know. You guys up there, being a Husker. Talking to Nick, who’s one of my trainers, he says, “I don’t travel much, Tom.” To me, you think this country was founded in Virginia, Jamestown and Williamsburg. I’m trying to say that stuff. We take that for granted, it’s just a couple hours away. You with me? Even the civil war was fought here.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Right, for sure.

Tom Henning:

Weird stuff. Where you guys are, it’s the great discovery and the hard working people. My big affection, my dad used to say all the time, “If you don’t like the farmers, just don’t fuss with your mouth full.”

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah.

Tom Henning:

You’re not hungry, right? That’s right. Well, that’s because these guys are taking care of you. They’re the ones growing the cattle or the corn. They’re the bread. It was the bread basket of America. You’re taking care of what everybody has. And I think people forget that until they get out there and see it. And then also, I think you show us how big the country is. It’s a massive country. When I lived in the Midwest, everything was hours. Is that how you guys are? I’m two hours away. It wasn’t miles, it was, how long does it actually take to get there? Indianapolis was two hours away. Columbus, an hour and a half, that kind of stuff from Cincinnati.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Ours is like Kansas City, three and a half. Chicago โ€ฆ

Tom Henning:

The low end is two hours.

Zach Wojtowicz:

You can go to Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Charley Burtwistle:

About four and a half, five. Then for our listeners out there, Tom, you talked about your past experience and just an absolutely very, very decorated resume for sure. Tell us a little bit about where you’re at now and the recent shift that you’ve made.

Tom Henning:

All right. My kids were getting older. My son was a really good track and cross country runner, in fact top 5% of the state. I wanted to be there for him and see his events, and do that. This job came up to where they needed at the time a project manager to manage a project for a retirement community. This place is Westminster Canterbury Richmond, it was putting a whole new tower look. I was going to put a whole new top of a tower mezzanine, everything in place of an existing 1974 tower. Modernizing this thing, cutting off the roof, putting on some new things. By the way, the residents are living right below me. It’s like a hotel that’s still open, but I’m building on top of you. We had the third … Or no, second wettest year in history when I did that job.

Charley Burtwistle:

Wow. Great timing.

Tom Henning:

Tons of roof leaks, tons of water issues, damage and all that stuff. I would come here at sometimes two in the morning to meet with the residents and say, “Hey, Ms. Smith, I’m so sorry.” And put in these old pig things and divert the water to a trash can, and they’re moving to the other bedroom to sleep because they can’t sleep in the bedroom because there’s water dripping over the bed and all that jazz. Just a nightmare. And goes back to the care. The difference is, I’m the owner and not the contractor. Having been a contractor, I can talk conversely with the contractor to say, this is what we need to do this. And then being the owner, I have my management people, like my mechanics and all that.

But we went through this whole job, got it done. Residents, super happy, love it. But I became almost like family, to where they know me by name. I know their kids, they know my kids. You know what I’m saying? It’s crazy. But I was able, with this balance, it is pretty much a banker’s job. I come in about 8:30, and I can leave at five o’clock, whatever. And I don’t work weekends, that kind of stuff. Which, for construction, that’s crazy.

Charley Burtwistle:

Unheard of.

Zach Wojtowicz:

We just had a guest tell us, “I never have a day off.” The fact that you got a weekend, Tom, living the dream.

Tom Henning:

When I had my business, and I’m going to tell all these contractors out there, you need to do this for balance, or you get the stink eye from the wife. But from six to eight I would tell my clients my phone is off. And they go, “What are you talking about?” I said, “I’m a dad, I’m a husband. I’m going to cook dinner.” At the time, the way I worked out with my wife was, because construction you had to be on the job so early, I was never there to get them off to school or get them ready or anything. I made a deal with my wife, Betsy. I said, “Look, I’ll put the kids to bed every night. I will tuck them in, I’ll read them books every night, eight o’clock.” Around 8:30, and I actually did this, I’d tuck the kids in bed, get back in the car and go to Miss Smith’s house to go do an estimate.

And oftentimes, they wanted that because they, like us, were dads and moms. And that was the only time they could meet with us because they were both home from work, the kids were in bed, if they had little ones. Or the teenager, whatever it was, they had the time to focus with me. You almost had to shift your paradigm of business development a little bit. And like you said, you’re always working. I was at the beach doing estimates, all that jazz. And so, when I came to the owner side, as they say the dark side, what I did was I appreciated what they did, and I made sure I gave my guys the grace and the time to get it to me when they can.

I was not this, and I’m not to this day, “I need this tomorrow at five.” You know what I’m saying? I usually put it in your court and say, “When can you get it to me?” They say, “I can get it to you next Tuesday.” That’s perfect, that’s fine. But then my favorite thing as a superintendent is, guess what today is? Tomorrow. When the sub says, “I’ll get to it tomorrow,” and you can roll up to them and …

Charley Burtwistle:

That may have to be the t-shirt idea for this episode. Every episode I like to take the best thing someone says and pitch it to our producers to put on a t-shirt and sell as merch.

Tom Henning:

I’m in.

Charley Burtwistle:

That’s my pitch.

Tom Henning:

I’m in, and I want the first. One extra-large, please.

Charley Burtwistle:

There you go. Guess what today is? Tomorrow.

Tom Henning:

Yeah. That’s right.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I’d like to point out, we’ve had zero t-shirts made, so they don’t land. But โ€ฆ

Charley Burtwistle:

One of these days. One of these days the ladies will come through for us.

Tom Henning:

And what I’ve learned with all my wisdom, guys, is that if you are humble enough to say, “Look, I’m not the smartest guy in the room.” And that’s what you find as you get older, is you don’t want to be the smartest guy in the room. I want the smart guys doing the work. You know what I’m trying to say? What I want people to look at me as being smart on is I got the right guys doing the work. That’s where you’re smart. I think that only comes with experience, and it also comes with just good people skills where you’re working good with folks. That kind of jazz.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s solid wisdom. It shows experience, right? There probably was maybe a time, I know I can be pretty confident in my abilities. And as I’ve gotten older I’ve tried to be like, well you might find someone who could do it better. But it makes sense.

Charley Burtwistle:

There’s a lot โ€ฆ

Tom Henning:

I grew up in the 80s, you had … What was that song, Like A Rock by Bob Sager? You thought you were invincible.

Zach Wojtowicz:

We’re not from the 80s.

Tom Henning:

But if you play that song, Like a Rock, you’re coming out of college, I am a stud muffin. Nobody knows more than I do. And everybody just shut up and sit down because I’m getting ready to show you what to do here. And you quickly get humbled. You know what I’m saying? That’s what I love about construction, it shows you real quick how much you do or don’t know about what’s going on.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah. I feel like there’s a pride aspect to that, too, especially growing out a team or building a company or something. Hiring people that are better than you at your job comes with a lot of, you have to take a step down from your pedestal and admit, hey, if I want my team to grow or my company to grow, I need to be the second smartest, then third smartest, and fourth smartest, and fifth smartest person on the team.

Tom Henning:

I had great mentors. If you look at my resume history, I worked at DPR for instance.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I saw that.

Tom Henning:

I met the Doug, Peter, and Ron of DPR. Been to California. Doug Woods took me aside one time and said, “You’re too entrepreneurial to be working for a company. You should start your own company, Tom.”

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s a fun way to get fired. No, I’m just kidding.

Tom Henning:

To your point. I was like, so you โ€ฆ What do they call it, the quiet firing? No, but what he was saying … But I told Doug, I threw it back at him. I said, “Doug, why do you think I’m working here?” He says, “What are you talking about?” I said, “Because you teach us to be entrepreneurial. You’re not telling me what to do. There’s not a title on my business card, it’s what the client thinks I am.”

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah.

Charley Burtwistle:

I love that. I’m going to start using that.

Tom Henning:

I’m telling you, Doug Woods, he actually had business cards. And he’s the founder. I’m the D of DP and R. It just says, Doug Woods.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s so cool.

Tom Henning:

Now, he’s passed away. I think he died about a year and a half ago. Sad. The kind of boss he was, he put his office by the copier because he wanted to hear what’s going on. You know how people, the bleeping so and so just wanted another … You know what I’m saying? Hey, what’s up John?

Charley Burtwistle:

Hey, what was that?

Tom Henning:

John would tell him what’s going … And then he’s got his ear to the ground.

Charley Burtwistle:

I love that move.

Tom Henning:

But their attitude was, you’ve got to go forth and conquer. That’s how I do it. But, anyway.

Charley Burtwistle:

I want to touch a little bit more on the topic of the ear to the ground, hearing what other people are saying. We mentioned at the beginning that you were just out at Buildertrend University in Omaha not that long ago. Can you tell us a little bit about what that experience was like? Obviously, you get to meet a lot of other builders, a lot of other remodelers, people that use Buildertrend, and talk and communicate as an organization of peers across the country. How was your experience?

Tom Henning:

It was neat to talk to other folks to see, how do you use it? Or what modules do you use, that kind of stuff? And as long as I’ve been using this program, which I’ve been using it, when I had my old company, I think it’s since 2012. I got to look back at my subscriptions. You guys can probably see. But you guys did my website for me, the whole nine yards, man, back then. When I came over to here and started doing what I was doing, I quickly saw, this is what I needed to use to manage all the remodels we do. We do about 60 remodels a year.

Charley Burtwistle:

Oh, wow.

Tom Henning:

And then, we actually do selections and all that stuff. And then, we got this huge expansion, this $200 million expansion we’re doing, and we’re adding 118 new units. I remember talking to Nick, and then Carolyn Kramer actually trained me on selections. I bought the selections module, you had to upgrade to the next level of Buildertrend involvement there. And Carolyn helped me get it all set up, and we got it in place, and we’ve now completed the selections of 47 of 118 units with this program. Phenomenal. And these residents, by the way, it’s like an hour and a half to two hour meeting, and we’ve been meeting with three to four residents a week. We told the big company that’s doing this whole expansion, we’ll have all these selections to you by January one. All right, so we’ve actually created the select … And the Buildertrend thing spits out a report, and it says here are all the selections.

We’ve put some language in there saying that, by the way, any upgrades are non-refundable. If these people back out later and say that $9,000 bidet I bought, you’re not getting your money back, it’s going in the remodel. Or the wood floor upgrades you picked, and all that stuff. And we got folks that picked up to, in some cases 50 some thousand upgrades, whatever it might be. But the reason for that is to help the contractor get the job done, and also get a commitment from the residents. Now, it’s easy to say that, it’s like going to Disney saying, “Hey look, I’m going to tell you it’s a non-refundable ticket.” You’re going to say, “Fine, I’m going to Disney. I don’t want to not go to Disney.” And that’s how this place is. We have almost over a thousand person waiting list here.

Charley Burtwistle:

Really?

Tom Henning:

Yes.

Charley Burtwistle:

Wow.

Tom Henning:

We’re blessed in that we’re a brand, that people want to be here. It’s because of the quality of care, the quality of people that we have here, and the quality of just everything about this place is what brought me here on the client side. They’ve allowed me to really almost run this like a contracting business. They say, “Tom, do your job.” And so, that’s what I do. I bid all my remodels out. I have three bidders for almost every division. We have pre-bid meetings at these apartments. They walk the job with our sales team. Sales team told us what’s going on. We do that with Zoom even. The guys that can’t make the meeting, they can log into it. It’s actually Microsoft Teams is what we use. But they can come into the Teams call.

We do that. I have a schedule on Buildertrend, so I actually use Buildertrend. I actually have a Westminster Canterbury renovation tab job that everybody has access to, and you pop that open and it has a schedule in there of all my bids, when they’re due, and what apartments they are, and what time the pre bids are, and all that jazz. Going to Buildertrend University though I learned, hey Tom, not only can you do that, but you can actually have them put the bids in. I think the thing with Buildertrend that I tell anybody that’s new to it is, don’t try to drink all the ocean at one time. Just take little pieces and get good at it. And so, where I started with it was the daily reports. I wanted my guys to just do daily reports. Take pictures, upload them, just tell me what’s going on, get it where the client’s good with it.

Then I went to schedule. All right, let’s start putting our schedule together. Is this something we can publish now? Do we want the client to see that? Is that something you think we want to do a baseline schedule? Are you guys ready to do that? We’re at the point now, we got baseline schedules. And I’ve taken jobs now where we used to take 14 weeks, we’re giving the credo to do it in 11 weeks. Okay, we do that. Now, we got it to nine weeks.

Charley Burtwistle:

Really?

Tom Henning:

It’s just because of, I truly believe it’s the Buildertrend organization pieces that I’m using, it helps my guys just stay dialed in. The schedule feature alone is phenomenal. You just pop guys, when you update stuff and they’re tied into the schedule. The plumber gets an update that, hey, we didn’t pass an inspection, so you’re going to have to come back tomorrow. It’s not going to get done today, or whatever it might be. It’s phenomenal. You don’t have to call anybody. The to do lists, I use that all the time when I’m walking around with my sales team and they say, “Hey Tom, this grout needs to be fixed.” I swear to God, I’m getting phone calls while I’m walking with them because they got popped and said, “Hey Tom, I saw that. Can you tell me what I …” The sales team loves it because they see I’m actually taking care of it. And that’s what I love about Buildertrend. It’s just like, I got this.

Charley Burtwistle:

You have to be making Zach’s trainer heart very, very happy listening to you talk.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Actually, I messaged Caroline while you were talking, about the shout out. And she said to say hello.

Tom Henning:

Oh, awesome. She’s great. And to tell you, at one point she had to help me with something, and she couldn’t make a meeting, and she had somebody pinch hit for me because I was working on something. And that person, I’m telling you, everybody I talked to or worked with the Buildertrend, you’re dialed in. You know what to do. I remember calling in one time, the 1-800 number because I was upset about something, and they just talked me off a cliff. “You know, Tom, you’re right. This is what we got to do.” They just calm you down. I think a lot of it is that, is you guys have an awesome product. And I just think the tweaks is what would I run into. Now I get with my teams and say, what can we do better with Buildertrend? What would you like that to be? And then try to do that, where you do the suggestions, pop stuff in there and send that into the team and all that. But great product.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah. Our product team, we have a few people from product on the podcast every now and then. The recurring theme constantly is, we want to do what’s best for our customer, and we can’t do that unless they tell us. It’s funny after hearing that from them so often, now I’m the type of person that when I get an email or I get a popup in another product that tells you to leave feedback, I do it now. I used to always be like, oh, this is annoying. But โ€ฆ

Tom Henning:

Yeah, you block it, right?

Charley Burtwistle:

I’m like, wait, if I want it to be better I have to tell them. And then, as far as our CS team goes, I hate to give Zach too much credit, but he is one of the senior managers on the CS floor. He’s out there training people and coaching people, and driving the strategy there. We have an incredible CS team, and Zach plays a part.

Zach Wojtowicz:

People like Caroline deserve all the credit. I don’t do anything.

Charley Burtwistle:

I don’t like complimenting โ€ฆ

Zach Wojtowicz:

Don’t let Charley talk nice about me.

Tom Henning:

And I guess her counterpart, Nick, was the one that’s upsold me to the selections program. He said, “Tom, you need this if that’s what you need to do.” And that’s where I think you guys bring a lot of value to a client like me. That hey, it’s going to cost a little more, but it’s worth it if this is what you want to do with it. And then now that I’ve got it in place, and we’re using it, it’s like discovering fire. The people like, I can’t work without it. Right? It is the win-win. And that’s what you’re trying to generate is a brand that, it’s like QuickBooks. You got to find an accounting software you want to use, and then that is what you use. I remember when I hired Paychex, I said, “This is how you get fired.” And they said, “What do you mean?” I said, “You miss payday.”

Charley Burtwistle:

Right.

Tom Henning:

They said, “What are you talking about?” I said, “You need to tell me how much I got to have in the bank, what my draw needs to be, all that jazz. But my guys get paid on the first and the 15th of every month like clockwork. I don’t care what jobs I got going on, whatever it is, they get paid.” And most of my folks were salary, I didn’t have self-performance guys that were working overtime. I just wasn’t that big yet. I never really wanted to get like that, because that’s just painful. Now, there are a bunch of guys that do a lot of self-perform work and hats off to you, man. It’s wonderful, but it’s tough to keep that 40 hours set. I bet you talk to a bunch of contractors, that’s their biggest challenge is keeping that guy busy for the week.

You know what I’m saying? And truly doing work. You know what I’m saying? I think it’s a skill. You got to find the right jobs, the right clients, the right customers, and just make sure they have things in place for you. But to that end, I used Paychex for instance, and I never missed a payday.

Charley Burtwistle:

There you go.

Tom Henning:

And that was one of my goals. But going back to the dad side, that’s what my son told me when I came over to here, and I’ve been here almost five years. He’s graduating now in college. He said, “You never missed a track meet. You never missed a cross country meet.” I was just like, I got all choked up running with him. And he has to slow down to run with dad because I can’t run his six, seven minute mile pace. You know what I’m saying? I’m an eight minute guy.

But I think he’s seeing what it means to be a dad. And I think Buildertrend, you’re apparent with that. I think the Buildertrend piece is, this is how you take care of the family. That’s how I look at this product, this program. Is having people log in, look at things. I sold a bunch of work that way. Just, “Hey, just log onto the website.” And they would see the projects you’ve done. And, “Oh my god, I love that kitchen,” or whatever it might be. I just think it’s a great product, and just leveraging how it can just take care of things. And to put this in perspective, I’ve got to manage these 118 apartments that are coming up, and the big contract is like, “Tom, all these apartments are different. They’re not the same like a hotel.”

I said, “That’s right.” They said, “Well, we don’t know how we’re going to manage that.” I said, “You don’t have to worry about it, I got it.” Because I have Buildertrend. It was just funny. It was like, don’t worry about it. They said, “What about the specifications?” “You don’t need to correct the drawings, I got the selection sheet right here. That’ll be our spec.” “What you mean?” “This is signed by the client, they picked everything. They tell you which wall, the south wall needs to be painted the accent color, all that. We don’t need to draw that crap, it’s right here. Why do it twice?” This is what I’m trying to teach that paradigm is we get into the school of, man, the drawings have got to reflect what … No, not necessarily. That’s the beauty of construction, it’s kind of a work of art.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Little fluid.

Tom Henning:

Yeah. When a person’s doing a remodel … And this was another thing I learned recently, and I didn’t know this till I got to the client side. When you work in the construction industry, everybody under … I say everybody. Most people understand plans, they understand what they’re looking at. When you come to this side, where I’m working with buyers and social workers and nurses, and all this jazz, these folks can’t see what we see on a set of plans. I learned that it’s 85% of the population do not understand a Lego 3D.

They couldn’t look at something and build it. It’s a spatial thing. I didn’t see that until I came to the owner’s side. Because if you’re talking with guys that are doing it for a living, it’s almost, you can fake it till you make it if you don’t really know what you’re doing because you got enough people around you to say, “Yeah, that’s where the door’s going to be,” and all that stuff. And now with this, the virtual, the VDC stuff that’s out there. You can put these glasses on and show them, โ€œhey, this is your kitchen. It’s pretty amazing.โ€ I went to a conference in Chicago this year, and I was one of the hosts, the MCs for a day. The reason they wanted me as a host is because I’m a client, and can call BS to something. Oh it’s this way. No, it’s not โ€ฆ

The other thing I learned is that the client oftentimes, and I would ask your other contractors to ask their clients, “How long have you been talking about this project?” I would be surprised if it’s less than a year. Most jobs it might be years. I remember I did somebody’s bathroom and they said, “We’ve been talking about this for 20 years.”

Zach Wojtowicz:

Really? Hey, better late than never, I guess.

Tom Henning:

I joked with him, his name was Bob. And his name Bob Gun. I said, “Bob, I don’t know what to say. This is my first bathroom.” Bob says, “Well, better be right, because I’ve been wanting to do this for 20 years, and I’m hiring you to do it.” I remember, that’s when I started figuring out, okay, I got to get the right people to do this work. It just stemmed from there.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Do you have your clients help with the selections process? Obviously, you’re working with a little older population, are you introducing them to Buildertrend? I’m just curious.

Tom Henning:

Yeah. With the threshold we have not crossed, just being honest, with Buildertrend, is my sales team is still worried about getting them to be able to log in. Right? We talked about this at BTU was, hey, if you could get it to where I could have five people.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Sure.

Tom Henning:

What I’m getting at is the kids. Because a lot of them are the ones that are tech savvy. I’m laughing, my mom’s almost got a flip phone here. I’m trying to say I’m serious, man. It’s a Razor. They can โ€ฆ

Zach Wojtowicz:

Classic, though. Those are sweet classic โ€ฆ

Tom Henning:

They don’t have an iPhone, and you give them a tablet and they’re like … It’s like handing them the keys to a jet engine. They’re like, what’s that? But they’re coming around, and we’re putting in applications. And again the Buildertrend training. And we actually have production here. We actually have a TV station and training videos.

Charley Burtwistle:

Oh, nice.

Tom Henning:

I’ve got a guy that can record me using Buildertrend and say, “Hey, Resident, this is what it’s like to use Buildertrend.”

Zach Wojtowicz:

Oh, nice.

Tom Henning:

Right?

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s awesome.

Tom Henning:

They know Tom Henning. And you know what I’m saying?

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s cool.

Tom Henning:

I’m showing you how to use it, versus the Buildertrend app that could show you. By the way, all those training videos are Top Gun, way to go. But what I’m saying is we’re able to take that and curtail it for our team.

I think it’s around the corner because what I’m trying to show them, and I told them what I brought back from the classes, is how much time it saves. You guys got to tell me, what is your findings of when the resident’s able to log in. How much time does that save a week? I heard 20 hours, but I can’t remember. It was something like that.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Charley’s a numbers guy, you’ve done โ€ฆ

Charley Burtwistle:

Varies case by case, but I’d say 20 hours is pretty solid average there.

Tom Henning:

When you think about making a phone call, calling him back. You know what I’m trying to say? Having to get to the drawings and then explain it to him. Talk to him about, oh, you know what I’m talking about? Oh, let’s get online. Let’s look at it together. When you figure out that, it’s easily โ€ฆ

Charley Burtwistle:

Well, it’s just the little things. The little things here and there. You’re not going to chunk out a whole eight hour day, and you’re like thereโ€™s that day. But it’s five minutes here, it’s five minutes, it’s half an hour over there. And then โ€ฆ

Tom Henning:

Or even if it’s 20 hours a month, you can’t tell me half week’s worth of productivity is saved?

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah, 100%.

Tom Henning:

Letting them log in, done. I think being an entrepreneur, I learned this, too. You’re lazy. Just like, I don’t have to do everything.

Charley Burtwistle:

That’s efficiency.

Tom Henning:

Yeah. It’s not necessarily being lazy, but it’s like doing payroll. I could do payroll, I certainly could, but I’d rather have Paychex do it because they’ll get it right. You know what I’m saying? The IRS is looking for form number X, Y, Z. It’s done. They’ve got all the forms. What I like about it, it’s almost an armโ€™s reach. I’m not messing around with the money. You know what I’m trying to say? I got to pay these guys. Let’s make sure I pay them right. Just make sure the social security or missed comp, all that jazz is squared away. We’re not playing any funny business there. What do I need to do? I was big on that. And I would recommend any contractor that way, don’t just…

Actually had an account when I started my business, he says, “Two ways to play: above the table, or below, but you can’t be both.โ€ And he was serious. He said you can’t play both ways. It goes back to the VMI honor code, “lie, cheat or steal”. You have to carry yourself in a way that you say, look, I’m running a business, and there are business things I got to do. And you run the business. And you take care of your people. I think that’s a secret sauce of the success to any contractor out there. And then, also to a client. I can see the contractors that actually take care of the people, and the ones that don’t. And ones don’t aren’t on my campus, I just don’t want those guys. I want the guys that they’re well paid, they’re paid a fair wage. I’m saying, but I’m paying for the brains. I’m paying for good people.

Charley Burtwistle:

Absolutely. I was just going to say, taking care of your people, I think that’s a fantastic note to end on. We’re running really, really close on time here, so I want to wrap things up.

Tom Henning:

No problem.

Charley Burtwistle:

But I heard you say that, I’m like, oh that’s the perfect note to end the episode on. Because I feel like that’s everything that you talked about from start to finish of your journey and where you’re at now, is take care of your people and do what’s right, and the rest will take care of itself. Tom, thank you very, very much for coming on this episode of The Building Code. I feel like we could talk for another hour or so. If it wasn’t 4:30 on a Friday, we might.

Tom Henning:

Hey, anytime. I’m always up for a topic. If you want have even a group topic, where I’m a panel of guys or โ€ฆ

Charley Burtwistle:

That would be pretty cool idea.

Zach Wojtowicz:

You never know. I have some things cooking on my end.

Tom Henning:

But anything else you might have questions on. Or, hey Tom, would you talk about estimating? You look at my resume, you see the background. I would love to help. Big jobs, small jobs, what’s the difference? That kind of stuff. I think a lot of it is just take care of it. I appreciate you guys, so thank you.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Absolutely. Thanks, Tom.

Charley Burtwistle:

Thank you, Tom.

Tom Henning:

All right.

Zach Wojtowicz:

All right, Charley, we just had Tom Henning out on โ€œThe Building Code.โ€ As always, what do you think?

Charley Burtwistle:

Tom was very, very, very insightful. I get why when he came to BTU, as many people as they did talked about him and how great he was to talk to. I love having builders like him on the podcast. I actually feel like Tom was one of the first people we’ve had in a while who has a construction background. I feel like most of the people we talked to were like, oh, I was an accountant before this. Or, oh, I was a teacher before this. Or, oh, one of my friends started this business, I joined him. Tom, he sent us over his resume before the interview just so we could see what experience he had and talk through topics and things like that.

He’s worked at 10 different companies, owned a couple, he’s been in the business forever. To hear him talk about all the different things he’s learned, things he’s seen. Going from having to go and fax over stuff, to literally writing down sales notes while you’re walking through a job site in Buildertrend was really, really cool. Definitely something that I learned a lot from, and hopefully our listeners out there learned a lot, too.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah, absolutely. A builder’s builder. The old school. And not in a bad way, just in a way that a technology adoption. And some of our other guests have talked about, like Courtney, builders are doing and stuff for 30 years. Tom seems to have really embraced the changes, and he looks at it more in the people relationship side, which as the universal thread between the old and new as we’ve evolved. Of how technology is helping with the efficiency, getting people faster, communicating better.

When he was talking about how he’s updating a to-do and then he is getting a call about it, he’s talking about the innovation within the process. But how the old relationship building the people business, we’ve heard people talk about that consistently. It really came through that I could see why people want to work for Tom or work with Tom and do things. It’s really inspiring because it’s always, what could I be doing better to have that mindset when I go into my own meetings and do that type of thing? It was really cool.

Charley Burtwistle:

And to your point, to expand on that a little more, just embracing the change as well as he had. That was something, if we weren’t running up on time, I wanted to talk to him a little bit more about. Because even something a little small as upgrading to the selections feature, I feel like that’s something that a lot of our builders, or contractors across the U.S. in general, may be really scared to do. But all change is good. You have to constantly be evolving, otherwise you’re going to get left behind. To hear him talk about that was cool. It was also cool that he built the Bengalโ€™s stadium, and I just โ€ฆ

Zach Wojtowicz:

Did you see me? I bet if you looked at on YouTube โ€ฆ

Charley Burtwistle:

How many games have you been to this year?

Zach Wojtowicz:

This year I went to two games. I went to five games last year.

Charley Burtwistle:

Zach, big Cinci fan.

Zach Wojtowicz:

When am I moving to Cinci?

Charley Burtwistle:

Absolutely.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Don’t play this clip to my wife.

Charley Burtwistle:

I think we’re going to need to talk to him a little bit more about what flaws he may have had in his design that you could sneak into games.

Zach Wojtowicz:

He didn’t answer that part. I was like, oh my God, I get to meet Joe Burrow tomorrow. Listeners out there, maybe it’ll come back around.

Charley Burtwistle:

Maybe if you see on ESPN some random guy getting caught trying to sneak into Bengalโ€™s stadium.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I’m blaming Tom.

Charley Burtwistle:

Blame Tom.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Tom, thank you so much for coming on. Charley, thanks for coming in and chatting with us.

Charley Burtwistle:

Zach, thank you for coming in today. Until next time, I guess. I’m Charley Burtwistle.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I’m Zach Wojtowicz.

Charley Burtwistle:

We’ll see you.

Tom Henning headshot

Tom Henning | Westminster Canterbury Richmond


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