Tips for your business during COVID-19

Tom Houghton:

You’re listening to “The Building Code,” your guide to a better way to run your business. I’m Tom Houghton. Joining me on this special version of “The Building Code,” we’re joined by our in-house counsel and legal affairs manager of Buildertrend, Nick Knihnisky. Nick, welcome to the podcast.

Nick Knihnisky:

It’s great to be here, Tom. Thanks for having me.

Tom Houghton:

Thanks. Thanks for hopping on. We’re doing this podcast, just so our listeners know, we’re doing this remotely. This is our first time doing this instead of doing it in-house because of this pandemic. That’s actually why we brought Nick on the podcast today to talk about COVID-19 or the coronavirus and how it’s affecting the entire world, it seems.

Nick Knihnisky:

That’s right. That’s right. Strange times, undoubtedly, but hopefully be able to provide a little bit of helpful advice to our users and how this might impact their business.

Tom Houghton:

That would be great, Nick. I think everyone would really appreciate that. Now, I think we also should probably go on the record and say that neither of us are scientists.

Nick Knihnisky:

That’s right. Absolutely not an epidemiologist, not a public health official. Certainly don’t want to seem alarmist with any of the material. Simply want to have the conversation, most important topic of the day and the situation is so fluid. Every hour seems to be changing.

Tom Houghton:

Absolutely. We’ve definitely noticed that as well. I’m sure our listeners have as well. But let’s talk about what’s kind of happening. I mean, I’m sure everybody’s kind of aware of this situation, but maybe where we stand right now and any updates that we have for our listeners.

Nick Knihnisky:

To go to the earlier disclaimer, I also want to caution that this isn’t legal advice. Your situation’s going to be different than what mine might be, but we want to encourage you to be informed. I know President Trump has a news conference later this afternoon. I think the expectation, at least around here, is that they’re planning for a nationwide lockdown. What that looks like, who knows?

Nick Knihnisky:

I know New York shut down restaurants and business or restaurants and bars. Chicago did the same. LA I believe did the same as well. So hectic times.

Tom Houghton:

Just so our listeners have a context as well, we’re recording this on Monday the 16th. This will go live on Tuesday the 17th. We’re doing a special release. Normally we release the podcast on Thursdays. If you’ve been subscribing, we appreciate that. You’ll know that we normally release on Thursdays, but because of this data and because we’re trying to get it out as quickly as possible for you, we’re releasing this 24 hours after we recorded it here on Monday. Who knows what will happen by the time it reaches our listener’s ears, but still, I think we can talk about the situation and just options for our listeners as well.

Nick Knihnisky:

Absolutely. I think there’s three main things that you want to be looking at. First and foremost, communication. Second, it’s going to be potential scheduling impacts because, like I said, if we’re going on a nationwide lockdown for two, three weeks, it’s going to be difficult to build homes during that time or really assist your customers. Then third is the insurance aspect. You want to know how you can protect yourself from any potential interruptions.

Tom Houghton:

Absolutely.

Nick Knihnisky:

Just to get started with that, obviously unprecedented situation. I want to distinguish between the legal protections and the realities, but communicating with everyone involved. All of your stakeholders is going to be the key throughout this entire process. Your employees, your vendors, your suppliers, your homeowners, your various clients, include them in your preparation and planning. If you haven’t already reached out to them, said, you’re tracking the situation and you’re trying to prepare as best as you possibly can for any negative impacts, I think that’d be really helpful. At least just saying, “Hey, look, it’s on my radar. We’re doing as much as we can behind the scenes. If we go into a large scale interruption, obviously you’re going to want to communicate that.” Everybody’s aware of what’s happening. It’s almost impossible to avoid this news. Reaching out and just saying, “Look, we’re aware of it. We’re tracking, we’re doing everything that we can.”

Nick Knihnisky:

You don’t need to throw out, I’m sure you’ve had the same exact situation with your email inbox where every single brand is telling you exactly what they’re doing. I don’t know why the Marriott CEO felt it was necessary to reach out to every single individual, regardless of whether or not they had a hotel stay coming up. But obviously your work is going to be much more pertinent to the day-to-day lives of your clients, as well as your suppliers and employees, so encourage you to reach out to them.

Tom Houghton:

I mean, you’re absolutely right. I’ve gotten emails from all sorts of places that, whether I’ve shopped there one time or 10 times, we’re cleaning the stores, we’re doing this, we’re doing that. It’s good for our clients to be thinking about, they want to be a part of that communication process. It would be strange obviously to be working on a project with a homeowner and not get communication just because everyone else is over-communicating right now. They should be a part of that process.

Nick Knihnisky:

Right. To your point, over-communication is the name of the game right now. I can’t recommend that enough. It’s much better to make sure everybody’s on the same page in this situation than it is to attempt to ignore it.

Nick Knihnisky:

To that same point, track all of your communications. If you’re sending emails to suppliers or vendors or vice versa, put those in Buildertrend and be able to go back and see what exactly was communicated and when. It might save you down the line, probably not the next couple of weeks as times are difficult, but if there’s ever a dispute, you should know exactly what was said and when.

Tom Houghton:

Absolutely. That’s a great idea. You can obviously track all those communications, whether they’re messages or emails, inside the Buildertrend platform. That is a great idea, Nick.

Nick Knihnisky:

Absolutely. Then that kind of brings us to our second point, and that’s scheduling. Obviously, if we go into a nationwide lockdown, that’s going to cause some potential delays. Even if we don’t go into lockdown, you should be prepared for those delays, whether those are supply chain disruptions, labor issues, things like that. Ultimately it goes back to communication where Buildertrend can just be a huge asset to your business. Being able to communicate delays to your subs, users and suppliers is really going to be necessary to keep the job site going. Then as we come out of the back end of this, getting things going again.

Tom Houghton:

Definitely. I mean, you want to be ready for whenever we come out of whatever potential stoppage. This is part could be complete speculation, and obviously it could change by the time it hits listeners ears. Are you hearing a lot about potential backlogs with supplies or things for the job site?

Nick Knihnisky:

Yeah. We’re pretty diligent on following what the latest legal communication is, not only in our space, but across the globe and just figuring out how legislation might be impacted, how our customers are ultimately going to be affected by potential issues.

Nick Knihnisky:

First and foremost, we’re hearing supply chains are going to be slowing down. Obviously China was the first region to be hit with COVID. We’re finally seeing the ripple effects from that. But I think that really necessitates you getting familiar with your contracts. In contracts often this concept of force majeure. People often ask what is a force majeure. That’s going to be a boilerplate contract term. It’s often at the end of your agreements that’s going to say, “No party’s going to be liable for failure to perform their obligations as a result of anything that might be beyond their control.” That’s going to include things like acts of God, public enemies, active military, or regulatory authority, fires, floods, earthquakes.

Nick Knihnisky:

A few years ago when the SARS epidemic occurred was the first real time the force majeure were tested in the landscape of a pandemic. It was revealed that pandemics and Western explicitly excluded from a force majeure are going to be covered. You’re going to want to know, get familiar with your agreements, what’s in there. They might not provide recourse for you against your suppliers or subs, but the same concept should protect you and any complaints from your clients.

Tom Houghton:

That’s good. They should definitely take a look at their contracts and hopefully they’ve been storing those documents in Buildertrend or place they can easily access those.

Nick Knihnisky:

Right. I do want to caution, oftentimes a force majeure will also include a notice period. In the event of a lockdown, you might have 72 hours or 96 hours to alert the other side that you’re going to be relying on that force majeure. Again, I’m hoping everybody’s going to be flexible given the scenario, but in case that you might, you always want to cover your basis.

Tom Houghton:

Absolutely.

Nick Knihnisky:

Reaching out to the other side and saying, “Hey, we’re planning to rely on our force majeure in this agreement, we’ll be in touch.” It really goes back to the communication aspects. Just over communicate, continue to send emails, continue to send messages, know what your contracts say, and that’s going to be really important.

Tom Houghton:

Definitely. That’s great advice. Obviously if they do, with the Buildertrend scheduling tool, if they do need to push out the schedule, they can easily access that inside Buildertrend and adjust the schedule accordingly and let all the subs know and the homeowner know just through the Buildertrend platform.

Nick Knihnisky:

Right. Exactly. Exactly. Right now Buildertrend’s going to be a huge asset to you, I think not only for the communication side, but scheduling to your point and being able to, if the job site is ready to come back live, you’re ready to return to work, boom, you’re all in one place. You can communicate with subs, with suppliers, be ready to go.

Tom Houghton:

Awesome. The last note you said, you mentioned, so we talked about communication and then scheduling. Your last note was insurance?

Nick Knihnisky:

Yeah. I highly encourage you to reach out to your insurance broker, discuss your policies, see what might be in there to mitigate financial impacts of disruptions. There’s not going to be any easy answer because ultimately it depends on your policy, but be aware of what you may need to do to ensure that you’re protected from any significant interruption.

Nick Knihnisky:

Again, if they shut everything down, you might have some protections in your policies that are going to give you at least a little bit of financial flexibility. Don’t hesitate to reach out to your broker. I know we’ve been reaching out to ours, having the same exact discussions, just, “Hey, what do we need to do? What are we covered by? Are there any steps that we should be taking? Do we need to just cleanly stop operations in order to take advantage of our policies?”

Nick Knihnisky:

Those are questions that you want to know the answers to because ultimately we understand that margins are tight and we want to be sure that you’re fully protecting your business as well as yourself.

Tom Houghton:

Absolutely. That’s great advice. Again, that just goes back to the communication side of it, communicating with your insurance broker and that way you can figure out what’s in your policy and what’s covered and what’s not covered. That’s some really good advice.

Nick Knihnisky:

Right. In situations like this, it takes a village. I hate to be cliche, but rely on that village. You spent years building a business and you want to be sure that that continues in the future.

Tom Houghton:

A socially distanced village. Right?

Nick Knihnisky:

Right. You can certainly rely on phone calls to access that village.

Tom Houghton:

Just like we’re doing right now. I mean, we live in a day and age, it’s funny, I was talking with somebody off air before this about it’s amazing how it’s 2020, so we’re able to do so much more online, through digital communication, through tools like Buildertrend, just to keep everybody up to date and communicate with them so much more efficiently and effectively than we have in past issues when we’ve had global issues like this. So definitely leverage the tools that are at your disposal.

Nick Knihnisky:

Undoubtedly. Fortunately we have the flexibility to access work remotely and be able to work from the privacy of our own homes, but not everybody has that privilege. Being able to leverage your communication tools, understand what people can and can’t do is so important.

Tom Houghton:

Definitely. Obviously we’re hoping that this is a temporary issue we’re dealing with here, just a couple of weeks, hopefully, and then we’re out in the clear. But if this does turn into something much bigger, again, these points here that you’ve mentioned, the communication in this process, adjusting your schedule and then the insurance will definitely come into play.

Nick Knihnisky:

Absolutely. To your point, we’re hopefully this is a short thing, obviously, unprecedented. It’s amazing how quick everything has moved. It was what, just five days ago that they were canceling conference basketball tournaments and canceling the NCAA tournament, which I know I was pretty bummed about. But fast forward just a few days, all of a sudden we’re going to be canceling everything. It’s amazing how quick everything’s moved.

Tom Houghton:

Definitely. We’ll keep an eye on it and we’ll continue to communicate with our listeners and we’ll continue to create great podcasts for you all to listen to. So keep listening to “The Building Code.” We’ll still keep recording. Nick, we really appreciate you coming on the podcast today and chatting about COVID-19 and of course we wish everyone’s business safe passage through this difficult storm that we’re weathering.

Nick Knihnisky:

Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you Tom, for having me on. Hopefully you’re staying safe and hopefully our listeners are as well.

Tom Houghton:

Definitely. Thanks Nick.

Nick Knihnisky:

All right. Thanks Tom.

Tom Houghton:

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