The Construction Industry Doesn't Need More Software; It Needs Better Connections with Yael Hanan

0:00Yael Hanan: On this week's show, Trimble Dimensions Preview with Yael Hanan from Pellas.

0:17Yael Hanan: Alright, this might sound a little weird. You've seen us do these before. But this is a first for us at The ConTech Crew. We are a media sponsor for Trimble Dimensions 2026. It's November 9th to 11th at the Venetian in Las Vegas. That's right, Nathan. We're hitting the road. We're going to Vegas. What do you think of my man? Vegas, baby. Let's do it. I'm excited to see you. I feel like I see you way more outside of Colorado than I ever see you in Colorado, but that's okay. Yeah, I fly over you a lot, and then we catch up in places. We're just in Minneapolis. We're in other places. You know, it's much more fun to see you out on the road.

0:54Yael Hanan: So I'm excited to get to Trimble Dimensions. I'm going to be transparent. This will be a first for me. We were talking about a pre-call. It feels like a continent I haven't set foot on yet. I've done the other biggies, but not this one. So I'm excited, man. It's a good one, man. Yeah, Vegas is always a good time. I mean, with Trimble, you got all that hardware, right? I mean, the Expo 4 and I mean, it's a 15 acre work site. It's just the hands-on tech aspect of it. I mean, that's enough you don't get at the other ones. is all this kind of like the big infrastructure, heavy highway hardware stuff.

1:28Yael Hanan: It's really cool. Yeah. I mean, that real connection to hardware that they use and you're hitting it right this year, obviously they'll be talking AI and talking workflows and excited for Rob Painter, the CEO, and talking about all the things that are going on and how they're connecting the workflows in the field. But like you said, unlike everybody else, they actually have a lot of hardware. So they have an offsite expo with that 15 acres for hands-on project work. You really want to get your nerd on. You really want to get your fields sensed together. You got that to go to. 700 other sessions.

2:05Yael Hanan: Startup competition. I'm leaning in. We got somebody sitting here waiting to talk. Don't worry. We're going to get there. Expo hall as usual. Startup competition. A developer summit. A little bit of everything. But also highlighting this Trimble 0 to 60 challenge. which brings us to our lovely guest who I cannot believe we have not had on. I've been a fan of not only the company Pellis, but of Yael as well over the years. So, Yael, welcome to the show.

2:34The ConTechCrew: Thank you, Jeff. Hi, Nathan. I also can't believe I haven't been there before. It's really good to be on the show today.

2:41Yael Hanan: Well, I mean, really, transparency, I was talking to Yael about doing this episode and said, but I think it's a great time to bring you back on. And she had to tell me that she hadn't been on yet. It just felt like you had.

2:52The ConTechCrew: It's just because we know each other for so long and we've been taught in so many issues. It's like, you know, he was like, what? Are you sure? I'm like, I wouldn't remember it. I'm sure.

3:03Yael Hanan: You know that moment when you're buried in submittals, the electrical contractor swears they're working on the latest set, the mechanical disagrees, and nobody can find the same detail? Bluebeam solves that problem and more with Max. Stitching pulls together every discipline's drawings into a single continuous view. So architects, engineers, and contractors are finally looking at the same thing at the same time. Wild concept, right? Flag issues before they cost time and money. Find what you need fast and stop herding cats across 100 sheets. Same Bluebeam you trust, just way smarter. Free trial at bluebeam.com forward slash TriMax.

3:41Yael Hanan: I had to use one of those AI things to go find out, and you know, she was right. So why don't you tell folks a little bit about you and then how you landed here at Pellis?

3:52The ConTechCrew: So I'm the co-founder and CEO of Pellis, like you know. In my background, I was a construction lawyer for many years. Got into construction law very coincidentally, to be honest. I worked at a very large law firm. I liked the partner who was leading the construction law practice, wanted to work with them specifically, and just fell in love in the industry, you know? You walk in the street, there's nothing there. You walk in the same street two years later and you suddenly see a huge building, right? I was actually a part of building this thing. So for me, it was incredible. I did it almost six years at one of the largest law firms in Israel.

4:25The ConTechCrew: And then I shifted into tech. Oddly enough, stopped being a lawyer, worked at an early stage startup, figured out that this is actually what I want to do when I grow up, figured out it was in the medical device industry, that industry isn't really for me. And that was my last proper job before Pella. So now I get to combine two of my passions in one place.

4:43Yael Hanan: That is awesome. I love that because we hear a lot of people who have the experience of being in the industry or family in the industry, but you tangentially hit the industry and then went a different path and now came back. What did you come back? What problem did you come back to solve? I mean, I'm sure from the law perspective, you saw a lot of the holes in the industry.

5:03The ConTechCrew: It's interesting because we're a team of four co-founders. We all come with a very diverse background. Ido, my CTO, my co-founder and CTO, he was a mechanical engineer. He worked construction himself. And then he shifted also in his master's into tech. And Matan, or VPRNV, he's also originally a mechanical engineer. And then worked as a data scientist in a couple of the largest tech companies out there. And a far COO, strong operator, building and scaling tech startup. And we all came together around construction because we all have some kind of a connection to the industry and to the problems.

5:37The ConTechCrew: and specifically for trade contractors, honestly. It's like our favorite vertical. We can talk hours about why, but it just, to us, it made a lot of sense to come together and solve the problem we're solving today.

5:50Yael Hanan: I'm curious, in the construction law point of view, were you, back then, were you representing the trade contractors? Were you representing GCs? Like what led you to kind of empathize for the trade contractor?

5:59The ConTechCrew: So I think both actually. Honestly, you know, as a lawyer, you represent whoever pays you. In some projects, you would land with a GC. and some projects we apply with a large trade. So no one thing, but I think that when you look at it, we had a couple of different problems we're exploring. But then when we got into the trades, it was so appealing. It's a huge vertical. They are doing the hardest work in construction, in our opinion. And it's a vertical that really goes unattentioned. Nobody's really building software for them. And for us, it just made a lot of sense to focus there on the people who are doing the hardest job and need tools that are dedicated for it.

6:34Yael Hanan: So what data are you finding that they care the most about? And traditionally, they would be looked at, they just do whatever the GC tells them to do, and they don't care about the data. I don't think that's true today. Maybe it used to be. But yeah, what data are trades asking for? What are they interested in?

6:48The ConTechCrew: So with Pellis, I'll go back a step for a sec. But with Pellis, we're building AI infrastructure for trade contractors. Basically allowing the trades to take their knowledge, their expertise, their data, and their processes and turn them into an AI-powered system. So basically taking the capabilities we're building and leveraging them to build their own agents, workflows and applications that are really dedicated to how they do the work or to how they would like to do it, which is also a big difference. And I think that for trades, you know, everybody, you know, one of the biggest hypes in the industry is data silos, right?

7:22The ConTechCrew: And fragmentation. But from the trades perspective, that problem is probably a hundred times worse than what usually has been discussed. discuss because a trade contractor a has many different faces to his job they manage labor in the field they are completing design they're purchasing materials they're fabricating they have so many systems they work with and then on top of it they have all the gc systems that the gc picks up for them and forces them into so for them what silos and fragmentations look like is really, really way worse than everybody else's. Just bringing all of that together into one contextualized place and then building the intelligence and actions and automations on top of it, I think that's a huge value for that.

8:08Yael Hanan: You really hit on a number of good things there because it is really why. I wonder in this process of just selecting it, obviously it's where the work gets done, but why do you think they were underserved and what do you think people can learn a little bit more about how to serve this better? Because you're right, There was a lot more tools and this is not the only ones going out into this frontier, but you are definitely a leader and definitely sitting on a small with a small group right now.

8:34The ConTechCrew: So I think trade contractors like we're talking trade contractors, right? But there is no one trade contractor workflow. You have mechanical, you have electrical, you have plumbing, you have drywall and finishing or asphalt. All of them are different groups with different needs and different challenges and processes. And then even within electrical contractors, I have been met two contractors who have the same workflows and do their work the same way. So it was really hard to build a software that actually covers wide variety of workflows and trades that actually make sense. That's one reason.

9:10The ConTechCrew: And then the other reason is that contact in general is new-ish, let's say. And when you have something new, you always first build for the big and shiny objects, which in our case, it's GCs. And I think that today, both we're now experiencing new waves of contact. And with AI, it's not just the enabler for construction, like for our users. It's also our enabler to build a more flexible software that can accommodate that wide variety of traits and serve all of them in a good way that suits each and every one of them.

9:44Yael Hanan: Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. But usually people listening, give us an example of where, you know, no two electricals, none of them are the same. Give me an example of some of the areas, the ahas you said. This is what's different and this is what we can do now to help solve the problem.

9:59The ConTechCrew: So we say Pellis is connected, right? We're bringing all of their data into one place and then built on top of it agents, workflows, automations. Let's take one workflow, for example. A contractor just got a bit package downloaded out of Building Connected. He then takes the drawing sets out of it, electrical sheets only, breaks them down, puts it into Acubit for takeoff, trembles, takeoff software. Then he will build his estimate. Perfect. Those two places aren't really connected and the data doesn't really flow in between them. So with Pellist, we would grab the documents from Billy Connected.

10:37The ConTechCrew: We will take the estimate from Accupid. We will cross-reference them and see that there is no contradictions between the things that you put in your estimate and the specifications and the contract and everything else. If there are, we will flag it for you, write you the RFI, and then you can automatically submit it into Procore, for example. closing an entire loop of making sure you don't miss any scope gaps, flow of data that is seamlessly across all the platforms you work with. Does that make sense?

11:04Yael Hanan: It does, because if you really break that down, what all those steps are a human going to building connected, grabbing the bid package, removing the sheets that they want, uploading it into AccuBid, working on it in AccuBid, and then anything that I get out of it having to get into Procore. And if I understand this then, I'm now sitting in my Pellas dashboard and building Connected. I'm grabbing it. I'm pushing it to AccuBid, but I'm going over and doing my work in AccuBid then, right? That's what I want people to understand is it's like, it's not like some agent goes out there and then does everything in AccuBid for you.

11:39Yael Hanan: It's just, hey, it's over in AccuBid. You do everything in AccuBid and then it combines in and double checks it for you and then automates like, so I don't have to go write an email. I just push the RFI in the Procore.

11:49The ConTechCrew: Correct. So that would be one good example. Another good example would be cross project intelligence, right? For trades, it's really, really hard to close the loop between the estimate and the closeout and really understand what happened in between helping them close that loop again, because we sit on top of all of their data and identify what really happened in between your estimate and the closeout, even if you ended up in the same number, and then help you leverage that intelligence across all of your projects and project that to future projects. So you would pick your projects better because maybe you're doing a lot of hospital renovations, but your margins are 5 % higher when you do schools.

12:25The ConTechCrew: So let's start doing more schools and less hospital renovation.

12:29Yael Hanan: Wow. Nathan, I'm going to let you ask a question here in a second. But before you go, years ago, we had that conversation. It is that in this business, we are really good at estimating. But actually, when you dig into that estimate, I wouldn't call us lucky, but like we're always over this much here, under this much here. And it sort of comes out in the wash at that estimate.

12:50The ConTechCrew: So like, and you don't know what happened in between and you don't know why.

12:54Yael Hanan: And by the way, that's where your margin could increase, right? Because if you can figure out, Hey, we're going way over here. And why is that? Okay. That's because that number is not good. And we're getting way under over here. Why is that? We can actually, if we close that gap more, the gap we can create is revenue. And it's the true budget to actual that we've always wanted in other systems. and a GC can pull that off now, right? Because of the way that world works, but that is so much harder as a trade contractor. So this is cool to see that functionality getting there. So that was, you just made a prediction from eight years ago come true, I think on the show.

13:33Yael Hanan: So who said things were going super fast? We're there now.

13:36The ConTechCrew: I'm here to, you know, make your dreams come true. But I think that also like going back to it, it's not just closing the gap and closing the loop or connecting a workflow in between systems like we described. it's doing it the way they're doing it now. So understanding how their workflow works and coding that into the software. So like we tell them, it's not that you onboard a new software, AI onboards you and how you do the work.

14:01Yael Hanan: So really tailored to that. And back to my original question of what day do they care about? It's, am I losing money? And that's essentially, yeah, the example of what you were delivering, right?

14:10The ConTechCrew: Am I losing money or where can I make money?

14:13Yael Hanan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. One or the other, yeah. The positive or the negative. And I don't know this, so I probably should have asked you before this, but are you incorporating schedule into that? Correct. So see, and we now know, and we've been saying this forever, right? Time is money. But now when you look at liquidated damages around these hyperscalers, data centers, it's more than money these days. It's a lifeblood on the schedule side. So how are you incorporating schedule into that then?

14:41The ConTechCrew: So again, you can build any type of workflow into the application layer of Palace. For example, you can build an app that takes the GC schedules. And, you know, those are updated as the project progresses in what actually happens and then automatically combines it to project into your own schedule on when should I order my materials? When should my equipment be on site? When do I start fabrication? Because, again, you know, there is a delicate balance between when you get the stuff done. You don't want them too late, but you definitely don't want them too early. And again, also the intelligence of how did I do?

15:15The ConTechCrew: How can I be better for the next project?

15:17Yael Hanan: Does that make sense? You're nailing it because that is the exact step that you need. And they're very hard to make all of that work because, again, classically, people don't realize these days that so much is being ordered. We have tons of ordering problems and material lag times. We also have fabrication and fabrication needs. But if your shop's fabricating too fast, then you've got a material handling cost that's sitting around for too long. And so there's this perfect timing that has to be orchestrated. And classically, it's done in a schedule, but you don't know the rest of it. So you have to talk to this person or talk to that person.

15:53Yael Hanan: And it's not that their information is not important. It's just that it needs to be timely. And then we need to know on this one, we really had to make up time and we saved ourselves. But that's not always going to happen. How do we prevent that in the future? And then, by the way, turning around, it's not some stick and carrot thing. It's turning around and sitting down in these collaborative worlds now in hyperscalers, data centers, all this stuff and saying, hey, here's the problems we've seen. We hear this over and over. It's not a little bit business anymore in the trade world when it comes to hyperscalers and data centers.

16:27Yael Hanan: It's about partnerships and being picked for your expertise, but also your transparency around we got to get this stuff done. Here's where it goes wrong. And how do we incorporate that earlier into the process to make sure nobody's scrambling later? Well, that's an electrical I want to work with. That's a mechanical I want to work with. Heck, that could be a, you know, a finishing carpenter that I, you know, want to work with in the end. These are important pieces. and they differ depending on what type of job you're doing.

16:59The ConTechCrew: For sure. And I think it's funny. We're talking about this is a trade I want to work with. But for example, if you look again, we go back to bidding phase. A lot of the problems are there, obviously, but not only. They have a pre-bid RFI time window, right, to submit the RFIs that they can do. Most trade contractors don't even open the bid package before RFIs are due. Now with Pellis, we get the documentation when they get it. And we basically automatically suggest, hey, here are the top 10 RFIs you should submit. And we see it from trade contractors. They're like GCs, come back to them and say, those RFIs are really good.

17:37The ConTechCrew: They got us thinking about a lot of stuff that went unnoticed. And suddenly that gets them points in the relationship, which is actually eventually what's the project, right? So it's always about identifying that trade contractor's bottlenecks and then helping them do their job better and freeing up their time, right? The human becomes, instead of doing the actual manual work, to supervise the work and making the decisions you need a human to make.

18:02Yael Hanan: Oh, that came right out of the MEP innovation report we did with Nikas Macnen MCAA, is that's exactly the problem. Too many of our skilled folks are in the work, not in the decisions. And we need them out of the work and in the decision making and at that table focused to have that conversation. because any decision made upstream, we know it lands on the trades and the trades are the people who put in work. And with all the integrations and all the things, it makes a lot of sense that you guys would be in Trimble 0 to 60. So explain a little bit about Trimble 0 to 60 and your integration path and why you're stepping into that world right now and what it's like for a startup.

18:45The ConTechCrew: Sure. So the 0 to 60 is a challenge by Trimble for a startup, basically to build integration into any type of Trimble product suite, whatever. For us specifically, again, we serve the trades. Trimble products are big at trades. And we got customers coming to us and say, hey, can you please build an integration into AccuBit? Can you please build an integration into Project Site? And we just went down that path of exploring how we go about it. And during that, we discovered a program and it just, for us, it made a lot of sense.

19:16Yael Hanan: And so I guess going through, is it the first accelerator in the industry that you've been in or have you been in others? I guess, yeah, what have you learned from going through this one?

19:24The ConTechCrew: So I think tapping into the Trimble network and all of the things that they allow. Like we've used the program to integrate into ProjectSight, Acubid, and TrimConnect. And we're now going into ERPs, but that's a whole other story. I think that we've learned how to work with very large organizations like Trimble, how to leverage your ecosystem and the resources they have put to us, and how to build a really good, both use cases for mutual customers, but also like a better together story of us and there.

20:00Yael Hanan: I think that's critical, right? To the future of startups, right? There's a lot of big players in big portions. You know, I remember in the beginning a lot of we're going to disrupt, we're going to get rid of. But really, now the world's filling space. It's filling that white space. And it would make sense that you'd want to fill it there and other places. Right. How is that managing that? Because you're creating a category in and of itself for the industry, but you're not pushing others out of their categories.

20:29The ConTechCrew: So a couple of things. I think that first of all, again, if you're looking at it from the trades perspective, and we talked about how many different types of roles or hats they're wearing, I don't think it's realistic to think that one software can come in and be the one that rules it all. It would be both a really good purchasing software and an estimating tool and a takeoff tool, a fabrication. It's just not realistic. That's one thing. The other thing is that those trades have spent years building their tech stack. There is a reason why they are choosing to work with Project Site or AccuBid and why they're using Stratus for their fabrication.

21:03The ConTechCrew: Like there is a reason for all of that. We are here to be the connection that brings everything into one place, then builds the action automated layer on top of it. So it's more of a complementary kind of thing, in my opinion, which for trades is crucial because, again, the number of systems they work in. But I don't see us replacing any of those layers, honestly.

21:25Yael Hanan: I like how you said that. I mean, I've certainly talked a ton about tech stacks, but like thinking of a tech stack for a trade contractor being your tools, your systems, and your workflows, right? That there's three different components, right? Like data can be stored somewhere. And like Bluebeam is a great example of that, right? It's a fantastic tool that is so utilitarian, has all these different use cases, and everybody always wants to grab the data from there and go put it in all these different systems. but that's based on the workflow that they're doing. Yeah, everything that you're focused on is like, what is that kind of frictionless workflow where we can just start to grab and report data back in a way that we can learn from it without getting in the way, which is that silver lining.

22:08Yael Hanan: That's awesome.

22:09The ConTechCrew: That's exactly the idea. And by the way, we are integrated into Bluebeam and we're integrated to any place where trade contractors are doing their work. Trades, they love to do markups and annotations on Bluebeam. Those markups and annotations, they're not just lines on a drawing. They're decisions somebody made about something. Using them, integrating into Bluebeam and using them as data points as part of the whole thing, like the Palace data store, it just makes sense because it creates a wholesome picture for the user of their project.

22:40Yael Hanan: I wasn't setting it up for that, but I love it because again, that's ear to ear over here. Do tell.

22:46The ConTechCrew: Nobody told us to do it. It's just Nathan and I who we broke.

22:50Yael Hanan: I've been a Bluebeam fanboy since long before Jeff was there. I go back to like 2011. I was too, and then was not there until recently. And I'll tell you though, it's funny, you use a word called markups, et cetera. And I hear that over here on the team side, and I hear us repeating it. And I'm like, but a markup isn't a markup isn't a markup. It's not the same thing to individuals. They are so customizable and so done that if you look at them correctly, they're part of a workflow, right? And this might be... And so when we... it's funny, we talk generically because it can be used in so many places, but to a trade contractor, what that means and what that can inform, right?

23:26Yael Hanan: It could be a piece off the drawing that goes back to that RFI. It could be a piece off the drawing at the field level and the installation time. And that could be going to a completely separate place. And then look, we don't do this. We don't record your markup history for your whole life. You do.

23:42The ConTechCrew: And you don't connect that market into the specification or the contract or the submittal or the change order and close it the loop to create a true picture of what's going on.

23:54Yael Hanan: Yeah, data ownership, right? I mean, there's so much education for trades around data ownership. And just because you're using some app that the GC gave you that's really slick and easy, it's like, well, but you don't own any of that data. Like if push comes to shove, it's a huge risk, right? Yeah.

24:09The ConTechCrew: But it's never slick and easy, by the way.

24:10Yael Hanan: A couple of people may think it is because they haven't tried anything else. Yeah, Excel is their only other option, but I digress.

24:16The ConTechCrew: But you know, Jeff, what you said about the annotations and not being the same or the markups, I think it's the same thing with like, it's almost similar to querying documents, right? People sometimes would say, hey, what's the difference? When you ask a question, when you want to query a document, you don't just ask it for the sake of, hey, I want to ask what material can I use, right? if it's the base of a decision you're going to make or a workflow you're going to start or a task you need to complete. So ending your solution with we're querying drawings or we're querying documents doesn't get the trade contractor anywhere, honestly.

24:52The ConTechCrew: So when you're doing a spec review run, even if you do it on ChatGPT, you end up with a bunch of answers, but that's when it ends. How do you use that to take the next action and complete what you actually want to do?

25:03Yael Hanan: That's a wonderful component to it, especially because everything does lead to an action and you have to then try to make that action happen. And I would imagine then trace that action, audit that action, keep a data. I don't want to call it a dashboard because that's everybody thinks of like just this little thing, but a centralized location to understand that and then learn and grow off of it, which again, makes sense to why you would go and want to, if you think about all the data and all the things going on at, in the Trimble world, there's a lot of the decisions. And it's funny, we're going to preview this because we get to do this at Trimble Dimensions.

25:40Yael Hanan: I'm going to be live on stage with Josh Levy from Document Crunch and Mark Schwartz from, well, I guess acquired by Trimble. So he's now with Trimble and Mark Schwartz from Trimble as well to really talk about how they see these connected systems, but also really focus on the connected workflows. And people forget just how much data is created by, Nathan, what you called the physical hardware. Like, I can't imagine how much is locked up in there in a way to inform other things. Like, it's not locked in there, but it's just not connected to everything else we do. Either locked in hardware or blocked by contract, right?

26:24Yael Hanan: It's one or the other. It can be. We're going to go live and talk about it on stage at a live podcast. And I think that's going to be a really fun opportunity for us because this is the dichotomy, right? I met and had Josh on this show when they were, I think, smaller than you are right now. And then I got to have him. How long ago was this? Well, I had it when he was right after he had four employees. It has been a very long journey. I don't even think he had left his firm yet full time. He had just left. Just left. Yeah. I remember that. He had just taken the leap out to be a full-time startup entrepreneur.

27:02Yael Hanan: Funny, too, that you two have the connection of being lawyers. So there's more connections there than I thought before we started recording. And now they've walked that whole journey, and they're stepping into the next journey. So I'm interested in how you look at that path and look at where you guys are going and think about the next steps for you guys.

27:19The ConTechCrew: That's interesting. I think that's, at least for us, what's interesting in the document contract acquisition is the why. Josh set up his company with a mission of, first of all, contract management and all that, but going into risk management. And Trimble's acquisition, I think, shows us that they took their intelligence to apply it across a way larger ecosystem of products, right? It just shows us and kind of validate our theory that you can use AI as the intelligence layer across multiple ecosystem products. And that our theory of what is the role of AI in construction moving forward is just the right way to go about it.

28:02The ConTechCrew: And I think that that acquisition, by the way, opened up a whole new world of opportunities for tech startups. And first of all, something to look up to, not necessarily as the acquisition itself, but as the opportunities. But also it opens up a gap of places to fill. Now the dock in Cratchit's Tremble. That's great.

28:20Yael Hanan: Yeah, it is. And it's a huge opportunity. People, I'm excited to see where they go with it. And we'll have lots of talks on the stage about it. But everybody looks at these things sometimes as, you know, is it a big money play? Is it a big exit play? I remember talking to Josh about making these decisions. And this was about an exponential play together. That's where we've been saying this on the show for years. It's like there are very few companies actually IPO. We have to be honest about that. Very few IPO. Even more just fail. So the acquisition and the bigger, stronger together, we've had some stumbles along the way.

28:56Yael Hanan: But I think we're starting to see in the future here from groups like, I can say here, Bluebeam, Trimble, others, that we can understand how to play well together and expand our capabilities through that type of acquisition and partnership. I couldn't agree more. My two cents on that contracts are everything and contracts impact so many of the workflows. I feel like, again, like the more we can leverage the ability to get upstream and to identify where parts of contracts are actually implementing or impacting downstream workflows and then give them data from your platform to now inform, you know, changes to contracts earlier on.

29:33Yael Hanan: I think just, yeah, there are so many opportunities to leverage a document crunch to get upstream and make the life easier for the trade contractor by just giving them all the evidence and all the data to make better arguments and change the contracts up front. I love all this document crunch stuff. I'm a big contracts guy because I'm all about how contracts impact workflows. And so I guess I'm curious, yeah, like what opportunities you see or if there's anything going on with the work you're doing in how downstream workflows are impacted by those upstream contracts.

30:00The ConTechCrew: Sure. I think that, again, for looking from the trade contractor's perspective, right, the contractor is the king of the project. It sets the ground for the entire relationship between the trade and the GC. It sets out, when can we submit change orders? How are we going to be compensated for them? What's the timeline for, do we have pay if paid clause, right? Do we stick to the end? We have a certain scope, we're done. Why should we stick until the end and wait for being paid? So all of those small things in the contract affects decisions trade would take in the field and how they do their work.

30:34The ConTechCrew: So again, if we're talking about connections, understanding it, connecting it, pushing it into all of their other workflows, not just to be aware, hey, it says the contract and what it says. But for example, if there's a timeline for change orders, make sure that we capture those on time, document them, go back into purchasing and to submitting everything. make sure that you actually can invoice it and get your money out of it eventually.

30:57Yael Hanan: Yeah. So it's a good distinction because, right, you've got Document Crunch doing what it does and expanding into where it expands. But then you're actually taking that and connecting it to the places where the things are getting done at the trade contractor. Maybe you're pulling back on fabrication. Maybe you're speeding up on material acquisition. There's things that it's going to impact and they're not handling that part because, again, they don't know which systems you're connected to and how you interact with them and how you make those decisions, right? You also have a whole other basis going on of multiple jobs you're running, et cetera.

31:29Yael Hanan: So how do you sequence those in? And is there a way to move this job and that job? And that's all maybe happening over in Stratus. But I need to know that. So I have to push that. I love the focus on decision-making. And given that, we're going to try something new here with you on a rapid fire question asking. And I have to start with this. What's the most overhyped thing in construction AI right now? Takeoffs. Takeoffs. Ooh. Okay. All right. And I like the short and sweet answer. Good job following the rules here.

32:03The ConTechCrew: You said FireRapid, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No notes. What's the most underhyped? I think the amount of work, effort, and knowledge that goes into making really useful AI. both from startup perspective, but also from the trade contractor's perspective.

32:21Yael Hanan: What's one construction workflow that desperately needs automation?

32:26The ConTechCrew: How you capture the change order, how you document it, and how you close the loop, both for the purchasing and the invoicing of it.

32:34Yael Hanan: Well, this could be interesting. I don't know how you're going to answer this one. Technology, what technology integration do you want to see next?

32:40The ConTechCrew: I can tell you what we're pursuing next after we've pursued the first layer of integration. Our next layer of integration are all the ERPs.

32:47Yael Hanan: I think I would drop the ERP everywhere, yeah. What do you want people at Dimensions walking around to ask you when they see you?

32:54The ConTechCrew: Easy. How can I start using Pellis today?

32:57Yael Hanan: I think first we have to say, if you're a trade contractor, then ask that question. Yeah, right. You can ask it if you're not a trade contractor. Even if you're a GC, yeah. But you know. Owners, everybody.

33:08The ConTechCrew: I still want people to ask that.

33:09Yael Hanan: Pellis in three years, what has it become?

33:12The ConTechCrew: The AMI infrastructure for trade contractors, when you think about software for trades, you think palace.

33:18Yael Hanan: That was the rapid fire. She made it through. That was impressive. Yeah. Especially for our first one. So I want to switch and give people some, where are they going to find you? So you're going to be at the show, right?

33:30The ConTechCrew: Yeah. So we're going to be at Dimensions. We are finalists at the 0 to 60 challenge. So I'm going to be pitching on the large stage. We're going to have a booth at the startup alley. And also I'm lucky enough to join a couple of roundtable discussions with Brooks Twork from the Construction Solution Group.

33:46Yael Hanan: I think that's what's going to be interesting about the event is, Nathan, we're going to see a lot of these new startups, the established ERPs, the established tools and systems at Trimble all coming together to have roundtable discussions, to have sessions. There's also deep training. So, I mean, I'm really excited to see all of this come together. What are you excited about? That's what's tough, right? Is you've got all the excitement and all the kind of flash of the expo hall and all the tech and all the hardware that's out there. If you ask me, the value's in those 700 sessions. And if you've ever been in the sands and all the escalators up and down, it's amazing how many sessions you can fit in those three days.

34:26Yael Hanan: Go through those sessions, find the ones that are relative to your industry, to your topics that are interesting to you. I think especially the panel discussions where you get to hear from multiple perspectives on some of these topics, because it's all about the nuance of trying to understand, okay, how do I need to think about all of this AI stuff and where it fits for me? And there isn't one right answer for everyone. It's, you know, everyone's kind of on their journey. And the more we hear other people's stories, the more we can continue on ours. You're focused on that learning. And, you know, I'm excited about the learning as well, but Trimble also knows how to throw a good time from what I hear, right?

34:59Yael Hanan: I haven't been there yet. That goes without saying.

35:02The ConTechCrew: I'm trying not to

35:03Yael Hanan: rub that in for those that can't go, although they should be going. You should be going.

35:07The ConTechCrew: They can still go. There's still time. But I think there's a whole competition going on in between vendors in the Trimble marketplace on who's going to get to host like the suite and the party. There is a bunch of things that I'm excited for.

35:19Yael Hanan: Yeah, there is a competition going on between the different vendors that are who's going to host the suite and have the special party. You can learn more about it. Don't worry, we're going to drop it all in the show notes, but you can check it out. We'll have some special links to for listeners. It's not sold out. It's you can still go. We do want to see you there. In fact, that's why we're doing this is to encourage people to show up because again, that's the key to this. If Pellis is doing this, Trimble is doing this. Yeah, we've got hardware, we've got software, we've got all of that. It's useless without the connecting of people, right?

35:51Yael Hanan: We talk about this over and over, but it's the relationships that happen in this industry that really drive it forward, right? We want them to be informed by the data that we have. We want them to be connected and easier to use, but we're not getting rid of the relationships. And in fact, we want to use it to strengthen them, right? If I'm using Pellis correctly or using Trimble Connect correctly or I'm using Document Crunch correctly, I'm connecting with my customers or those that I am their customer and we're building better relationships. We're executing better. In the end, we can execute projects better this way if we're all connected and then we've built those relationships of trust.

36:33Yael Hanan: Dare we say that construction is a relationship business, but honestly, it's a trust business. And it's more and more now building a trust layer that we can lean into while we do really crazy work going ahead. Because, I mean, you're sitting there watching it. The work the construction industry is building right now is insane. And it's insane because, yeah, it's industry to tech, but also tech to tech. I think even this year is the first Trimble Developer Summit in conjunction with Trimble Dimensions. So, I mean, again, just one more example of, you know, how continuing to build trust, these relationships is how we're going to move forward.

37:09Yael Hanan: Yeah. And I mean, if you really dig into it, too, right, Nathan, this connects all the way back. We're going to connect all of our things together because it connects back to the Construction Progress Coalition. Right. We Trimble is a huge sponsor of what we do at the Construction Progress Coalition. So is Bluebeam a huge sponsor of what we do. These teams are investing money in groups that can really bring people together to then solve real world problems. right? That's what we do there at the Construction Progress Coalition at the AEC Integration Summit. We're bringing some of that with us. New logo, by the way, if you guys haven't seen it, we're showing off a new logo.

37:43Yael Hanan: So you have to go to Trimble's site and check out the media sponsors to see it and see if you can tell us what we've changed on that one. If you see me at the show and you know what we've changed, come and talk to me about it. There might be some swag in it for you. And go check out Yael and the team and talk to them while you're there. And everybody else that's there again do a little bit of learning a little bit of shopping and uh let's have a little bit of fun while we're there right rock on yeah y 'all before we let everybody go let everybody know where they can go find out more about you if they're not going to be at tremble dimensions where can they find out more about you and the team and what you guys are doing palace.ai and

38:19The ConTechCrew: i'm sure you're going to put the link and uh episodes comments nathan what are you i'm going

38:25Yael Hanan: to end it this way. What are you excited about? What's your number one thing you're excited about for Dimensions? Just the relationships. You know, I think it's a newer group there where it's a lot more new faces. So I'm always excited to meet new folks and talk about interoperability and connecting data to change the world. So I'm jazzed already. I wanted to be here now. I'm excited. I'm getting really hyped up for it too. And I'm going to drop that mine is I'm really excited to have Josh Levy and Mark Schwartz on the stage and really help articulate what I've seen from this side. And I think, you know, really get the industry to understand where they're building and why they're building it and why it's important now.

39:03Yael Hanan: Of course, I also want to check off that another continent in the trade world, in the industry event world. I want to check that one off, but I'm also really excited about part of it and hopefully bring some clarity to the folks listen to the show on where these things are headed and why they're important to pay attention to. So thank you so much. And again, it's been too long. This won't be the only one. We'll bring you back on. Yael, thank you for being here today. Thank you, Nathan. Thank you, Jack. Nathan Wood, always great to have you, my man. We need you more of these. Let's keep going. These give me energy.

39:37Yael Hanan: So yeah, excited to see more of this and see everyone in Vegas. And thank you for tuning in today to geek out for our interview with Yael Hanan. To read all our new stories, learn more about our guests and listen to the show, visit thecontectcrew.com. This is the content crew signing out until next time. Enjoy the ride and geek out.