From Flintstones to Jetsons: Turning Construction Risk Data into Action

Welcome to our webinar on From Flintstones to Turning Construction Risk Data into Action. My name is Aubrey Eyer, and I’m thrilled to be your host today. Today’s program is a conversation between origami risk experts, Trish Kelley and Kevin Welde, moderated by Mindi Zissman. We’ll have a live Q and A at the end. And if you’d like to ask our speakers anything, please submit those questions through the Q and A section on the Zoom toolbar, and we will address those after the presentation. So we’ll start that conversation now. Welcome to the Origami Risk webinar. I’m Mindi Zissman, and I’m excited to be here moderating today’s session on RMIS Systems for construction. Our title today is super fun. Why do we work like the Flintstones but live like the Jetsons? How to manage construction risk for twenty twenty six. Based on our headline, we’re excited to talk about the delta between the gaps and opportunities for risk reduction in construction companies. Before we dive in, I’d love to introduce our panelists, Trish Kelley and Kevin Welde. Trish, go ahead and introduce yourself and then Kevin, and then we’ll get started. Yeah. Thanks, Mindi. Excited to be here. My name is Trish Kelley. I am part of the marketing team here at Origami Risk. Specifically, I’m the product marketing manager for our RMIS suite. I have been in the risk management SaaS business for close to five years. Formerly, my experience is in the cybersecurity space. But, yeah, again, excited to be here. Kevin, I’ll pass it to you. Thanks so much, Trish. Yeah. Kevin Welde. I am the construction practice lead here at Origami Risk and spent fifteen years actually in the field. I took a little bit more of an untraditional route. Went to trade school out of high school, worked in the field for fifteen years in various roles from project management, estimating, sales, and that safety and and risk was was part of my, purview as well. So looking forward to helping organizations like my fellow colleagues in in construction, you know, transform how they they go to market and how they work. So thanks so much. Okay. Awesome. Well, let’s dive right into our topic du jour today. How do we actually close the gap on construction risk and bring that Flintstone level practices up to the Jetsons level? Kevin, do you wanna wanna take a stab since you’ve got that construction expertise? Yeah. Sure thing. Actually, it’s so timely. I was on a call today with a gentleman, and he was talking about, hey. He came from an organization that actually had origami, and he said that short of getting tablets and etching things into in into the, you know, the tablet as to what their processes were, It’s so manual. It it was it’s painful. So he was used to having, I say, a solution to to, I say, streamline all of his processes. He wants to bring his his colleagues up to, you know, what it feels like to have a unified system. So I I always say that we work with probably about fourteen different point solutions in our in our careers. And if you can streamline, I’d say a couple of them just to make your life a little bit easier, you’re gonna be much more productive. You’re gonna be happier at where you work at as well, and you’re gonna be able to focus on what you’re hired to do. And that’s build, you know, great buildings for for our colleagues in the construction industry. So, yeah, I I think it’s I I empathize with them because I’ve had to man use a lot of manual processes. I filled out, you know, JSAs in the field, with paper, and then you’re going through things and, as they call it, like, pencil whipping. You know, I I certainly understand, you know, the importance of getting really good data from the field and allowing your executives in, you know, in the offices to to make, say, strategic decisions about your business. But also training and, I mean, the whole it really has, I say, a cascading effect, and be much more, I’d say, proactive versus reactive. I mean, when we’re out in the field, things happen that we’re we’re not aware of that are, you know, unforeseen conditions, things of that nature. I think if you have a tool that’s gonna allow you to collaborate with your colleagues who are very smart and and well versed, might have seen some situations like that in in their careers, it’s gonna help you be much more productive and also just get better outcomes as a as a whole. So Yeah. And and on that note, can you talk about safety also? It’s, talking about outcomes. Like, how does it help digitize safety? Absolutely. I think digitizing safety is gonna give you a quick win. It all comes down to, I’d say, enabling your teams in the field. If you don’t get good data from them in the field every day and something that’s easy to use with a mobile device, whether that be, like, an iPhone or or an Android or a tablet, whatever it is, that’s the power of of getting, I’d say, good data and also making decisions about your business. And, also, you can do it like I said, things are gonna happen in the field. And if you can grab that data and you can train for future, I’d say, instances, you’re gonna reduce your claims. You’re gonna keep people safer. They’re gonna be happier. And if it’s something that’s easy to use, it’s it’s gonna be a solution that’s very powerful at your organization. So I think, you know, mobilizing your teams in safety, with a quick win with a mobile device that’s gonna allow you to fill out audits, inspections, get corrective actions. It’s gonna be, I’d say, a great experience for everybody, involved. Awesome. Trish, any examples kind of from the Origami Remus collection? Any you know, how are how are our clients at Origami doing this? Yeah. So I do have a good a good quick example. Mccarthy, is one of our longer term clients. We actually have a case study out there, if you guys wanna check that out on our website. But before Origami, they had, certainly foundational processes in place, but no real, like, automation or any kind of unified technology systems in place. So they had their data was scattered. Their workflows were, you know, manual and scattered as well. So they put together a mitigation action planning or map program, if you will, that really connects their risk and safety and compliance data across all of their projects, which I think at the time was, like, two hundred plus at any given time. So a lot of things going on. And this really gives, like, their leadership team and also their auditors sort of that single source of truth that their enterprise that they can sort of view over their enterprise risk profile. That visibility has really kind of changed the way that they operate since they’ve started using Origami. So their project managers can go in and score risk at the project level. Their compliance teams can come in and sort of intervene in real time. And then leadership. So at the leadership level, they can sort of measure the effectiveness of sort of what they’re doing mitigation wise over time and look at, you know, comparing, benchmarking what they did, what they were doing five years ago to, you know, current time. And that’s kind of becoming sort of the modern standard, if you will. So having that connected sort of living system of risk intelligence that really enables organizations to make decisions with, you know, timely data and then being able to make those decisions quickly. So, you know, in a matter of days versus a matter of months where you’re having to dig through, you know, different spreadsheets and looking for the right data points to actually make those data driven decisions. Excellent. I know something Kevin mentioned earlier. And just like every other industry, construction is facing challenges in attracting and retaining talent. Right? And a lot of that depends on the technology framework that you have at as as a base. So how does a strong digital infrastructure shape the competitiveness of the workforce today, and what is at risk for construction companies that fall behind? Kevin, do you wanna to take a stab at this? I know you mentioned it already kind of in your in your first question. Yeah. Absolutely. No. It’s a it’s a good point because I think when you’re trying to attract new talent and and and it’s gonna be younger talent, we have multiple generations in our in our industry today. I’d say I think it’s it’s four different industries. You got the boomers, Gen z, Gen x. Yeah. I mean, you know, whatever, alphabet number whatever you wanna call it. But, I mean, they they they expect to use technology in their jobs. And if they don’t have access to that and be able to communicate with their teams and get good direction from their superiors, I would say, they’re gonna go to another organization that that might make it easier for them to work, whether whether that be putting in your time card, seeing your pay stub, you know, filling out an audit or inspection report, with a mobile device. I mean, I think these are becoming table stakes. Having solutions that are gonna allow you to work like you live, I think they’re they’re gonna translate. And I think, you know, if you don’t have, I say, solutions to remove some of that friction at your organization, you’re gonna see people leaving. And and I’d say worse going to your competitors or leaving the industry itself. We have definitely not enough people that are in the trades and working on these jobs. And to attract young women and men, you need to be able to offer, I’d say, some solutions in place to to give them, you know, I’d say, a career path, but also just reduce that that everyday mundane tasks that you’re doing maybe on paper that are gonna get lost in the shuffle ultimately. I think a lot of times Like spreadsheets. Like spreadsheets. Right? A lot of times they just figure, what am I even filling this out for? Is anyone even gonna see this, or is this going Right. To date myself, like, a three ring binder or something like that. So Totally. Totally. We hope it’s accurate too. Right? Accuracy as well. Yeah. Trish, would love to hear from you. Like, what are you seeing kind of as the c suites are coming to Origami or any of those actually that are specifying, you know, a SaaS platform at a construction company? Yeah. I mean, I feel like c suites executives are looking at, like, the challenge of opportunity cost. So the longer you wait to start, you know, jumping on the modern technology train, the more ground you’re gonna lose with your competitors. Your competitors, you know, who are who are on that modern technology train or have that real time visibility, they have the foresight into understanding, like, what types of projects to invest in, where to not invest. So, you know, having that strong sort of digital foundation drives several different ways to differentiate yourself from the competition. So, like, Kevin was just talking about talent retention, having people that are, you know, that are in the field. Their jobs are easier because they can eat more easily, you know, report an incident or what have you. Your brand reputation, your operational efficiency, like, that’s certainly something that the c levels are looking at. So I think, you know, when your teams sort of see that their safety reports and their risk data are actionally driven, it builds trust and, you know, that’s a huge differentiator and sort of for that talent retention piece, keeping the skilled people, especially in an industry that’s facing, you know, just constant labor shortages. So Yeah. Piece of that. Yeah. And the reality is, and we say this in many different lines of business, but what got you here won’t get you there, and that also applies to contractors. Right? That you can start, you know, business and spreadsheets works, but at some point, it doesn’t. And, you know, the systems and processes that carry a contractor up to five hundred million in revenue aren’t gonna necessarily sustain them at a billion and, you know, get them there as well. So how does maintaining data discipline and safety standards, like getting the right data, clean data, using it the right way, being able to kind of be actionable with it, how does that become a differentiator, not just for compliance, but for growth and safety and all the other things that contractors really need to focus on? Kevin? Yeah. So I was yeah. Yeah. For sure. Absolutely. I’d say grow that growth, you know, with great power comes great responsibility. I think with growth comes, you know, more risk at your organization. So I think having air you know, all your data in one unified platform is gonna really serve you well. It’s gonna minimize your exposures. You’re gonna, you know, be able to look around corners. As I mentioned before, you know, we had a we had a contractor who was wearing a couple different hats. He was hired as an estimator, then he was also then brought on as the safety manager. Before he knew it, he grew that out outgrew that title, and then he was, managing risk. And I think having everything in one unified solution is gonna allow you to collaborate with your colleagues and smart folks because that’s if you’re doing everything, I’d say, in a silo or in a vacuum, you’re gonna, one, feel very alone. And, two, you’re not gonna maybe make the best decisions because you might not know what you don’t know. But if you have a a platform that’s gonna allow to share data with your team and your colleagues easily, you’re gonna get, I’d say, a lot more benefit out of out of your your business programs by by leveraging technology. I think bringing that connection between safety, performance, and your total cost of risk is is gonna allow you to, you know, I’d say, just have everything in one single dashboard where you can make better decisions about the business, and it’s gonna allow your teams to, you know, get better outcomes, especially in construction. I think we we work at so many different various sites and work with so many subcontractors. There’s so much data that comes together, it’s like a deluge of information. It’s hard to make decisions about the business if you don’t have if you have them in emails, threads, and, you know, spreadsheets and things of that nature. Not not having that data, I’d say, gathered in into one unified solution is is, is doing yourself a disservice. And that’s how organizations I think that’s what I see the biggest issue is when they’re coming from, like, three million to five million to fifty million to and then they’re trying to get to become a billion dollar contractor. They’re still operating and, like, this got us to five hundred million, but they’re still operating with that small business mindset. And I think they need to think bigger. And when they start to outgrow some of the systems that they have, pulling it together in an integrated risk management perspective is always gonna give you, you know, better outcomes and allow you to scale the business. So that’s what we find. A lot of organizations are growing through acquisition or they’re taking on more work, doing more work. When you pull all those stakeholders together, I’d say having having multiple people, you know, collaborating is what gives you better outcomes. Yeah. And, Trish, how do you do that? Right? How do they actually kind of bite the bullet and make that a reality? Yeah. So, I mean, making it a reality, it’s certainly not something where you have to boil the ocean. We love the saying, and I know most people are familiar with this, of the crawl, walk, run method. So that really should be the right mindset for for most organizations. So you don’t have to modernize everything overnight. A good technology system is really built to scale with you as you grow. So, you know, if you’ve got future plans for for growing quite a bit, you know, you you can find a system that that will grow with you. I think, really, the important thing is having that discipline around your data, having that foundational, you know, consistency with your data can become sort of a strategic lever. So, you know, when you’re talking with your insurers at renewal time, you can show them consistent sort of high quality safety and claims data, and you can use that to negotiate better premiums and improve your cash flow and sort you know, really strengthen your position in the market. And then, you know, from the compliance standpoint, it’s really, you know, not just checking the box, but using that more as a as a profit lever. So, yeah, again, I think the the important point there, though, is that that you don’t have to boil the ocean. You don’t have to go this is not like an overnight thing. It’s something that you can really phase into and sort of attack the low hanging fruit. So Yeah. So construction companies are really known for their, like, grit and ability to get things done, but really scaling well and safely and and doing it Yeah. Securely, you know, from a business perspective and or, obviously, from a front lines perspective requires that back end to be as robust as what you’re doing on the job site. So, like, one of the things you were talking about before is we bring these, you know, iPads onto the job site, and we’ve got, you know, we’ve got Tufin. We’re doing all these other things kind of in the front lines. But, like, how do you make sure and get that kind of back back end up, as as well and as safe and as robust as you do with that front end? And, this is our last question. So your parting words. Yeah. For sure. So, I mean, I I think a lot of times people, like, they can suffer in silence. And, I think wearing multiple hats is the norm, and sometimes we’re, like, proud of, like, how hard we work. And we come out every day, and we try to figure out everything, and it’s gotta be all done by ourselves. And I think, you know, raising your hand for help is a sign of strength. And I think when you can come together with your your counterparts and and say, hey. We need a better way to figure this out to make better decisions about the business. It’s gonna try to, I’d say, solve the complex. And I think every job is even on a construction site, every every every project that you deliver is a series of small projects. So if you can start to tackle, hey. I wanna tackle EHS right now, then I don’t wanna work on our audits and inspection forms, and I wanna start to work on our corrective actions so we’re we’re safer, our pretask activities. That allows you to get a quick win, and that allows your teams to digest it. And I say very, you know, easy easy to chew small bites, if you will. That’s gonna allow your team to then start to scale, you know, that complexity, and you’re gonna roll it out to risk management, start to have to pull everything into one platform for your claims, and then also integrating with your TPAs. I think if you look at everything at one time to see the whole end of the project, projects are built in stages, and so are implementations. I think if you can just start to realize that this is just like a a construction project where you need to start, you need to plan, you need to then execute, and then you need to then deliver for your client and then turn it over to them. And I think that’s the best way for you to to manage things. And you don’t have to be you don’t have to figure it all out in in one meeting. You don’t have to figure it all out in the first, like, say, three months of your project. But if you can have that strategic focus, it’s gonna allow you to be much more strategic at your organization. You’re gonna get better outcomes versus, I’d say, the reactive of as we as we talked about before, the tactical firefighting when you’re just managing Yeah. Tasks and you’re you’re trying to you feel like you just can’t see the the end in sight. I think if you simplify everything and break it down into small projects, it becomes much more, I say, digestible as Trish talked about with the crawl, walk, one, run. I think that’s something that’s gonna allow your teams to, you know, start a project, get great outcomes, and then deliver and then grow into the solution. It doesn’t have to be like, I’d say, think we talked about like, we do a lot work with homebuilders, and they say, hey. I wanna build my forever home. I think you gotta find the plot of land, and then you gotta start to build it as as you can as your budget might allow or as your timeline or whatever resources you have at your disposal. So I think that’s something that I I see a lot of organizations. They get a little they stumble upon that. And I think if they can just start to, one, ask for help, two, start to engage organizations like Oregon Risk to to help get a plan in place and then build, and get success off of those building blocks. So, Trish, what are your thoughts? Trish? Yeah. I so I was gonna add. So we love a good saying around here, and we can’t take credit for this one, but you can’t manage what you can’t measure. So, you know, when your data lives in spreadsheets and emails and, you know, different disparate systems, you’re basically, you know, flying blind. So having that accurate centralized reporting really gives you the visibility into, you know, which subcontractors or which projects or which regions. This is something we talked about earlier, but sort of where to invest and which ones are sort of truly driving the greater risk and what can you do to mitigate in certain areas, based on that data. You know, doing more with less is certainly something that everybody strives for, and that requires having clear and accurate data, and sort of the unified system, the dashboards and reporting that Kevin was just talking about lets you sort of see where to focus for the biggest impact, whether that’s, like, reducing claims frequency or tightening on subcontractor compliance, you know, identifying which safety programs actually are moving the needle. And it also gives you foresight, like I was mentioning earlier, into sort of what types of projects that or locations that you wanna invest in, you know, going forward. So Awesome. Yeah. It’s, you know, really about, like, empowering through simplicity and, again, not boiling the ocean. So they don’t you know, modern systems, modern technology does not have to be super complicated. The right platform can give, you know, small teams confidence and control without having to need a ton of, like, IT oversight or relying on data analysts to, you know, pull out the insights to make decisions. And, you know, from our standpoint, we feel like the the companies that have partnered with us that invest in this sort of visibility are the ones that can scale safely, Mindy, as you mentioned earlier. Right. You know, they’re not just managing compliance, but they’re they’re managing their growth and how to do that safely. So Right. It’s really about freeing us up and enabling everyone to think and act strategically rather than, you know, having their head in spreadsheets. Thank you everybody for joining the Origami Remis team today. Your homework is to go home and choose one initiative from this conversation that we talked about a bunch to actually implement and reach out to us and, you know, commit some of those things to action. Thank you so much, Kevin and Trish, for being with us today, and we look forward to seeing everybody in our inbox. Thank you so much. Thank you. Okay. Well, thank you all. That was a great conversation. We’re gonna open up the program for q and a now, and you can type those questions into the q and a section at the bottom of the Zoom toolbar. So we’ll give everyone a second to type those in, but let’s start with our first question now. So, Trish and Kevin, we’re a small contractor, and we don’t have a big safety or risk team, just a couple of people who wear multiple hats. Where is the best place to start if we wanna modernize without overwhelming the team? Sure thing. I can take that, Aubrey. Thank you. I’d say start with where you get the biggest lift for the least of effort. I’d say if you wanna just start to manage your audits, inspections, good catch, near miss, reporting, that’ll give you a quick win, allow you to get some visibility into the field, and allow you to then also work on corrective actions and things like that. So I think digitizing is the first step, getting away from some of those manual processes, spreadsheets, manual paper processes. You’ll be able to then, you know, get some, good visibility. The field will start to adopt it. You’ll get quick wins, and that’ll be a a great way for you to start out on that journey. Trish, what are your thoughts? Yeah. I mean, I I think exactly what you just said and what we were sort of talking about at the end of the discussion there. You don’t have to overhaul everything at once. So that crawl, walk, run that we talked about, you can start small, figure out ways where you can kind of prove the value and sort of expand as you have, you know, more need and more bandwidth. Once you it’s, again, going back to the the data story. So once you have all of your data that’s, you know, living in one place, you’ll naturally start asking, you know, smarter different questions like like what we’ve talked about with, you know, which projects or which subs are driving more risk, and that’s, you know, really where the real transformation starts. Okay. Thanks. Our next question is, a lot of our data is still trapped in different systems, HR, insurance, safety. How do you recommend connecting those dots so we actually get the single source of truth you described? Yeah. I can jump on that, Aubrey. Yeah. I mean, this is a really common challenge that we see in the market. A lot of organizations are growing. Some are growing by acquisition. They’re growing fast and end up with a lot of siloed systems by accident. So when you’re choosing a partner, I would say make sure you have a solution that can be integrated well with other solutions in your technology stack. We love to partner with organizations, and we know that we’re gonna be, I’d say, like, a hub where we can connect with all of your mission critical solutions you have in the field. That’ll allow you to reconcile better and allow you to grow, but also not disturb, you know, how you operate on a day to day basis, which is most important. Trish, what what are your thoughts? Yeah. I mean, I think just that it doesn’t need to be complicated, setting up integrations and pulling in data from different systems. So if you have a good hub so, like, with Origami, you can feed data in automatically. So you can pull in data from your incidents that are happening in the field, claims from your adjuster. You can plug in exposure data from your HR system. So once you have all of that really centralized, you can get that consistent, you know, real time insight, again, into, like, where and and what’s driving risk across the board. Okay. Thanks. We have another question. For companies that are already stretched thin, how do you make the case internally for investing in technology, especially when leadership only sees safety as a cost center? I could jump, in there and answer that, Aubrey. So, yeah, I I’ve been in that spot before, and I think you need to get buy in by showing how it’s tied to dollars. I think if you’re starting to leverage a technology, you get some quick wins, you get buy in from the field, you’ll ultimately get lower, I’d say, fewer claims, fewer incidents out in the field. Your EMR could improve as as a contractor, and that’ll allow you to get more work. So I think if you’re tying it to a bigger picture, not just, this is, you know, safety first type culture, which everyone has that that that, you know, moving into into the field. But I think tying it to dollars and a bigger picture versus just one point solution is really gonna help you get buy in from the c suite. Trish, what are your thoughts? Yeah. I I think that the c suite, like, what they respond to is is having visibility. So not, you know, random anecdotes. I think when you can pull up a dashboard that shows, you know, your incident trends, your lost time, all of your claim costs, everything, you know, in one view, it can become a powerful story. And I think that moves the conversation from we, you know, need to invest in this x y z software system to, okay, we’re doing something to protect our margins and and growing the business. So yeah. Okay. Well, looks like that was our last question. Trish, Kevin, is there anything else you’d like to say before I wrap us up? I just like to say, my contact information is is on this, slide here. Please feel free to reach out. Give me a call, whatever works best for you, and I’d love to be a resource to help you as you start this journey to automate some of your processes. Yeah. Thanks everybody for for joining. We appreciate you guys hopping on, and hope hopefully, this is helpful. And like Kevin said, our contact information is right there. So any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out. And, also, feel free to check out our website, origami risk dot com. Okay. Well, thank you everyone for joining us today. I wanna extend a special thank you to our speakers, Trish, Kevin, and Mindy. Thank you all again for your participation, and have a wonderful day.