The Huddle - Episode 129 - Blue Collar Cruise #6

It’s time to hop aboard for the 6th installment of Blue Collar Cruise! Join Paul, Daniel, and Jose as they navigate the latest news, trends, and innovations shaping the flooring and construction industries. From groundbreaking technologies to exciting industry updates, this episode is packed with valuable insights for blue-collar pros like you.

Hop aboard and stay informed about what’s shaping the industry—don’t miss this exciting journey!

The Huddle was created by Paul Stuart of Stuart & Associates and Go Carrera, alongside Jose and Daniel Gonzalez from Preferred Flooring. Aimed at helping you maintain forward progress in your flooring career, they cover topics from personal and business growth, to installation tips & tricks and everything in-between.

Want to be a guest on The Huddle? Email thehuddleforwardprogress@gmail.com today!

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https://www.preferredflooringmi.com
https://www.stuartandassociates.com

hey everybody welcome back to the Huddle where your weekly podcast to help you gain forward progress in your flooring

career to all you new viewers welcome to the team to those always with us thanks

for joining what's up fellas how you guys doing good how you doing

today doing pretty well doing pretty well everybody geared up for Christmas

no no no you got you got jobs going or

what yeah we do well I mean well we all any of those Christmas crunch

projects just one just one you know where they close everything down and you

have to get it done in this small window this one is actually a residential project so

oops you know what they they they went through some they were very they were indecisive

at first but I thought it'd be pretty cool to get everything done for them by Christmas as a as a gift since they kind

of inherited a home or took it over I should say and trying to help a little

help a family out good deal y all right well welcome everybody giv just a moment

here for some people to join this week is I Believe episode six of the blue

collar cruise I think I think this is our sixth one isn't it yep the blue

color Cru has on there so we just kind of have to I gotta roll with it

[Laughter] then whatever I say

goes that's uh from your from your

neighborhood uh podcast director in the background Miss Ashlin

yeah so the blue color crudes where uh for those you who don't know it's where we uh kind of scour the internet for

some relevant interesting topics to the construction industry sometimes it's

flooring sometimes just overall construction Trends data that kind of stuff sometimes it's fun sometimes it's

kind of serious so we want to you know uh find stuff that's interesting and we

just kind of wrap about it and give our comments we encourage you guys in the

audience to give your comments as well and this is the like I said number six

had good luck with these so far and I love doing them they're fun so we are going to um I'm just gonna start off by

saying that this episode is uh sponsored by floor cloud and so we'll be playing a

video from our sponsors here in a bit but just as a kind of a overview of our topics we got a You Know

It uh failures that pose major Financial risk to companies I have a very personal

story about this um so that that uh that should be fun AI

Rush is feeling Tech debt tsunami uh this is in regards to uh

people who are not staying up with technology you start to gain a thing as uh as a company called technical debt

meaning you're so far behind you spend a bunch of money uh to kind of catch up

and um uh you know do business the way that your com a lot of times it's it's

required by your your uh customers I I think of uh uh procore in that manner

and other technologies that come out and you just have to use them uh we got the science behind hard

hats how to protect your brain and then if we get to it a really interesting article on uh a 12-story

building in Finland that's built totally out of wood and uh so the question is

will future uh skyscrapers be made out of wood our first topic being uh one close

to my heart uh failures and major Financial Risk to companies uh from it

but there's also major failures and Financial Risk to us flooring contractors for you know

moisture uh problems on projects projects not being ready site conditions

and that's where our sponsor for today floor Cloud comes in and you know

provides a modern day this kind of plays right into the other stuff getting up

with technology it's a modern day way of transporting your project site

conditions right to your fingertips it'll help you to increase your efficiency and profitability when you

know what your jobs are doing without having to drive out to them all the time or send and mobilize Crews just to find

out the Project's not ready because they don't have Windows in or hbac on or your moisture readings are too high so let's

roll with a uh video now from floor

Cloud floor Cloud enables realtime monitoring of your job site conditions

via desktop or mobile device no more manual checking for temperature humidity

or even dupoint no need for base stations Wi-Fi or external power sources

simply scan the QR code on the front of your sensors and you're up and running with the most accurate and Innovative

site monitoring system in the flooring industry dispatch your Crews with confidence and reduce your climate

related installation issues floor

Cloud now you know yes sir except for

um we had one of ours uh allegedly thrown away cuz I had it on the

temporary power on one of the jobs and the electrician said I told my guys to

throw the whole thing away because they got paint on it oh my God you don't know what you don't

know well I know you guys are huge Believers in floor cloud and the setup

is simple and easy so you'll be able to set up a new uh

sensor straight away but do you got to buy one right you got to you got to replace it then huh yeah we we've still

got four of them so we're good for a minute

wow so you were they got paint on it so they said they threw it

the yeah the the electricians temp box and everything got paint on it so he had

them throw the entire board and everything that was on it in the trash Oh my God and so you had a attached to

the board yep all right well not only do you

get to learn about floor Cloud you also get to learn about what not to do with your sensor so don't put them on

temporary things that can be uh you know the temporary Electrical uh boxes and

walls that they build and throw them away they were still mud and walls and stuff when uh I went and started going

in there you know what that's what it needs to put on there he needs to put on a two-way mic two-way speaker system so

when it starts getting moved why are you moving my my my sensor like the

old I can't confirm this uh but there was a talk about maybe even adding

cameras in the future where it would take a picture every so often of your job site so if you started getting a

picture of trash you'd be like oh man I'm in a dump that one's in the dumpster

somewhere all right well let's kick it off with

our first topic so this is uh as I said near and dear to

my heart so unanticipated it downtime is a nightmare scenario for most business owners I don't know how you guys run but

everything we have all of our job files project orders all that stuff is in the

cloud and more and more so that's that's happening right like the cloud

technology obviously is taken over and most people do that and with the

potential cause of these downtimes whether it's because of your it or your

internet uh the a a report came out from a cyber security firm called spunk

released in June highlighted the Staggering cost of downtime estimated that businesses collectively lose $400

billion dollar a year annually due to unplanned it failures

take soak that in for a second 400 billion in losses so what was I I love

technology but what is supposed to be very um

cost-saving save you time and effort and all this stuff uh you know that c it's

like it can do the opp the exact opposite at any moment right yeah have

you guys had any down uh any of these uh examples of this where your network was

down cyber security uh no um but just

downtime yeah when we were making the switch from Google to Microsoft there

was some hiccups there yep making that switch um learning curves as far as

learning how to use technology the right way well in our our uh situation

um and I believe this kind of uh touches on it a bit but just to kind of fill out

what the article says here um about it says the direct cost primarily Revenue

cost because when your networks down if everything's on the network then you people can't work uh average $49 million

per year the financial strain is uh particularly severe for small and midside midsize companies

obviously that would be your most atrisk demographic in business uh to be able to

absorb such a sub substantial loss of time and revenue in ad in addition to

revenue loss businesses face numerous other direct costs associated with the downtime such as

fines uh it budgets insurance premiums these kinds of things the diminish the

hidden costs include diminishing uh shareholder value of course that's with public companies uh the Splunk reports

uh report underscores that the broad impact of downtime affecting both large and smaller firms are often less

equipped sorry the broad impact of downtime affecting both the large

Enterprises and smaller firms but we smaller firms are obviously less

equipped to handle these challenges so give you an example of what I was talking about we had a ransomware attack

back in May and we had cyber security insurance so

if you are watching this I've I've talked to a few other flooring companies in the industry um obviously in the

industry but uh companies that I've gotten to know and uh shared my story

with and told them about what we went through most people don't have any clue

they're they're ill-prepared and you think it ain't gonna happen to me I'm too small like why would they well they

did they came after us they encrypted all of our files we were down for to

three to four weeks we couldn't we even though we had backups

we couldn't work because our IT company had to find out where how they got

in that took a our insurance company got

a it firm attorney firm a lawyer firm out of

Pennsylvania the forensic it firm was Artic wolf out of like Minnesota or

Wisconsin or something and then our local it firm and everybody had to

collaborate together to make this like forensic it find out what happened

because they couldn't just up our turn our backups back on because they could have access to

them too right yeah then then your back and here's another key for people who

have never been through it your backups are not safe like they're safe but

they're not um inaccessible meaning if they turn your backups on and you left

the door open of how they got in in the first place they can take those two then you don't have backups and you're really

screwed you're really in a situation where you have to pay the ransomware we did not we got through it it took time but

we were down for three weeks we were handwriting purchase orders on notebook paper to keep track of orders that we

were placing with our vendors because we had to keep I mean we still had projects

that required product to be ordered the best thing about that is as soon as you're up and running again it's like

all right now we have to have someone to go through and enter all this stuff into the system yeah yep bunch of data entry

at the end of it so what um go ahead the I was just going to say

that downtime that's mentioned in the article I mean for us just our little

small company was very very significant the damage the payout from our insurance

company was in the six figures to fix the problem so oh get cyber security

insurance that is my number one advice to anybody watching this if you have a

network or you work on computers at your office get cyber security Insurance make

sure you have it it is a must in today's uh atmosphere we had it for a friend of

mine was my insurance agent long time ago and he's like ah it costs so little it's a great insurance policy just in

case and guess what I'll tell you what if if he would not have sold me that

policy I would have been in deep trouble I know not only the loses right that's

it that that's what insurance is for and I I tell you what I I cannot I

cannot express that one thing get cyber security insurance and then uh as the

article talked about exploding it costs our it costs now have went up over 400%

a month so for safety or because of well

you have to restructure everything um you know we when you go through something like

that you have all these experts telling you you should probably do this and you should probably do that you should

probably do this and all this other stuff and before you know

it you're it bill is exploded so this is

a um you know a matter of efficiency it's almost like debt will find

people you know you you find efficiencies to get faster and create more uh efficiencies and you do these

things on the cloud and all this stuff to be more efficient um luckily because

you know like when I say in the cloud you also have cloudbased software so we

could still get to emails uh through our devices but each the the problem with

going through something like this was each one of our endpoints or computers they call them in points at it in it uh

we couldn't we couldn't get on them until they found found out what the problem was so it was 3 weeks not being

on our own computer so we were borrowing computers I pulled out I brought this as

a prop to show I pulled out this old dog look how

thick that is an old think pad dang this probably a 2014 that I had laying around

I was like I got I've go to I've got to put some some old Soldiers back on the

the battle fil I was using email and different stuff but Man 2012 and it still runs

like a champ man yeah well the old thing pad all I had to do is do some up have the IT people do a little bit of

updating and fired her up and boom so says how did you handle the

extra stress dude I tell you what

um God and F family and having good employees uh our

team came together in a big way we've been through a lot in 20124 it's been a

real rough year for our company um just a lot of challenges and um you know

having good employees uh and and you know having family that you can lean on

and of course uh you know having God and I'm I'm I'm a huge believer in prayer

and and you know getting on your knees when things are are good and getting on your knees when things are bad and so uh

I would say those are the things that got me through it being transparent you know Jesus family and and uh you were

pretty Cal you were pretty calm that day I talked to you like think day one I I believe and and you're like man I'm like

what's up he's like oh dude I also have what would your advice

be to to people out there like what if this were to happen and what it should

be what is the first thing should do if they have three employees or 20 like

what's the first thing they should do well the very first thing is call your IT company we got I'll tell you a few

things that went well first off it happened early we caught it within a few

hours of them entering our Network so one of my employees was in here early

about 6:30 she had fired up her computer and it was just encryption codes this

long and you click into that file and into the next file and it says read me and it's the message from The Ransom

people and it's like we got your stuff we don't want to hurt you just contact

us at this number and it was really the nicest criminals you'll ever deal with

because they really do most times give you your stuff back about 60% so more

times than not you're going to get your stuff back if you pay the ransom and that's because if they get the

reputation of not giving you your stuff back nobody would pay why would you even pay exactly right so most times uh now

the first thing you do is call your IT company and their first thing to us was

cut the hard lines basically you you've watched movies cut the hard lines it's basically like that unplug every

internet port that you have and then they they it at least stops the attack

because what's interesting is it takes more time than you think like these you would think that it's just like clicking

an email it's not it takes time for those encryptions to happen and they got

a lot they didn't get my personal my computer now they thought they did because we have another computer on the

network called owner HP and they definitely got that one uh but they didn't get to my computer before we cut

the lines they got to our server which was what really debilitated us IDE but they they didn't get uh to my my

computer um so if you have something if you have a a computer on your network

that's called like owner's computer or something rename that sucker first off

uh secondly or put a dummy unpluging the hardlines as soon as you know uh yeah

unplug the hard lines as soon as you know and have an IT firm that you can uh leverage and then make sure you have

cyber security so we basically called the it they told us pull the lines we pulled

the lines by 7:30 8 8:00 we had people on almost people on site by that time

from Our IT company so have a good IT company if you don't and you have and

you do it yourself make sure you know what to do um but cyber security insurance is is probably the biggest

thing is then we called our insurance company and said hey we've got a Cyber

attack we don't know quite what's going on but we have

tons of encrypted files and we can't get to our server or every file on our server was

encrypted that being said that launches a whole series of events and that

insurance company will guide you through the process basically so make I can't

stress I mean I'll stress it again get cyber security insurance it's not extremely expensive set you guys have um

your servers on site then you run your own servers we do not

anymore although that's not they even if they're not on site that doesn't that's not a protector in itself um we decided

because our servers were we were on our second major server and so it was kind

of getting to that age and it was going to cost 15 grand to get a new one and and then you know we decided that well

we listen to our it people and they said look you go in the cloud full manage service and and you know that was one of

the big cost increases is we went to a full managed service with our it people

um but what I would tell people is if you have those things in place once it

happens don't cry over spilled milk and that is why I was probably caling that morning Jose was the the fact is is I

was solution oriented what do I need to do to keep things moving forward and

protect my customers from being exposed to this chaos and so it's like okay we

need that so I created a system now we kind of have this system in our uh I don't know if it's in our training

manual uh but we have like what to do in this scenario

now so everybody knows what to do next time

but we had to discover okay so how are we going to do POS how are we gonna right luckily go Carrera was not

affected it was I shouldn't say luckily it just was not attached to anything it's in its own place with several

redundancies and being a separate company that was kind of a a Saving

Grace because we could go back and look at old work orders and know where we were at on jobs and so that really helped us a lot um and we were still

able to deploy Crews and pay people without one one of the big things with

with that is is like because Tanya Works in it or not it but corporate and they

try and get everyone with these fishing emails and it's she was like I don't

even click on anything anymore same one thing a good it firm will do is

they'll send you fishing emails from themselves and then send me a report on who clicked on fishing emails and then

you can train that person like hey dude I know it said Google something and you

thought you got a surprise or or a free gift card because it's your

birthday or whatever not even that it's like one there was a a Tik Tock and this

lady was like I F I thought I finally got recognized for doing a great job at my work they were like you're being

recognized for this please click here to get your prize and she was like fishing email yeah they got me yep yeah and

there's a few different ways this happen so I had a client this um what they do

with fishing emails come to find out out they'll sit in your network once they gain access to your email they'll sit in

there A lot of times people think they click aici email and then all of a sudden computer goes blank well that's

not the most efficient way for them the most money-making way for the hackers is to sit there watch your communication

learn how you and AI is actually helping them with this so now they can write emails that sound like you so I had a

customer this happened to and what they did what happened to them was a one of the other subcontractors on a

project sent them an email and said hey BL blah blah blah XYZ person I won't

mention names but um hey our account got hacked and I had to switch bank accounts

here's my new routing and account number please that

$687,000 uh invoice uh invoice number XYZ like they knew all the info and they

sounded like this guy because they had watched how he replies to emails for so long they responded like he would hey

and by the way how's your kid that kind of thing and she did the transfer and

transferred $187,000 dollar to a a

hacker and it's gone so fishing emails are important to

like that's that's a big one um you have all kinds of

updates and things that you have to stay up with I would tell you you know get with an IT firm I'm no it person at all

uh from a uh Information Technology you know like a a hardware and setting

things up like that I'm more of a software guy and I'm not even good at that I gotta have a really good team at

go career because I'm more of the Visionary ideas yeah but the truth is is that

having a a Good IT company is important because your updates that you just click

like you don't have time to do the update those are the ways that they find their way in and there's um from VPN if

anybody uses vpns which are highly encouraged by your uh it people but also

they they want you to use two- Factor authentication on those things and all this stuff at the end of the day get

with your it people because it costed us a ton of money um you know this article kind of goes

into some of this uh it says a significant portion of

the it downtime about 56% is attributed to cyber security breaches which is

something similar to what I was just talking about and it say it goes on to say such as fishing emails and

ransomware attacks so there you go uh soft software it infrastructure

failures account for 44% of the incidents human error uh identified as

the maing contributing factor and that's what we were just talking about on the uh on the email

emails so to combat the threat of downtime businesses are encouraged to implement several key strategies

including developing an incident response plan to track and resolve downtime events so that's once you go

through it you kind of put something like that together um if you would invest the time

ahead of time it's probably better uh what do you do if it occurs you know how

are you going to handle it if you don't have a just think if you don't have access to your computer whatsoever how

are you going to continue to do business uh the second point they make is investing in cyber security measure

measures tailored to your needs obviously that's getting with an IT company regular training for employees

also that's kind of the fishing email and having an company they'll send some

and then they'll send the uh owner or whoever you guys whoever somebody has in

their company to train the employees like hey that was a fishing email if that would have been a malicious fishing

email we would have been put at Great risk and then you can kind of uh um you

know train employees up uh creating a disaster recovery plan with clear backup

policies uh there's another big one have backups and make sure they're off campus

backups uh far far away with their own security um the key to preventing major

it failures lies in continuous Improvement so there you go you got a lot of work to do that's just what it

what it boils down to it takes work to all these efficiencies and everything that it does bring it just takes work to

maintain it 100% that is that is scary to know

that all the stuff that I used to click on all the clickbait when I was younger had my the computers yeah I don't my my

computer is strictly for work now I don't I don't do any navigating on the uh the internet anymore for uh for big

boo and stuff like that I don't do that no more learn my L yeah our firewall here blocks pretty much everything um

but I'll tell you when you have updates for to your firewall or to your um

remote access uh software any of that you that's where

you know managing that is God that'd be a whole second job oh yeah even in a

company my size which is not a big company um it it it takes it would take

a full-time person to make sure that everybody is up to date and that's why we just hired out so this goes on to our

next kind of ties right in it's still Technology based uh but this AI

Rush AI is getting scary you know what I mean like scary accurate scary good um

like if you use chat GPT or Chad as we affectionately call it here on the

Huddle homie I mean if Chad your homie uh you you can see all the upgrades and

updates that Chad's having um but this article is is talking about the I AI

Rush is actually fueling a tet deck and they're calling a tsunami uh so as it

artificial intelligence continues to revolutionize Industries businesses are grappling with the growing challenges of

managing their it infrastructure a recent report from uh research form

Forester warns that many companies are facing a tsunami of technical debt which refers to the cost incurred by delaying

technology upgrades or Moder modernization so that's a hard word to

say the increasing complexities of the it landscape coupled with the rapid rise

of AI is expected to push more than 50% of Technology decision makers to

experience moderate or high levels of technical debt by the uh by 2025 and then by 2026 this number could

surge to 75% that's nuts You' you'd almost have

to read through this whole article word for word but technical debt is typically

the result of shortterm decisions when it comes to your it and your your

technology approach to your in your business uh that really need long-term

Solutions so you gotta we we talk about I AI quite a bit on the Huddle here you

know we we've discussed it multiple times this is it's it's pushing the the

the technology so fast it's it's so rapidly changing that it's causing this

technical debt and and so by the time you get you to illustrate this by the

time you get used to using chat GPT three and you really get yeah yeah and

and you start to implement it into your business it's already now at four or five and it's got another upgrade of

like reasoning and this different things that they're implementing

so that's a very simple uh uh illustration to show you that how the

this technical debt by the time you get used to something if you're not looking

out another couple steps all the time um yeah it's gonna grab you now I came um I

came across a video the other day that said that uh they tried to shut down uh

three is that what and it tried to save itself like it what tell me about that

so did you watch the same video Daniel yeah so essentially what had happened

was they were going to delete it from everything to get rid of three and just

focus on four because you know once it's the upgrade we don't need three anymore and it used it they told three to delete

itself and it tried to take it everything and then move it to like

another server and they caught it and then they asked it why it did it and it

was like I was trying to save myself what that is nuts to me dude I

know that's so that reaction is what that's what I did I was like what is going on and now all of a sudden Ali on

my social number three is trying to save itself can you imagine what they what's going to happen if they try to like

delete four or five dude it's notna get to that

four or five is create version have you guys watch that movie what is it called

Eagle Eye yes with uh what's that dude from the Transformers what's his name um

Shiloh sh yeah Shiloh sh sh he he's in that movie that

movie is like AI movies that man that that one is like how you could see it

like doing its evil thing Sky Skynet

yeah that's another one did dude that's incredible it tried to save itself dude

that that kind of let where did you see that did you see that on Tik Tok is this real I I either seen it on Tik Tok or

YouTube like a YouTube shorts or something like that I gotta I gotta look that up that's

incredible that's like the first version of chat GPT and it's already smart enough to be like ah I don't want to

die it's software that's

crazy well to continue here the um the this report or I should say

another report by Accenture further emphasizes emphasizes the financial burden of te technical debt citing that

in the us alone it costs businesses around 2.4 trillion dollar dollars annually I don't

know what that represents I'm not as familiar you know I have some personal experience with the

previous article this one here is a little bit ambiguous to that $2.4

trillion it says as companies uh allocate more funds toward generative AI

which is what chat GPT is uh this figure is likely to grow enture noted that a

paradox in the adoption of generative AI while it contributes to the creation of

technical debt it can also be leveraged to help manage and reduce it this dual role of AI presents the classic catch22

for organizations striving to balance Innovation and sustainability yeah this is one of them

scary topics kind of when you start to think about it yeah I know I'm looking at it you know that that two 2.41

trillion that you know that's got to be like lost time you know do like everything that's a lot of dollars and

cents yeah I I'm not real sure what that represents or how they came to that figure

but could be partially what they are estimating is

lost by not staying up with the Curve and that would be maybe a little bit more opinionated

of a number anyway man you

know let's move on to something that's in our in our wheelhouse well just let

let's talk let's talk hard hats guys because this is more in our uh in our

wheelhouse and although the other two topics are very interesting and I tell you what uh the first one is close uh to

my heart so I hope anybody watching caught that and really does uh take some of that advice because it saved my rear

end so now we're on to something uh this is the science behind heart hard hats and

how they protect your brain so this comes out of world construction today as we all know that heart hats are

a critical piece of protective gear used across all the industries whether you're in floring uh residential or commercial

obviously more uh more tributable in commercial floor um construction but uh

plenty of hard hats on residential as well but it's designed to absorb

distribute and deflect impact for es Hard Hats play a crucial role in preventing traumatic brain injuries or

tvis by uh by understanding the engineering Behind these helmets workers

can better appreciate their lives saving capabilities and importance of wearing them

consistently we I know you guys are are you know safety oriented right uh we

have safety uh talks and toolbox talks and um it still does not prevent people

from doing some silly stuff at your job sites but wearing your hard hat in fact

they getting even more fancy and uh look like you're getting ready to ride a bicycle afterwards I think you guys said

you had a job that required the the um helmets as they call them as opposed to

a hard hat it's hel bump caps yeah yeah it's like comes up over your ear clicks

on like like a Tron like a cheap version of Tron without other light yeah we were

doing um we did a bunch of the Amazon I say a bunch I think we did three Amazon

warehouses uh of course have a lot in the the main area and did some of the

epoxy out in the warehouse area but um they required us to wear those and I'll

tell you what if you only need to take one little knock to the head to understand that

hard hats do prevent uh a lot of damage and as flooring guys we we kind of hate

them because they slide down on your face uh and honestly most of us are like

hey man if I need a hard hat while I'm working here you're not ready that's what we used to say when I was

installing like if I had to if I had to wear a hard hat I was like well you're not ready for me

then uh but the uh modern helmets they're starting

to call them helmets more and more uh help minimize rotational forces which are a major contributor to the brain

brain injuries it restricts uh abrupt head movements uh the suspension system

mitigates the amount of rotational force that reaches the brain furthermore hard

hats are designed to deflect sharp objects uh providing a vital Shield against injuries from falling debris or

tools this is all pretty common stuff but if has anybody actually taken a smack to the head with a hard hat on and

just imagined what that would have been like without it yeah but I when it happens what I think is I wouldn't have

hit my head if I didn't have a hard hat on if I didn't have the hard hat if you didn't have that extra six

inches of height a short guys we were not used to that um I can't say that there's been a

time where like it's saved me right because it usually we're in the project

when there's no nothing going on overhead right otherwise we can't do the floor if they're working up top but um

you know all the Bakers and ladders and everything are pretty much cleared out I just like Daniel said I used to hit my

head a lot when I wore my my hard hat you know and just kind of Jar yourself a little bit but safety glasses yes they

have definitely helped out um but yeah protect your eyes and protect

your eyes and protect your head uh the hard hats that we were talking about

earlier in uh the those are the ones that include the foam padding uh you know for a little bit of

comfort and further vibration damp dampening uh and they have that little

chin strap that does help I've worn that one uh and worn a regular hard hat mine fits

pretty tight but when you're bent down if you have the the helmets they don't slide around near as much I'm not I do

have what's that the expiration days people got to check that out too

good point did uh I'll bet most people did not know but we're here to tell you

on the Huddle uh as H Jose just said hard hats have an expiration

date I don't remember where we learned that lesson but we learned that lesson the hard way as I remember it when oan

made a visit probably or some or some safety engineer at a Air Force Bas was

like your hard Hat's out of date and I'm like man this ain't cheese no I I I didn't have that actual conversation but

but uh I'm sure it went something like that I remember it not being the most Pleasant way to find that out it usually

isn't man because you know floor guys don't like them anyway so you know they fall off your patch I don't know anybody

who's like yeah I love wearing hard hats in and we don't jump out I know one

person I know one person that worked for a tile company and he always wore his

hard hat like this and he wore that thing to the gas station he wore that like everywhere everywhere really

everywhere yeah man well it was he was he your safety

director no you didn't want him to be in like in any conversation yeah he was too high

strum so the the um you know that that was a a quick easy article but it you

know we like to talk about safety here because it is a always a growing like you can set yourself apart um on

contracts being uh especially if you're in government work or anything like that

where you have a good safety program and a good safety record um good track

record if you're moderating you know uh is is good um you can win some jobs off

that so if you're in the commercial world you know uh speaking from experience it can be really helpful to

uh you know be safety oriented and that's why we have that article we're going to move to another one but this is

a little bit more interesting so have you guys heard of skyscrapers being

built out of wood instead of Steel and concrete not until article to be honest

with you and yeah the only thing it reminds me of is like going

to the amusement parks and seeing these things built out of wood and then how

much downtime there is because of it like

I yeah like the old the old uh the old wood roller coasters yeah we got one

it's called Uh shiver shiver metim Timbers shivering timers Shimmer me

timbers is what it is well they are there's a movement in

the construction in Industry to bring back the as they call it the Golden Age of wood beginning with skyscrapers so

the focus is on mass Timber high density wood products made from engineered

materials like cross laminated timber that's those you know cross-laminated beams you'll see uh sometimes on

construction sites and laminated veneer Timber are both gaining uh what's that

so this stff expensive yeah well but not not I think this is coming from a sustainability uh

Direction um as well as ease of use and

not not as much welding that kind of thing um so it's gaining the attention

well here you go if I just read a little further it's gaining attention because they're environmental and Technical

benefits so in Finland they built they have built a 12-story apartment building

and it's the tallest Allwood structure in the world uh they're saying it's a

Showcase of the potential of mass Timber to create sustainable carbon storing

structures uh the movement driven by Architects like John kleene promotes Mass Timber as a viable alternative to

concrete and steel which are carbon intensive materials Mass Timber uh Advocates argue

that the materials benefits extend beyond sustainability because unlike traditional materials Mass Timber can

store carbon uh as trees uh from which it's sourced absorb CO2 during their

growth as a result buildings made from Mass Timber may help mitigate the impacts of climate change again we've

talked about these kinds of things on the uh podcast before and the uh I would say we're

probably like recycled new uh forward I think we all agree we'd love a way to

recycle our materials easier particularly in floring um we've talked about had some experts on the podcast

before about the challenges of this meaning the the biggest challenges being

transportation and getting it picked up and not having to store it for 8 12 months before somebody can pick it up

and get it to a transfer center uh that kind of thing so I think we're pretty environmentally friendly I'm not a tree

hugger but I will definitely tell you that I think that we should take care of our planet as best as we can and

um but but you know I also realize that there's um some alternative energies out

there that are worse for the environment uh if you really look them up then the good old oil and gas so um do your

research but this does seem to be pretty crazy if you think about a 12-story building that's about what 120 130 feet

up yeah that's craziness right there nuts isn't else is nuts you know what

else is nuts what if this is just a gimmick so that way you the next 150 years if they hit a reset button they

can't find anything from the past what if that's all that is things going be biodegradable and can't find any

structures uh revealing themselves yeah it just goes down just turns into the

forest yeah so th th this part that um

of the article is to me eye opening I also kind of am wondering how true it is

uh because I don't just because it comes out of a magazine or somebody else wrote it I

don't tend to automatically believe it um so this would be interesting to do a

little more research on but it says Mass Timber is also lighter more fire

resistant that's the one that I I'm like M Timber is more fire resistant and

easier to customiz I don't know then concrete and steel making it a versatile material

modern construction I mean they do have firewalls right made out of composite and and woods and they they put uh fire

retarders in there and it doesn't retain heat right up to a certain temperature I

guess um I'm trying to be optimistic here brother help me out help me out yeah I I

don't know man that that's the one that I would love to see some some data on

that um what's that MythBusters Mythbusters

need to need to test this out see if it if Mass Timber is more and and again

it's not saying wood it's saying Mass timber for a reason as it uh as it defined in the earlier part of the um

article you know it's typically very pressed together it's still made uh it's

just made out of Timber so despite the enthusiasm around Mass Timber there's still challenges to

it uh scaling its use um so there's countries like Finland that are have

wellestablished Technologies around it but the US is still catching up we have to import most of our Mass temper

products from Europe uh where companies like I'm not even gonna Bender Holtz I

got it I think that's how you say it in Australia or Austria sorry uh have

developed um more mature Supply chains for the material and the us we are just

we we use pine trees for all of our building and so young pine trees are um

more often used for like tissue paper rather than structural Timber

um in this regard Mass timer um so European suppliers are that's who we

rely on at the in the US for large scale Mass Timber projects uh goes on to say that the rise

of mass Timber also rais concerns about sustainability of Forestry practices that support it so obviously that's

probably my number one thing is where we're going to get all this damn Timber if we're already talking about

deforestation being a problem so got a buddy who was uh into um

knocking down Timber and selling the wood he would be looking for like five 10 acres or more at a time to go

chop I'll come and chop your trees down for free but then he'd go sell it yeah

yeah well we think of wood like firewood and that's like what Chicago burnt down

before J are you talking is she referring to like the world fair when they burned all of that

down no Chicago fires like building after building

burned down in the 1800s or whatever the whole city caught

fire way back in the day they didn't have uh they didn't have they didn't have mass Timber they just had Timber

yeah yeah regular [Laughter] Timber yeah I don't know there's a few

parts of that article I'd love to um you know investigate a little bit more but

it sounds pretty cool still I I would almost bet you a really cool mass Timber

building would look cool really neat comparatively uh give you maybe a little

bit more um they they kind of cite this in the article more uh freedom for

design and such so I don't know if I want to give Architects any more freedom for design with some of the floor plans

I get to go through but uh yeah goes on to say the uh success of mass Timber and

mainstream construction will depend on over uh overcoming supply chain challenges and ensuring sustainability

for the forest that provide the raw material I couldn't agree more can't cut

down all the trees to build buildings although it is implying that they're healthier for the environment because

they timberlite what are you are you a sponsor Dwayne or

what you Ambassador for timberlite what is that do you guys know what timberlite is

nope I'm I'm Googling it right now all that comes up is actual lights

made out of Timber okay GTS

well that's that is the end of our articles that we had prepared for you guys this week on the blue collar cruise

I hope you enjoyed a lot of them some of them construction oriented some of them were just a tell of of caution when it

comes to it unfortunately we're all in it like these are two things that that

you can't escape from these days and also you you can't escape off on the

Shelf so yeah yeah I don't know if I'm more

concerned about the the rise of AI or that they're gonna start trying to do uh

multi-level buildings and and try to span 120 feet with wood it's already

working that part both of them right man who knows I don't know I I'll

tell you which one's going to grow faster and that's it and that's where that article was a cautionary tell about

not only I mean we brought in you guys brought in the you know Chad 3 not you

know trying to save itself from deletion that is insane I am definitely looking

that up but the uh it's like how fast technolog is moving means we're all

behind all the time and I I uh couldn't agree more one day we're going to wake

up and say oh we got to catch up and you may not even uh be able to at that point

so stay stay knowledgeable keep keep uh keep uh Curious um thank you Chris uh

Cristiano Christiano floring what is it

Christino it is Christo thank you for any of you who know he said it with an

accent he said it with an accent that's why yeah I I was trying to throw some flavor on it yeah it's uh it's pretty

awesome reach out to the guys if you want any more information about Flor cloud or you can go to I believe it's just Flor cloud.com and check them out

obviously you can always Google it but those guys over there Scott and and Patrick are awesome and uh it's great

product so look into those guys and that's going to do it for this week's blue color cruise if you have any topics

you really want our uh Team to research into and find articles on we have you

know um subscriptions to a lot of different uh construction oriented um uh

sites and things like that that we find these articles on so if you have any questions you want us to research or any

uh anything that you want us to look into and bring to the next to next month's bluecollar Cruise let us know if

you enjoy this uh content please give us a like And subscribe on our social

channels as well as YouTube the guys and I would certainly appreciate that the number one podcast and flooring here at

the Huddle we would love to grow like crazy in 2025 you guys are a big part of

that so thanks for joining us today and we will catch you guys next week uh

right before the Christmas holiday thank you everyone peace we'll

see you guys