All Episodes

S11, EP 308 - Pipeline Trench Talk 01 - Crane Operator Clem Conceicao

S11, EP 307 - Smartsheet™- A Contractor's Dream

S11, EP 306 – How to Start a Professional Construction Company

S11, EP 305 - Excavation Systems Bible

S11, EP 304 - What AI Does for Your Humble Construction Podcaster

S10, EP 303 – Trench Talk, Pat Mullen

S10, EP 302 – Drive the Bus and Do All Three Jobs!

S10,EP 301: Dissertation Derailed! Old Guy PhD Entry No. 2 with Scott Jennings

S10 E300: Leaving Business Puberty, Age Matters with Scott Jennings

S10 E299: No Damage for Delay Holds in Value Engineering Job with Scott Jennings

S10 E298: Sweet Spot for Cost of Failure

What is a Venturi Eductor?

Funny and Scary: ChatGPT Gives a Chuckle

Look up and Beyond 14” and Find a Double Minus 7

The Professor of Practice in Engineering Handles the 2nd

Will you Marry Me? Well, How About we CollaborDate?

Jet Grout and Soil Mixing - The 101

Just Say “No” – You May Get Thanked

What's a Form Ratio?

Don't Get Sick: Post-Topping Out Syndrome

My Old Guy PhD Program Begins – Entry No. 1

What is "Delegated Design"?

What’s that High Track Dozer All About?

Load Path & Building from the Bottom Up

Increase Profit by Rule of 27

Data Collection Without the $100,000 Fancy Toys

Two Negatives of Owning Your Own Construction Business

Red Flags in Bid Day v. Change Order Pricing

How to Make a Submittal – Check, Check, Check!

Common Rebar Inspection Fails

Daily Cost and the What-If

Construction Crossword Challenge

Trench Talk - Kelly Jennings, Small Business CFO

Profitability the Easy Way – Via the Bottom Line

What's a DRB?

ELB v. HDD or Jack and Bore or Microtunnel

Get a Master’s Degree in Engineering? Umm…

Trench Talk: Paul Kennedy, Surety (Bonding) Agent

Selling Your Business – EBITDA is “Bullshit Earnings”

Know Your Audience – Legally and Practically

Your Construction Career Path – 90% is Your Drive

Forensic Reporting 101

What’s a Deposition?

Project Specifications – The Basics, in Five Minutes

Concrete Formwork Takeoff 101 – It’s All About SFCA

The Differing Site Condition - Careful!

Kobe’s Gym Rats and Angela’s Grit

Find a Mentor: They’ve Seen What You’re Seeing

Constructive Acceleration: The Bully Owner

Increase Profit By Knowing Design Intent

Internal Divisional Subcontracting: Like Swallowing Hemlock

The Field Sketch: Kiss a Pencil Today

Trench Talk - Paul Hartmann, Rebar Foreman

Larry King and Katt Williams: Now It’s Your Turn

Measured Mile: It’s Not Just for Contractors

Partner, But Not Necessarily Via Partnering

Stroke: You’re Having One Right Now

Contractor Estimating: Drop the Curtain

New Civil Grads: Three Roads, Choose One!

Construction in Thailand: 1st and 3rd World Combined

Your Last Choice: The Total Cost Claim Approach

What is Extended Performance?

Mindset Differences – Major Leaguers v. Minor Leaguers

An Offering of a Contractor’s Standard of Care

Business In Hawaii Is The Same, But Totally Different

Pipeline Trench Talk 01 - Crane Operator Clem Conceicao

How to Start a Professional Construction Company

What’s the Difference Between Unit Price and Lump Sum Bids?

The Low Bid Model – Time to Go?

Utility Drawings 101: The Plan and Profile

Subsurface Disclaimers Don’t Hold – Travelers v. U.S.

Parkinson's Law - Hoping to Quantify Pacing

The Preparatory Meeting: Priceless

Legal Jargon and Process 101

Bonds and Bonding Capacity 101

Construction is Broken - Give me the Onsite EOR

The Importance of As-Builts

University Cooperative Education – the Real Deal!

Water in the Hole! What’s it Mean?

Smartsheet™ - A Contractor's Dream

Pipe Encasement Flotation – Archimedes was the Man!

Owners Loosen Up Your Grip!

Reading Rebar Drawings 101

Great Ways To Die

Don’t Get Your P.E. License - A Ridiculous Statement

I Wrote A Children’s Book Because I Could

Why to Get a Contractor’s License

No Taj Garage

Linear Scheduling: Effective with a Bend of Your Mind

A Kick in the, Well, You Know: “Last Minute” Bid Postponement

Claims Tools & Methodologies

Cake Batter and Concrete Mix Design: Same Thing!

Help Yourself: Be the Most Coachable Player

Ways That Engineers Manage Failure: Deflection

Bridges 101: What Makes up a Bridge

Another Contractor Claims Tool: ASCE 71-21 Identifying, Quantifying, and Proving Loss of Productivity

Project Loss Insurance: Heard of It?

Debt: You Need It

Utes and Bunds: Working in New Zealand

Bluebeam Revu Review

Don’t Be Afraid of a Little Manual Work: It’s Ok

Keep the Excavator Digging – It Drives the Cost

Estimating: Theoretical Versus Production History

Webinar: Inside the Contractor Mind: Bidding, Change Orders, & Claims

Inside the Contractor’s Mind: Bidding, Change Orders, & Claims

Using a Static Indirect Bid Item in your Bids

SJ's Toolbox Term: Joint Venture

Lose the Guilt – Mark it Up!

SJ's Toolbox Term: Working Capital

Blind and Dumb: Meeting Attendees

SJ's Toolbox Term: Pay Width

Trained or Untrained? Being Claim-Ready

SJ's Toolbox Term: Unbalance

The Calibration Period: Plan for Patience

SJ's Toolbox Term: Minority Goal

Delay Letter: A Template & How to Write One

SJ's Toolbox Term: LLC

Your Equipment Rates: Where to Start

SJ's Toolbox Term: Float

The Leonard Curves: Another Tool in Labor Loss Quantification

SJ's Toolbox Term: Extended Overhead

Going “Legit”: Lose the Brown Paper Bag

SJ's Toolbox Term: Covenant

Jet Grout in Five Minutes

SJ's Toolbox Term: Entitlement

Engine Failure Makes Engineers Great: Redundancy

SJ's Toolbox Term: Force Account

What a College Degree Says

SJ's Toolbox Term: Invert Spring Line Crown

Contingency Doesn’t Exist When Low Bid Wins

SJ's Toolbox Term: Spider Box & Bologna Cord

Bucketing – the Proper Claim Accounting Method

SJ's Toolbox Term: Allowance

K.I.S.S. – Keep It Simple Stupid

SJ's Toolbox Term: F.A.R. (Federal Acquisition Regulations)

Incidental: What’s in a Word?

SJ's Toolbox Term: Latent versus patent

Delay Types – Top 4 List

SJ's Toolbox Term: Purchase order

Five Minute “How To”: Starting A Construction Business

SJ's Toolbox Term: Squares

Shallow versus Deep Foundations: What’s the Difference?

SJ's Toolbox Term: Post-tensioned concrete

Pre-Bid Questioning to the Owner or Yourself

SJ's Toolbox Term: Level vs plumb

General Contractor & Owner Financial Protection: Two Ways

SJ's Toolbox Term: Prestressed concrete

Please Cough – The One Thing to Do This Week

SJ's Toolbox Term: Concrete Slump

Setting the Bid Unit Price: 2 Main Reasons for Unbalancing

SJ's Toolbox Term: Formwork

Top 6 Ingredients of a Letter

SJ's Toolbox Term: Continuity Equation

Pipe Goes Bang!

SJ's Toolbox Term: Beam-column

Insult Your Client with Simplicity: Day Labeling

SJ's Toolbox Term: 10 Civil Construction abbreviations

Closer to 1.30, not 1.50

SJ's Toolbox Term: Pre-Stressed vs Post-Tensioned

Fire! Run to It, Not From It!

SJ's Toolbox Term: Doctrine of Promissory Estoppel

Contract Mapping: A Valuable Tool in Your Toolbox

SJ's Toolbox Term: Trenchbox

You Better Honor Your Bid on Bid Day Mr. Subcontractor

SJ's Toolbox Term: Parapet

An Hour’s not an Hour, and it’s Certainly not a Day

SJ's Toolbox Term: Order of Precedence

Anatomy of a Change

SJ's Toolbox Term: PK Nail

Shhh, You’re being Recorded – and Two Other Tips

SJ's Toolbox Term: EROPS / ROPS

Quantifying the Loss in Labor Productivity: the MCAA Factors

SJ's Toolbox Term: Air Entrainment

Cash v. Accrual Accounting – Whatchu Talkin’ About Willis?

SJ's Toolbox Term: Grouser

How to do a Job Cost Projection: Cutting through the Fog – Part 2

SJ's Toolbox Term: Escalation

How to do a Job Cost Projection: Cutting through the Fog – Part 1

SJ's Toolbox Term: Serial Letter

Mistaken Taboo: Project Overhead

SJ's Toolbox Term: Spreader Beam

The #1 Driver of a Construction Claim

SJ's Toolbox Term: Active & passive soil pressure

Don’t be Charlie Brown’s Teacher

SJ's Toolbox Term: May vs Shall

Construction Contract Review Basics

SJ's Toolbox Term: Termination for Convenience

Webinar: Small/Medium Business Cybersecurity & Best Practices during COVID-19

SJ's Toolbox Term: Invert Elevation

Better the Devil You Know

SJ's Toolbox Term: PCO

Estimating: It’s an Art and a Science

SJ's Toolbox Term: Cubic yard

Bond Premium and the Project Time Extension

SJ's Toolbox Term: Surety

Webinar: Construction Insurance & Bonding during COVID-19

SJ's Toolbox Term: Builders Risk Insurance

Video Conferencing Softwares: a Quick Review

SJ's Toolbox Term: Pawl brake

Dear Owner, No Change Orders Thank You

SJ's Toolbox Term: Entrapped air vs. air entrainment

I Didn’t Ask for a Lamborghini

SJ's Toolbox Term: Notice to proceed

Letters to the Owner Need to Tell, Not Ask

SJ's Toolbox Term: Pressure

“Boosting” Job Profits on Equipment Purchase - on Paper

SJ's Toolbox Term: Plastic hinge

Webinar: Force Majeure & Differing Site Conditions – Notification and Response

SJ's Toolbox Term: Hoptoe

But What Does It Smell Like?

SJ's Toolbox Term: Well graded material

Project Parties – Who does what?

SJ's Toolbox Term: Two-Factor Authentication (2FA)

Signing a Change Order: What to look for

SJ's Toolbox Term: Constructive Acceleration

What Information Governs: Order of Precedence

SJ's Toolbox Term: Retention Bond

Notice: Writing the Letter

SJ's Toolbox Term: Arbitration

Legal Word of the Day: Contemporaneous

SJ's Toolbox Term: Unexcused delay

The Joint Venture Estimate: Setup is Key

SJ's Toolbox Term: GL Account

Optimizing the Contractor’s Professional Engineer

SJ's Toolbox Term: Collapsed as-built analysis

Wanna Eat? Help me Kill

SJ's Toolbox Term: $1 Million, $2 Million

Laos: Infrastructure / Means & Methods

Earthwork: What’s a Cubic Yard?

Takeoff: Beyond the Drawings

Avoid Claims with a Pre-Bid Analysis

From Me to You: Things I’ve Learned as a Professional

Introduction to Contractor Estimating

Designers Design, Constructors Construct: Drawings Constructability Review

Designing with Cost in Mind

Subs Should Join Forces!

The Lookahead Schedule and 90/60/30

Cracks in Construction

Needed Software for a Contractor

Is One RFI One Too Many?

If Cash is King, Time’s the Queen

Time, an Owner’s Achille’s Heel

Microsoft Excel v. Microsoft Project v. Primavera P6

Crew Cost Clicker

Top 10: Basic Business Etiquette

Construction Law Bible

Davis-Bacon, OSHA, Jones Act, and Buy American

The Basics of Advanced Scheduling Terminology

A Crane with Wings!

Fleet Management: Ways to Gather Data

Instant Resolution of Contractor Overhead Daily Cost

Timecard Collection – Like You’ve Never Heard

Unit Conversion

What’s BI? Do I need it?

Freight Terms Over Land

What is Section Modulus, S?

What's a GL Account?

Cost Codes: What, Why & How

Why be an Engineer: It’s the Mornings

The Internal Pre-Con: Top 10

The Construction Daily Report: Why & What

Spearin and Modified Total Cost Method Adopted in Missouri

Training: Now I See the Value

Choosing a Construction Consultant

Construction Claims Hierarchy

Customized Programming: Easy Access and Low Cost

Some Basic Analysis Techniques in Claim Preparation

Plans Constructability Review: Why, When, & What?

Credit Unions versus Banks

Equipment – Buy, Rent, RTO, RPO, Lease - Which One???

Inventory Tracking: A Money Saver

Top 10: Basic Business Etiquette

The Unilateral Change Order

Project Management Triple Constraint

Why Track Extra Costs and How

Balance Sheet: Knowing the Basics of Liabilities

All Zeroes One Code

The $5 Casio

Estimate Handoff

Conversion of Inches to Feet in Decimals

Calc of WC, GL, & Bonds in your Estimates

Where to use QR codes today

Engineers and Architects Gotta Step It Up!

Proposal Terms & Conditions

I See Claims

Why Hire a Management Consultant

Letter Writing

A Cheap Lawyer

Standardized Docs

RFI Notice

DEF

Two for Today: Taxes & Fuel

Cost versus Price

An RFI can Satisfy Notice Requirement, said the Feds