Commercial Property Inspectors Roundtable Meeting #33: Inspection and Reporting Efficiencies

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Rob Claus (00:05)
Welcome to this month’s commercial property inspectors roundtable, hosted by the Certified Commercial Property Inspectors Association. Mouthful. welcome everybody. I see we’ve got just a bunch of people on the line and a bunch of people here, and some are are showing each other, some are hiding, which is fabulous for all.

I’m gonna get started today, and we’re gonna open this up at the you know about halfway through with with the true round table event. But I I’ve got some ulterior motives to this month’s roundtable. And if you’ve been paying attention to some of the postings we’ve had and and some of the the member benefits, a couple of months ago we released

a a workbook and this particular workbook was on job costing and we did a we did a a course on job costing as well but in that workbook we had this conversation about inspector efficiencies very specifically how fast how efficient and you move through buildings

And in this workbook, there there’s a a particular worksheet or or tab on it that talks about how we’ve we’ve lumped inspectors into just for for for just architecture. we’ve lumped inspectors into three categories. You know, beginning inspectors, senior inspectors, and maybe principled inspectors. Principal so so like

You know, I don’t want to say small, medium, large, but new, emerging, and been around a while in Spectres. And the idea is how fast do you move through certain buildings? obviously you move you can move through a large warehouse much faster than you could move through maybe a tight office space. Or you might move through

a retail space differently than you move through a a mixed use space. And so I want to open this conversation today by us thinking about our speeds. And and if anybody wants to share their speeds, I’d love to hear it. And I and I think others would too, because as we’re moving forwards with our careers and with this

with with the commercial inspection industry, it’s the the the not what do we charge but how do we charge is typically genesized in the one encapsulation that’s consistent across the board and that’s time. And so does anybody want to share let’s say or let’s just begin with the with the with the easy one and that’s industrial.

Does anybody wanna kinda share w what their speed is moving through an industrial building? And if so, I’m gonna ask you how many years of experience you have. So does anybody wanna start?

Go ahead, Jamie. You got your hand up.

speaker-1 (03:42)
Yeah, I throw out some thoughts. I’m just refreshing my memory here and all this stuff. Industrial. you know

speaker-2 (03:51)
When when the

speaker-1 (03:52)
When the call comes through and do the interview and the proposal, sometimes and running the math on okay, what are we gonna charge here? I sometimes I I I lean heavy on okay, how many, how many guys do I need to do it? So I guess one part of all this is is a is a single person operation versus multi-

And so I’m still refining. I would say we’ve been in in the commercial space serious about commercial for about four years now. you know, we’ve been doing commercial twenty two, but serious about it for four years. And I I have on on my my list industrial that one inspector for every thirty to fifty thousand square foot. But that’s just kind of to get get the juices flowing and get thinking about it.

Rob Claus (04:46)
And what about per what about per hour, Jamie?

speaker-2 (04:50)
Well,

Rob Claus (04:50)
How how fast do you think you can move through an industrial building per hour?

speaker-1 (04:57)
Well, I think a single person can do a let’s just say for an example, a a thirty-five thousand square foot industrial with the small amount of office space in the front. I think they could get out of there in two to three hours. and then maybe back at home you shouldn’t have more than an hour on on getting the report done. But you know, not to go in too many directions here, but another one that I think varies dramatically.

From one inspector to the next or company to the next is the difference in taking photos and notes and then writing the whole report at home versus doing it on one of these report writers on your phone. So our our way of doing it, you know, we’re still on Spectora and we use that for commercial. so we’re we’re leaning more towards trying to compile and write the majority of the report on site with the phone and with the app.

so but it it varies on the age and the the the cleanliness of the property and the systems and all that. so yeah, I I I guess one could do the same thirty five thousand square foot industrial example and just taking photos and notes, you could probably move through there and in you know, two hours or less, but depends on how much you’re writing along the way.

Rob Claus (06:24)
Sure. So you’re you’re looking so if I was equating that, Jamie, and before we move on to to to somebody else’s share would be you’re you’re almost looking at it in in the equivalence of of of days, like half days. So you you’re thinking that that you one of your seasoned inspectors can certainly do a thirty thirty to fifty thousand square foot building in a half day project.

speaker-1 (06:51)
Yeah, if they had if they had a job like that and it was just one guy going for the I would give the whole day. And so it’s nice you go out, you got travel time, and then to reasonably get the report finished and buttoned up in in a sort of an eight hour, you know, we we have hourly employees and all that stuff. So we you we would allot eight hours. and some of it on pricing, I know we’re not really going on pricing here time, but

Some of it too, I’ll tell you, there there’s a lot of there’s a lot of price shoppers and people that get two to three quotes. And so some of it I am looking at what what’s what’s a a really competitive fee I can charge here to land the job, but it but it it’s still good Bruce profit. So if if a lot of our a lot of our employees still do home inspection, so

I look at it sometimes in a half day or full day, if the revenue can exceed what they would do in home inspections that day or half day, if it’s better than that, then I’d like to close the job at that, even if it’s not, hey, the most we’ve charged on this type of job. So some some of it’s that too.

Rob Claus (08:03)
I appreciate that, Jamie. Anybody else on the share?

Again, this is the one thing that when you when you really look about the one intangible you we all have is time. And the the more efficient you are moving through a building, you know, it can it can be a positive or a negative. If you’re a more seasoned inspector that moves through a building very, very fast, you can almost hurt yourself in in your billing if you’re billing per hour. VJ.

speaker-2 (08:39)
Yes, I have I’ve been working in commercial industry, like I’m from New York City, right? So yeah, I

Rob Claus (08:46)
Yeah.

speaker-2 (08:47)
have a different experience. so I’ve been doing the reports and everything. So I just got into this commercial home inspecti I mean building inspections. So how is it different than the other commercial inspections compared to when you go out in a property and do the inspections? This is my first time joining this call, so I just wanted to

Rob Claus (09:07)
Yeah. First time caller. Yeah.

I I I you know, I I guess that’s a tough question. We’re we’re I’m trying to think of the best way to answer it for you. I I I guess the difference is

in the product you’re producing for your client. you we’ve got on the commercial side the opportunity to to define and decide exactly what product we’re going to provide each client. There’s no set, there’s no set rule and there’s no set product for eat for everything cookie cuttered like let’s say a residential inspection might be. So they’re all kind of taken off on to to to Jamie’s comment of

That interview process we have with our clients of asking them specifically, what do they need us to do? And so kind of the the the scope of this conversation is what if that client asked you to do a complete comSop inspection of of a particular building and and we’re and and I I had posed the question of an industrial building.

And and to kind of get this idea of how fast can you move through this building if you are a new or emerging or seasoned inspector? For me, I’ve been inspecting for I’ll call myself a seasoned inspector. So if I’m gonna go through an industrial building doing a comsop inspection of that box, I’m gonna be somewhere between 4500 and 5,000 square foot per hour.

For myself. So if I’ve got a 50,000 square foot building, I’ll probably budget 10 hours. Will I be there 10 hours? Most likely not. But I have to bill for my time that’s driving through the traffic, that’s paying for the tolls for me to get there. That’s that’s paying for my parking, that’s all of those things that I probably have to have as an intangible to do that, which also includes my report writing.

And and so I kind of lump all that together. and so this is where I’m saying this is what we have to start thinking about to make a profitable, sustainable business. And for most of the inspectors that that may have been transitioning from residential to the commercial side, this is that thing that that that might escape because on the residential side.

their standard and there’s really never a change. But on the commercial side, every inspection is a change. And we have to think about being sustainable and profitable in our businesses because that’s that’s where we need to be. So but thank you, VJ, for for asking that question. Does somebody have, you know, a a number they like to throw out of of what’s been successful for them?

speaker-2 (12:22)
yeah, hi everybody. Brad here. Thanks, Rob. I’d kind of echo the time frame that Jamie threw out there with the exception of as a sole proprietor, my workflow is more based around building the report at home on the desktop. So we’re gonna spend a lot less time on site, but for something like that, I I’d plan on two hours there just taking pictures. I I characterize it

with the clients is gathering the information. And then I I just as a matter of habit kind of plan on two hours on the the administrative side between scheduling the inspection, follow up calls and driving. And then I’d probably spend maybe four to six hours, maybe four to five hours building the report. So it’d be probably about a full day.

Rob Claus (13:21)
So that whole that that that adage of of maybe maybe instead of thinking of

inspection efficiency of the maneuvering through the building, one really needs to look at time allotment precise. In other words, I’m going to allot one day interval or two day interval or a three-day interval to each project. Does that make more sense?

I’m getting some nods as well, that’s a that’s a new way to look at this. yeah, because I know I know for me, if I charged by my hour, I’d lose money because I’m very, I’m very quick, I’m very efficient, and I can go through a a fifteen to twenty thousand square foot building in an hour. I I’ve done a three hundred thousand square foot building in a in a in a half a day. So, but if I charge for that, I’d lose money.

I have to look at that project as the the the it ain’t an entire day of my life, not two, three, or four days. It’s an interesting way to look at it.

speaker-1 (14:31)
Hey, s so Rob, question on that is at what point do the what point do all these experienced guys price it by the square footage versus by the time it takes them to do it?

Rob Claus (14:41)
I think I I think and and I’ll open this up to let somebody jump in, Dave, but I’m I’m I’m actually thinking that you’re pricing by the hour, but you’ve skewed your hour towards your day and your speed.

Where we’re where where you might, you know, if if if you remember in the introduction class, I I use an example and and and and again I’m not price fixing and we’re not talking about assigning a price, but I use for an example on on that in that screen of a three hundred and fifty dollar per hour fee. Well actually if I charged on some buildings three hundred and fifty dollars per hour and I was only there three hours, you know, that building really should be a ten hour project.

By size, but because of efficiency, I’m able to I’m able to monopolize that that that client experience into a higher fee. And so I I think I think when you really sit back and and look at that job costing workbook that we’ve created based on on 1920 hours of of work life per year and

And understanding your indirect costs and your direct costs and really knowing this is my labor cost versus this is my overhead cost, for instance, you can really stand back and go, now I can make a predictable fee based on reasonable profit. And by adjusting the profit. And if you haven’t looked at that workbook, please do. It’s free, it’s right on our website. Look at it.

I can actually go in that workbook and and and and if you’re if you’re an entrepreneur or if you’re a manager, let’s say like like Jamie talked about as a manager, I can sit there and play in that workbook with okay, at 15% profit, I’m at $3,100. At 18% profit, I be I’m at $3,600. They at 30% profit, I might be at $4,200. What makes sense for that day’s worth of event?

to my client. And where is my victory? Because now I know where my break even point is. And knowing where your break even point is

speaker-1 (17:04)
Okay.

Rob Claus (17:05)
on each job ensures you profitability.

speaker-1 (17:10)
Yeah, and I guess that was kind of my question. Like if if they’re using a 15,000 square foot building as a reference, and and this is just a base number, at your three fifty an hour times ten hours is thirty five hundred dollars. But if some people are charging ten to fifteen cents a square foot, well now you’re talking five grand to six sixty five hundred, where do they draw the line in hey, which one am I gonna go with? Or do I meet in the middle?

Rob Claus (17:34)
And you very true. And and you have to look at each of your individual circumstances. You know, if and that’s where if you don’t have a handle on your your expenses, because there’s certain expenses that are there every day. You’re driving in one, you know, you you have one in your ear, you’re looking at one on your phone. Yeah, don’t you know, yeah, it’s it’s Brad sitting at Starbucks enjoying a coffee.

That’s a daily, that’s an expense that’s there regardless of your presence on a property. And and and you have to know what that is by the hour. Yeah. Because I in the workbook experience I I just did last week on this project, out of nineteen hundred and twenty hours and where nineteen twenty comes from is fifty-two weeks.

of work times 40 hours minus the nat the federal holidays and and a week’s worth of vacation that you that you took with your family. That’s about 1900 work hours. And let’s say I’m going to be an aggressive company and have ninety six inspections this year.

I might only have less than 600 hours of inspection time. So there’s out of 1920, there might be 1300 hours that I have as life expense that is not assigned to a specific inspection that has to be looked at. And so this is where this efficiency.

and and how we’re garnering our movement through the building is so important to each of us because that’s what actually efforts the rest of our existence and for some that’s doing both residential commercial yo you could you could theoretically if you really are good at budgeting theoretically

you could create a scenario where the commercial, if you’re doing thirty or twenty inspections a year, just barely over bare barely over two a month, you could have that sustain your entire existence and let residential, you know, drive your fun. I don’t know. You know, but this is this is you know, they I read something this morning.

That two thirds of the American population does not have a household budget.

They they live hand to mouth every day. And and so it’s just it’s just one of those things. That’s what garners this conversation today. Jamie, yes, please.

speaker-1 (20:38)
Well, I’ll try to tie a few things together. I think David was asking on on score footage and all that. And so to kind of move away from pricing, because we’re trying to talk efficiency, I I think that there there’s there’s a lot of factors in der determine their price. Square footage is a big one and hours is a big one and travel time, like there’s all these things, and that’s pricing. But maybe why i efficiency is so important, the topic of the call here is that

you have to be able to get the job done efficiently and let’s also say quickly in order to charge a a fee that you’re gonna land the job. And so I’m finding in recent years that you know, look, we go too high on the fee and and we don’t land the job. And so efficiency, I think I think that maybe if you are compiling the whole thing back at at home on the computer afterwards you should consider testing

using a platform that that you can compile on site. And and one thing I’ll throw out here with this that I’ve always been big on, we’re big on, is through the last four years in CCPI online courses, every time I take one of these online courses, I have my template open in my software and my commercial property template. And and daily, weekly, monthly, we are we are making

revisions to that template. Every monthly inspector meeting we do and a commercial inspector meeting, every job we do. So when we’re finishing a report, I I might have the template open and I’m making real time changes to that template. So the next time we’re out on that job, it’s quicker. And so I think probably for us, efficiency and how long it takes to do the job is is the software we’re using, the app on the phone, and having a template that is is

robust. And so if you’re early on in the first handful of years in doing commercial, getting your narratives set up for all these things. And so you might maybe chilling cooling tower with a boiler and maybe you haven’t seen that system yet. And the first time you go out to a property that has that, that day and that report and the research you’re gonna do about all that and creating the comments for that

It’s going to take longer on that job. But now that you’ve done it once, on the next time, you’re going to be a little quicker. But the third time you’ve seen one of those systems, even quicker. So your library of comments, and you know, even if you have all of that set up, if you’re spending a lot of time editing comments that are already existing, edit those comments to where they just work the next time.

And so there’s there’s thousands of little edits in your template that I I the time it takes to go through physically, do the inspection, take the photos and write the report, that’s you know, that’s where the bulk of the time is to do this. So I don’t know if you guys wanted to get into into software and templates and all that stuff, but that’s probably where the bang for your buck is shaving time is at.

Rob Claus (23:57)
I think that’s extra ex especially true, Jamie, in the multi inspector firms. Because you want to have a consistent voice across your entire company and you don’t want somebody out there, you know, one of your one of your mini inspectors running rogue with with with terrible syntax or or or just a comment that’s completely from another planet. The same conversation goes to you might offer two different report platforms, maybe three.

You might you might be offering, you know, a a report platform that’s that an output that’s very geared towards the the bank and the and the bank users. But then you might be offering a different platform that might be strictly as a maintenance platform. That’s that here’s the seven bullets that you need to know in life. The other 15, you’ll figure them out later. But this is where the proposal comes in.

and that conversation and then you might have the obviously the the full the full comsop type type of inspection that’s that’s there. So so to that order

Are you is it are you running on an industrial building 50-50, the time spent in the field versus the time spent writing a report? Now let me say this: whether you’re you’re you’re using your handheld device in the field keying in data, or whether you’re back at your office keying in data, that’s report writing. So so what’s what percentage of your inspection is spent

manipulating the soft the the reporting. I’d love to hear that. You know, are you fifty fifty? Are you thirty thirty seventy? Are you seventy thirty? Are you sixty forty? I’d love to hear about e about some reporting efficiencies if anybody wants to share.

Tony, what are you running?

speaker-2 (25:58)
Hi Rob. I would say probably sixty forty reporting to first physical inspecting, let’s call it I guess.

Rob Claus (26:09)
So so reporting’s reporting’s heavier lifting than the inspection.

speaker-2 (26:13)
I think so, but that that I’m working on the phone as I go also. Yep. So going from taking the data, I’m counting some of that on site, and then whatever it takes to button up to report. cost tables could probably up the reporting time

Rob Claus (26:28)
gosh, yeah.

speaker-2 (26:29)
by a lot, depending on what they want.

Rob Claus (26:31)
Yeah. Yeah. And that’s the best that’s the beauty of having the the the cost to remedy being an ancillary product is I get to charge for it. Yeah. Yeah. Versus it’s it’s a or or if you decide to have a good, better, best scenario, you’ve padded that price in. Thank you, Tony. I I like I you know it’s it’s interesting to hear somebody that’s done a lot of them go, Yeah, the reporting’s a heavier load than

speaker-2 (26:54)
Now that I I never really stopped to think about it that way. I mean you do when you’re s calculating time, but you tend to put a little more time on site than you usually do. But now that part of that on site time is actually report writing. Yeah. Because I’m building some of it or at least taking notes and photos and all that.

Rob Claus (27:10)
Yeah, I mean I I actually think I’d have to classify I took a picture, I opened up my app, I put a caption, I annotated, that’s report writing. You know, that’s not just snap and run and snap and run and snap and run and you know, it’s that’s report writing. And so it’s interesting to hear that. I think I’d have to sit back and think of myself too as as as being a little bit more of a skewed number. Anybody else have something to share? There’s a lot on the a lot of people on the phone that have not shared anything.

Julian just turned his light his camera on like he’s got something to say.

speaker-2 (27:46)
Morning.

speaker-1 (27:49)
Yeah.

speaker-2 (27:50)
I’m about the same, sixty, forty.

I’ve started to use a chat GTP bot that’s right helping me write my reports, which makes it much more efficiently. so it’s been a much smoother area for me to get narratives down right according to the Compsop. so that is one area I’ve been working on and it’s been pretty good for me right now. So helping me write my reports and getting the narratives down to following the Compsop has been really great right now.

Rob Claus (28:26)
That’s awesome. Thank you, Julian.

I gotta I gotta decide. Today is the second Tuesday of the month and it’s ten thirty CST and we’re in the middle of a thunderstorm and the tornado just siren just went off. Is that irony? Is that kismet or do I need to head to the basement? Cause none of the other apps have gone up. I think it’s just the ten thirty ten thirty on a Tuesday.

Yeah.

speaker-1 (29:01)
If you if your if your feed cuts out, we’ll we’ll just keep going, all right.

Rob Claus (29:05)
Yeah, there there you go. I mean I haven’t had the emergency buzzers on all the apps go off yet, but if something happens, we’ve had nothing but storms for the for the last two months and so why not have it in the middle of this call too? Thank you, Julian. I I think I think that’s a good point. Does anybody else have have a ha yeah have a scenario? Yeah, Jill, please. I have a question. we have four or five of our inspectors who do commercial inspections.

They have taken the Injunachi training. Our one of our issues is that they have a range of time that it takes them to inspect. They all do commercial residential inspections also. It’s hard for us to standardize when we and our our template is constantly being worked on and it it needs a lot of work. It’s a it’s an ongoing constant process. My my

concern is how do we standardize our time and we price based upon square footage we’re we’re basically trying to estimate time and time that it should take and not necessarily making it about the inspector but the and and I will say too that because Katie just asked me about a an office building an office building is going to take

A different amount of time than say a warehouse because you have so many individual rooms, let’s say, and bathrooms and and you know different type of spaces. As a round table, I’ll interject, but we want to make sure we hear from everybody. As a person that managed a very large, successful commercial team, the single most important thing that I had to do was to create a full team mentorship.

that kept everybody pulling the rope the same direction, Jill. So that meant I had I had a team leader. And that team leader took every inspector out. And that team leader created that speed expectation. And so if that team leader is running, you know, I’ll use the baseball analogy, the bases at this speed.

That meant everybody had to run the bases at that speed. And if you you because you can’t lap somebody running around the bases or you’re out. And so, so after two or three or four inspections as a mentee to the mentor, you kind of get you kind of got that down. That okay, I’m going through a multifamily this speed, I’m going through an office building at this speed. And then as the manager or the person that’s doing the client interviews.

I can set that expectation up of this is how much time it’s going to spend. So this is how I can predict my profitability. but I I’ll say this as as a as a one more aside to this job costing template that we you know work book that we have. There’s there’s two workbooks up there, one for single inspector operations and one for multi. And the multi allows me.

To have a different hourly rate for each of the different inspectors. Cause if if you think about how how how companies run, I could have a higher paid employee versus a lower paid employee on the same job and create and create a mesh, you know, where maybe the highest paid employee is only on that job for three of the 15 hours. And then the lower ones might there for be there for.

for the rest of the other twelve and how I can really hone in my my experience. Well and that can also help account for for the different levels of experience. Exactly. Because there might be some jobs that a lower level inspector could could could sharpen their spear on alone versus a more experienced inspector will you know might not have

you know, might not be as profitable on that job. Thank you. Yep. Yep.

Anybody else got something to share?

I think this will be a never ending process. I think this conversation will will continue over and over and over again that that it’s really important for us to start thinking as business owners and not so much technicians that that that that other disciplines might have. Jamie.

speaker-1 (33:54)
Yeah, I just on Jill’s last question there on on for a multi trying to standardize the time. I think if you haven’t already written out each category of of property type and commercial, you know, retail, multifamily, and start start forming a a list there based on past jobs you’ve done. These big strip malls on a retail that you know

Every every third one’s got something they’re cooking, so there’s a commercial kitchen. Though those those tend to take a lot longer than industrial. And so starting your list, internal list on type, the commercial type first, you know, what type of property it is. And then maybe you have two different times for senior, senior level inspector and then newer. So the newer inspector is gonna gonna take a little bit longer and the senior is gonna be quicker. And I I I don’t know, a year

and a half ago I started trying to keep a list of you know how much time and how many inspectors per type of property. And so right now in fact in twenty minutes we’re starting a a very large retail shopping center, two story. It’s a huge it’s a huge one. And we have three inspectors on it and we’re doing a sewer scope. So I have one sewer scope guy that’s gonna be there the whole day. so that’s that’s four people on the one job. but anyway.

that that type of project that we’re doing today tends to be our long that takes longer than other types. So maybe you keep an internal list on that and you refine it. Each time you do a project, you kind of revisit, okay, how long did it take us and all that and how many people were on it and keep refining it. but you know, guys, just like home inspections, I can go on a cul-de-sac type street with a a track home built in the seventies.

And this house on this side of the street that’s identical on paper, it was a three-hour job, and a one across was six hours. The clientele needed a longer summary. The defects were different. So even on home inspection, the exact same property on paper with the same fee on paper could be a wildly different amount of time that it takes. So that’s part of the problem with trying to put down the numbers is more of a ballpark. because one

hundred thousand foot industrial to the next might take a totally different amount of time just based on the age and the systems and all that. So I I don’t know. I see it more as a guideline and what actually happens in the field when you have a multi firm and we’re doing a lot of jobs, there’s going to be a lot of variation from one project to the next, even if on paper they’re the same. So thinking of it more as a guideline, I suppose.

Rob Claus (36:43)
That’s helpful. I we actually have data we’ve been inspecting for forty five years, but we our commercial division has grown for quite a while over the last few years and and we’re not using our data and we have the data, so that’s helpful to to to try and categorize and use our data better. Thank you. Holly, are you still on the call?

Yes, sir, I am. I need to head downstairs for a couple minutes. Okay. My alarms just went off. All righty. We could continue the conversation going, that’d be great. I’ll I’ll do my best to to to log in on my phone. but other than that, I’ll try to be back in the next 15 minutes. Go, be safe. Yep. Yes, please be safe, Rob.

speaker-1 (37:33)
Combined.

speaker-2 (37:34)
See ya, Rob.

speaker-1 (37:36)
staying on on efficiency, did anyone have any thoughts along that way of other directions on efficiency and all that? Anyone have something we can go off of with that?

speaker-2 (37:53)
Yeah, I’ll I’ll I’ll tell you what I’ve been doing. for me. I’m trying to do my walkthrough of the inspection and I’ll make quick notes using my phone. sometimes I’ll do a voice memos and I’ll just have a list of items that have come across. I get back to the car, I’ll sit in the car for a couple minutes.

fill out as much as I can on my report writing app on the phone, try to save a little s time that way. So then I get back to the office to get on my computer, do all my photos and my report writing that way. So I’m trying to figure out a system that way. So that that works for me.

speaker-1 (38:36)
What what are you using for software?

speaker-2 (38:40)
right I’m using Scribeware.

speaker-1 (38:42)
Grabber, okay.

speaker-2 (38:43)
I’m using it for both residential and commercial. I’m looking around. I don’t know. I’m trying to find I I find that for commercial, I think it needs to look a little bit more commercial, professional looking. I’m trying to adjust it to make it look that way. yeah. What about you?

speaker-1 (39:09)
We’re we’re still using Spector and it’s been years years of we need to switch, but we have we haven’t done it yet. So yeah, we’re we’re still waiting to see if another product that comes out or another provider and all that stuff. and and I’m with you there. I I have not been happy for for years now with the look of our final report using Spectora. but it works, you know, it w it works and and so far we get positive feedback from our clientele and

we really haven’t received any negative feedback of, you know, it didn’t meet expectations or you know, the deliverable was was not what they wanted. So we’re still running with it. But I know that I think there’s been other meetings and a lot of other discussions around finding another software. But even with all that, there’s still I I think big value in continuing to refine all of our templates and our narratives and our libraries, because generally speaking, you can transfer that.

you know, from one writer to the next. And I just, you know, we touched on that before, but I think that efficiency, and this is the same for home inspections, if you’re I mean, if you’re going out to these commercial jobs, a lot of what you’re doing is taking photos aside from looking at things. And you know, the more you can connect a photo right into where it’s gonna go in the report and right into a comment that works, the more that you can do that, you know, you’re you’re ready to go. So if

eighty to ninety percent of the photos you take just get put in a spot in the report, into a comment, and and it’s already there, you know, you’re leaving the job with the report eighty, ninety percent written. And each time you do a job, making notes or mental notes about, hey, let’s tweak that in the template or let’s tweak that in the comment hundreds of times, thousands of times, that’s that’s really I think where the

the efficiency comes in of being able to to to limit the amount of time it takes to to write the whole thing. you know, you can go off on a whole another conversation about if the template gets to be too robust and too many comments and all that sort of thing. And there there’s a learning curve for when you have multiple inspectors using the same template, how quickly they can

use that template and find those comments and connect the photos to those comments and all that. And so that’s a big part of where the senior, more experienced people can put together a report quickly versus the newer newer people take a little bit longer. It’s finding where to put it, where to where to put the photo and and the comment and all that. but another simple one is if there’s a individual comment in your template that you find you’re editing each time you use it.

Well let’s just go ahead and edit that comment, to to be more generalized and work. But

speaker-2 (42:12)
Yeah, that I I do that. I come across something. And this this is applies to residential or commercial. And I’m working on a specific report and I need to fix something or it doesn’t look right. And I know that’s a general comment or general narrative that I have that applies to anything. I’ll go out, go into my template at that moment, just fix it. So next time it’s done, it’s ready to go. It just

Rob Claus (42:36)
Just ask and I apologize for talking so much, but Jamie, you we use Spectoral also, and I’m wondering if anyone else is anyone using the AI assistant successfully? is it helping with your efficiency? I know that that was the the plan. We have not found that to be the case yet.

speaker-1 (42:56)
use it for residential. I’m sorry, Jamie. Go ahead. Yeah, I I I have I’ve played with it a couple of times, but not not so much.

Rob Claus (43:04)
Spectora one, the one that’s built into the app

speaker-1 (43:07)
Yeah. N we d I I did start using AI a lot more to develop comments that then get saved in the template or if if you know how you

Rob Claus (43:16)
Basically

to search for the comments. So the y you’re supposed supposed to be able to speak into the phone, tell you know, as you’re doing the exterior, let’s say I see rotted wood on the so and so, there’s no, you know, the brick needs repoint, blah blah blah. And and then you can give it a list of commands and then it’s supposed to go into your template, find the appropriate comment, you would have to approve it. You’d have to s approve that comment that it has the right because they there can be subtle

differences obviously, and then it includes the picture and goes right into your template. We haven’t found that’s the goal, but or into your report. We haven’t found that to be the case. And that would be something that we would be looking for. We’re also on the fence about Spectora.

speaker-1 (44:02)
I could see how that technology as it develops and gets to gets to work better, I could see how that would be tremendous. when we take on a new inspector and train them, we haven’t hired in a while, but when we do that right there is what actually slows people down a lot. And so I could see how as they develop that, th this this is really gonna be a big plus incorporating that. I have not used that one.

but Jill, you can get on there’s a way to get on Spectora’s sort of a it’s a advisory board for developing it. We’re on it. I I think in the long run that sort of tech’s gonna be a big thing because hey, if you have three thousand comments and narratives in your template, and and boom, you can get to the the comment quicker and boom put the photo, it’ll probably work in the long run as they develop it.

Rob Claus (44:50)
In the long run I think it will. And the idea is that you can have a robust template and you could sort through, you could yeah, scroll rather than spending so much time scrolling or saving the picture and going home and trying to remember where it was supposed to go.

speaker-1 (45:05)
Yeah. I I find too that, you know, for the ten percent or five percent of the comments that have to be, you know, custom written and you’re writing it for the first time. a lot of our inspectors struggle with this is a new thing for me on commercial and I’m writing out, you know, it might be a longer a few sentence thing. And and you might struggle with, boy, how do I say this and what should I say? I think in general, using AI to assist in developing that comment.

that in in the last year has been has been more helpful. you know, it’s a new system or complex. yeah, so all of all of that I imagine for all of us, if we just fast forward a year, there’s probably going to be more and more of of of that. And and even that ties into two, the cost of cure, cost of remedy, opinions of cost. it’s really starting to help a lot more on determining pricing and all that.

So yeah, it’s here to stay for all of us.

So, Jamie, when you talk about efficiency, and I’m sitting here looking at what I’m getting ready to do, it’s for me, it’s it’s having a game plan of what part of the building I’m going to attack first. I’ve got, like I was telling Rob early, I don’t know if you you were on, I’ve got an 18 building storage facility I’m supposed to do in the next two weeks. And exciting for me, because I’ve never done one that big, but it’s their biggest problem is hey, we want to know about the roofs. That’s our number one problem. So it’s efficiency is like, okay, look, I know there’s 18 buildings.

First thing I’m gonna attack is all the roofs because everything else is kind of gonna be secondary to them in their problems. And it’s go okay. This is first. I like to get places early enough where I can see the lights on in the parking lot and all that stuff. And that’s when you’re pulling in. You can take pictures hell as you’re even driving, but take pictures of that. But then it’s efficiency. I’m getting to the roofs and then I’m doing the inside. And then I’m gonna check this and and staggering that so I know what I’m doing versus floundering around. I

I like that. I like that. I I try to train our inspectors of you know, when you’re coming from home inspection and you go to commercial and you start to get big jobs like David, what you’re talking about here, 18 buildings, we can get very overwhelmed or or flustered. You know, you show up and it’s like, man, compartmentalizing in the mind what you just said there of hey.

I’m just gonna roll up and my first target is is I’m gonna I’m gonna knock out all of these roofs. So in that moment it’s like I’m compartmentalizing, don’t get scatterbrained and try to look at everything. Like even sometimes when you go up on the roof and there’s a bunch of now the storage unit probably doesn’t have RTUs up there, but you can get up there and say it’s a retail and it’s got restaurant equipment, there’s all this stuff, your mind can go crazy and you’re trying to look at all these things. Just I I tend to

With myself and the inspectors just, okay, stop. We’re up on the roof, big flat roof. I’m just thinking roof right now. And let me keep moving until I get the this this roof finished. And then, okay, now let’s shift over and look at the RTUs, compartmentalizing in the mind. And the other one too, David, is that I found that when you get on these big projects too, you know, Rob and C C PIA always talk about the big three, roof HVAC parking lot.

We get on these big complex jobs and it’s gonna be a long day. I try in my mind to go, look, if I start getting the roof, the HVAC, and the parking lot done, once I’ve got all that done, I think of it like, hey, we we’ve got the big, most important stuff knocked out here. All these other little nuanced things are just kind of downhill from there. So and to some extent

I guess how you have your template set up too. For us, I mean, roof would be its own section, right? And it’s compartmentalized in the template anyway. So there’s a lot of way to ways to do this, a lot of ways to skin the cat here. But yeah, I I compartmentalizing and then setting up the template to make that easy. and you think of it too, on those roofs on those eighteen buildings.

If you get up there and the first thing you notice is like, it’s all the same roof material, the same age, it’s identical. So at some point, once you’ve really dug into the first one or two, theoretically all 18 buildings are going to look kind of the same. So do I need to take 300 photos of this roof? No. I I need some examples to inventory what’s there, the type of roof, and then the core defects that are going on. document that. Or you go, hey,

These these are original modified bitumen, they’re well past their expected useful life. You may only need a handful of photos to to capture that roof for all eighteen buildings, and you may only need one statement for the roof. So we got lost with with some of our our home inspection template stuff in you might have in your software.

You might have like ten different comments you use to describe that roof and all of its defects, but some of these roofs reach a point that if it’s at end of life and it’s ready for replacement and that’s clear, do I need to have ten different individual statements in my report, or can I capture it in one paragraph and have a half a dozen supporting photos? And I think for efficiency that

That part of it really, really narrows it down. you could get lost in saying, hey, if there’s 50 RTUs, do I need an individual picture of each RTU? I still do that. But same thing there. hey, how many are end of life and need replacement? How many are there and working? So I guess for some of the efficiency is I have found there’s a little bit of how we report and write that.

Is different from home inspection. And I’ve found myself and our inspectors sometimes we get out there on a commercial job, and you might want to do things sort of the way you do on a home inspection that works for a home but might not work for commercial building. And so I’ve had to over the last few years keep reminding our inspectors. I go out with them on site, you know, like, hey, we’re not doing a home inspection. Don’t just default to writing this up and inspecting it.

the way you would do a home inspection. So the the crazy thing is the the 18 buildings or say a a 200,000 square foot industrial building, if you’re looking at the roof and it’s 200,000 foot a flat roof, well, it really doesn’t take any longer to inspect that roof than a 30,000 foot industrial, other than you’re going to walk the whole thing. But writing it up and and capturing it, that whole roof is the same condition throughout, you know?

So anyway, it it can be, you know, you you can kind of shift gears and make it come together quicker, other than you physically get probably get up on 18 18 buildings. And they’re they’re flat they look to be flat metal roofs or semi-flat metal roofs. So, and that’s my argument. I’m like, well, am I just gonna jump on every one of them? And they’d look to be, I’m just I pulled them up online and they’re like there’s like 12 storage building or 12 storage units in each building that’s a long rectangle. So I’m fighting with myself going.

Do I want to walk on them or do I just want to just throw my drone up, shoot across it, and then just do those and be, I’m gonna get everything I need. I can put the videos in the report. Here’s all your roofs, and I can do the whole thing in an hour. I was just gonna ask if you’re using drones. So it’s like maybe you maybe you mount a representative sample, maybe you mount three or four of them. And then while you’re already up there, you’re getting drone shots of the others. And if they’re all identical and exactly the same condition.

you maybe you can get away with just mounting three or four of them and high quality photos with Yeah. They should be all roughly the same condition because they pr when they built them in ninety seven, they’re all gonna be roughly the same at this point. So cool.

Yeah, the the the for the last thirty years, these engineering firms and companies that do PCAs, property condition assessments, you know, something I’ve noticed in talking to realtors and brokers and all this stuff, they’re not necessarily getting as detailed as as we do. And there’s a lot more of sort of, let’s say, representative sampling. And there’s a tendency on a home inspection that

you you need to like look at every square inch and eyes on everything where whereas commercial we can allow ourself a little bit more of that representative sampling. So maybe if you were, you know, on on going on houses you’d you’d be more inclined to want to walk every square inch and avoid those callbacks and all that stuff. But there’s a way right there. You know, this is a big difference in efficiency walking all of those versus not

That would shave a lot of time off. I mean, you could spend the whole day walking the 18. So And that’s the thing. That’s where I was in for efficiency going, I don’t want to walk all of them because I don’t want this to take me two days to do this. And looking at them, I’m going, well, there’s, you know, 13 or 14 buildings are just small rectangles. I can drone through walk the outside of them, and probably finish those twelve buildings in four hours. I guess I guess I’m gonna have to go back and look at the ComSop for the overhead doors.

Are we required to open open and offer all all doors? Technically, I think Rob said yes, we’re supposed to, but the only downfall is that was my first question to her. What are you actually looking to get out of this inspection? And she said she was burned on another storage facility where they had to replace a bunch of roofs and didn’t know about it. So that’s her biggest concern is the roofs, knowing to your point, efficiency and the doors are that’s the cost of doing business. They know they’re gonna have to replace some doors.

But the roof, that’s a bigger deal. And that was my first question or shows her main thing is roofs. I’ll open and it’s ninety percent ninety eight percent rented. So I’m not gonna be op open be able to open a lot of the doors. Yeah. It is what it is. He just didn’t go, please.

speaker-2 (55:36)
Julie here. I I just wanted to chime in on that ’cause, you know, I think for from my experience on dealing with multiple buildings, usually what what I do to be more efficient and even to be cost effective is I usually offer a three tier proposal. So if they want a very detailed, very due diligence report, I charge for that.

And it’s my time and I charge a higher rate p for that. But if they’re choosing maybe a a B package, then it’s not so you know, as detailed, then you know, they they save a little money and they’re able to just get the gust of what they’re looking at. So I think that I’ve been pretty effective at using that model for pricing out and also being efficient, which helps because then I can

really realize okay, I’m gonna be spending three days on this project or five days on this project and then I’m able to price myself according

speaker-1 (56:36)
I love that. We can’t do that in home inspection. Julian, what what do you find ABC option, what do you find most people are picking? Do they pick the mid tier or what what’s the more common that they pick?

speaker-2 (56:48)
So s surprisingly probably four out of f yeah, probably f yeah, three to three out of five are going with the A package, which is the more due diligence package. once I meet the client, they feel that they wanna know everything about the building and then, you know, I’ll meet them on site and sometimes they’ll just change up, hey, you know what, let’s just do the full detail package. I really wanna know what’s going on with this building.

And so at that point then that’s when I, you know, change up and I’m able to, you know, coordinate and upcharge whatever’s necessary on that day. But I think most of the time I’m finding myself wanting to get that meeting in before with the client so that way I can make that connection and just hear what they’re looking for, hear what their concerns are. And that’s where it usually drives up to where they’re like, Okay, well, you know, we’re we just wanna, you know, we have a short contingency on this, you know, we wanna just get the just.

And they’ll just go with the package B. But I’d say about three out of five they’re going with package A.

speaker-1 (57:52)
Right on, I like that.

Well, I think we’re coming up on coming up on the hour here.

Holley Pace (58:00)
Yeah, I was gonna say sorry, sorry to interrupt you, Jamie. we’re coming up at the top of the hour and I think it’s probably a good time to wrap things up unless anybody else has anything they wanna share before we go.

speaker-1 (58:18)
Well, I could talk to Jamie for hours, but no. I mean

Holley Pace (58:23)
Well, I want to say a special thank you for everyone coming today. Unfortunately, the weather caused some connection issues. So we hope Rob’s all right. I’m gonna check in on him as soon as we get off the call. But big thank you to everyone for stepping in and keeping the conversation going. We truly appreciate everyone’s participation and all your good insights and tips to share back and forth with one another. just wanted to let everybody to make sure,

Check out our training calendar. Our next in-person class is coming up in September in Milwaukee. So check that out. And thanks again, everybody, for joining us today. We really appreciate your time and we will see you at the next round table. Thanks, Jamie. Thanks, David. Thanks, Julian.

speaker-1 (59:07)
Thanks guys.