Notes

As a third-generation builder, Bryce Wuori has always been passionate about construction. To further this passion, he studied Construction Engineering at North Dakota State University and earned a Master of Project Management from the University of Mary. As the CEO and co-founder of Pavewise, Bryce believes that technology is key to the future success of the pavement and construction industry.

Links to learn more about Bryce Wuori

• Bryce Wuori on LinkedIn
• An article in Bismark-Mandan Business Magazine about Bryce Wuori and Pavewise
• Pavewise website

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The views and opinions expressed in the podcast and on this posting are those of the individual speakers or authors and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions held by METER.

Transcript:

BRAD NEWBOLD 0:00
Hello everybody, and welcome to We Measure The World, a podcast produced by scientists, for scientists…

BRYCE WUORI 0:07
The traditional way, you know, is doing it using different weather apps to try to look at the conditions, to do scheduling, because we have a very short window to do a lot of work, so we have to be as efficient as possible. We have, you know, extreme weather up here that really affects our quality of work, that we can do safety. So I was constantly being like a weather person for my crews, as far as, this is the conditions you’re going to see, this is what we need to change. Here’s where I’m going to have you work, because we could see a rain event here. And I was doing that all through kind of a manual process. And I was like, There’s got to be a better way to kind of automate this, right? And that’s where we started building Pavewise into it.

BRAD NEWBOLD 0:50
That’s just a small taste of what we have in store for you today. We Measure The World, explores interesting environmental research trends, how scientists are solving research issues and what tools are helping them better understand measurements across the entire soil, plant, atmosphere, continuum. Today’s guest is Bryce Wuori. Bryce Wuori has always had a passion for construction. In pursuing this passion, he studied Construction Engineering at North Dakota State University and holds a Master’s of project management from the University of Mary as the CEO and co founder of pave wise, Bryce believes technology is the future key to success for the pavement and construction industry. And today he’s here to talk about how integrating weather data can improve construction project timelines, cost, safety and outcomes. So Bryce, thanks so much for being here.

BRYCE WUORI 1:36
Hey Brad, thanks for having me.

BRAD NEWBOLD 1:39
Awesome. So let’s get started before we get into talking about Pavewise and the cool stuff that you’re doing there, we’d love to know more about your personal background. How did you get involved in construction management and eventually begin your company of Pavewise?

BRYCE WUORI 1:54
Well, it all started. I’m third generation construction so I fell into the industry through family, my grandpa owned a construction company. My dad took it over, and eventually my brother and I took it over, and from there, we were able to pretty much run our company. It was kind of when the technology was starting to take over and machine control and stuff for equipment. So we were able to adapt some technologies. And I just always like to build things. One of my hobbies is, is actually carpentry. So it just naturally fell into it. And I always kind of got a little obsessed with, how do we improve these processes and certain things with technologies? And that’s how Pavewise, kind of was developed. We created it to help our own company succeed, and then found there was a void out there in the industry that other people are having the same issues.

BRAD NEWBOLD 1:54
So about how long did it take you, I guess, from doing your own thing or working with family business to say, hey, I need to do something new. I need to do something different, and kind of spin things off and really dig into this project management and incorporating data, real time data, to improving, you know, these, these construction projects?

BRYCE WUORI 3:08
It took about, I’d say, about five or six years the traditional way, you know, I was doing it was running a lot of using different weather apps to try to look at The conditions, to do scheduling, because I’m from North Dakota, and we have a very short window to do a lot of work, so we have to be as efficient as possible. And we have, you know, extreme weather up here that really affects our quality of work, that we can do safely. So I was constantly being like a weather person for my crews. As far as this is the conditions you’re going to see, this is what we need to change. Here’s where I’m going to have you work, because we could see a rain event here. And I was doing that all through kind of a manual process, and I was like, There’s got to be a better way to kind of automate this, right? And that’s where we started building Pavewise into it and found success in it, and we ran it through like 27 of our projects in like five different states, and we’re like, wow, we’re this is really helping us with our scheduling. This is helping us with compliance. EPA requires you on construction sites to record your rainfall, and if there’s an amount and you hit that threshold, you have to do an inspection, do a do a recording. So there was another piece of the puzzle that we’re like, we can automate that too, right with this technology and this kind of mindset, and that’s how it happened. And it took probably six years, honestly, to kind of really for to thought process, to building something to like, a full out product of other people could use and run with.

BRAD NEWBOLD 4:43
So you were talking about that kind of a manual process in, you know, in the before times, is that, was that a lot of like, you know, I guess, you know, pen and paper. Are we working with Excel? You know, those kinds of things. Is that kind of how it used to be? Or maybe, I’m sure it’s still done in many ways that way.

BRYCE WUORI 5:01
Yeah, pen and paper, traditional methods are our biggest competitor right now. How it’s done to stay in compliance is a physical rain gage that you go by Home Depot or wherever, and you set it up, and you have to drive out to the site after a rain event and see how much rain you have, journal it, and then if it rains again, within 24 hours, you have to do it again. But it’s kind of one of the last things people have on their mind when they’re trying to run a project, is like, Oh, I got to go check that rain gage to stay in compliance, right? And we found, and even with the company I was with, it was not an efficient way to track what was happening on your project, because sometimes you’d forget to dump that rain Gage, or it would evaporate on a hot day, and you’re like, Well, I know I got more than a 10th of rain here it’s there was puddles everywhere. So we knew it was a kind of an inefficient way that needed to be automated. And that’s kind of what ground truth took, took a hold of was, was kind of was kind of automating that process for compliance and for for scheduling and proof of work.

BRAD NEWBOLD 6:11
Let’s talk about some of the challenges. I guess, in order to to talk about solutions, let’s go back and talk about challenges. So what are some of the main challenges that are faced by construction projects. You know, when it comes to weather events or other things like that, what is the need for you talked about compliance, but there are other concerns and challenges that go into that. Can you detail a little bit into that?

BRYCE WUORI 6:34
So a lot of these projects have a completion date, and you know, if you don’t complete this work, by this date, you get liquidated damages. And unfortunately, we can’t control weather and having good documentation and proving, you know, you got this rain, or you didn’t have temperatures to do your work, or even safety reasons, you know, high speed winds with with debris, or cranes doing picks. So we’re running a lot of numbers right now with states. We’re working with North Dakota right now, and we’re finding contractors are putting a lot of risk in their bids, which make it a really inefficient inefficiency for our infrastructure industry, because that’s money that could go towards more roads, but they’re putting it into their bids for weather risk. And really the reason for that is there’s just not a good method in place to have the good documentation to take that risk out and have the owner work with the contractor building it to be like, Listen, this happened. It’s not your fault. It’s not ours. Let’s mitigate this risk and kind of use a tool to to use efficiently and agree on the data that happened on site, and we can’t control.

BRAD NEWBOLD 7:46
I definitely want to dig into mitigation of risks with that. Let’s, let’s back up and talk about Pavewise in general, and your offerings with PavewisePro ground truth. What is all going into these offerings and your services, and how are they then, you know, what’s, what’s the impact that that people are seeing when it comes to mitigating risks and other things?

BRYCE WUORI 8:08
Yeah, so PavewisePro is the main software we’ve built, it specifically for asphalt paving contractors. And one of the reasons is asphalt paving is one of the most sensitive construction processes out there, if you think about it, there’s 300 degree mix coming that cools really fast. You can only get your compaction and quality when that mix stays warm. There’s a lot of logistics go into it. Oil and water don’t mix. Everybody knows that. And the main component of asphalt is AC binder oil, so mitigating those risks and helping them with pave wise Pro, we help them identify upcoming impacts to that project for scheduling out to seven days, and we’ve built a model that actually helps that, but then we also take in consideration of what happened on the project, and we Give out text notifications. We automate prior to these events happening, best practices like a winds picking up. They get notified that you’re expected to see 15 to 20 mile per hour winds tighten up your roller passes, make sure your trucks are tarped, just things to be proactive that could cause implications on the progress or the quality of the project. That’s PavewisePro. It’s built specifically for paving contractors in the asphalt world. Ground Truth was kind of spun off of that because we realized that we can help other industries that are sensitive to weather, bridge contractors, horizontal, anybody that works outside right, which is a lot of construction, and ground truth is designed to just help with the compliance of proving the conditions on site. Text notify. You can put in custom text notifications when you want to know that your site is at a 15 mile per hour wind for safety reasons, or at a 90 degree temperature with the humidity. Have a certain to implement a dehydration text to your project Foreman so let them know to give your employees a break. We can do all that in the key part to it is the automation. Instead of having to open up a weather app or be constantly thinking about the weather, we now pretty much are like a weather assistant for them in their pocket. They get that text notification. They know what’s happened or what has happened. They get their weekly breakdown of site conditions, and it’s just helps them save time and kind of decrease a little bit of that, that risk in the whole process.

BRAD NEWBOLD 10:36
I mean, part of this is, is having that kind of localized weather that’s there on site. Can you explain a little bit about how having kind of these hyper local weather stations helps with this whole process and automation?

BRYCE WUORI 10:50
The hyper local weather stations are multi faceted for us. They can contractors are using them to automate the compliance so they don’t have to send somebody out to dump a rain gage or do the journaling. These are collecting that data every 15 minutes, automatically, putting it to a report for them, text notifying them when they need to know certain conditions that happened on site, so that they can do their compliance. So there’s time savings behind it, but there’s also what we’re finding is we are an insurance package for them so that if an event happens, the site conditions aren’t favorable for work. They with highly accurate data, they can take this and prove everything and not be concerned about is it going to be accepted. We’ve actually, I’ve personally ran into the issue of before we ran hyper locals, and that’s why we started doing it, honestly, was we got into some litigations where there was a weather station within six miles of the project, and the data got rejected because it wasn’t on site data. Well, we fixed that real quick by putting a station on site and and that’s been huge for proving those actual conditions, because we all know a mile away could be completely different as far as weather goes for and where we’re seeing that a lot now that we have, you know, up to 50 of these deployed.

BRAD NEWBOLD 12:13
What are some of the weather data measurements, or what types of weather data are you looking for are you incorporating into your offering there?

BRYCE WUORI 12:22
The biggest that we track is definitely rain. So we we have to a lot well, every site is required to track rain, and then we do track wind. And temperature are the next biggest ones, depending on the industry and what’s being done. There’s, you know, the humidity is important in concrete curing and even in asphalt curing, it’s not exactly curing, but the cooling process of that, understanding how the wind’s cooling it and allowing traffic onto it, and those types of things, really gives a lot of data to allow the contractor to make decisions. So wind, temperature and rainfall are by far the biggest that we use, but most common.

BRAD NEWBOLD 13:08
How did you find out about METER’s weather stations?

BRYCE WUORI 13:11
We I was actually down at TRB in Washington, DC, for another event, and I just happened to walk by a booth, and we’d been, we’d been dabbling with some other weather stations, and we talked about building our own, and we’re just, we found them, and it was just meant to be. And we, we, I ordered one, I think, that day, and got it out, you know, the next week, and we started seeing the value of of how the we run the W’s so we, you know, we’re getting everything brought up into our software, and having that pretty close to real time data is is very we found very attractive to the to the industry, because they need to make decisions very fast and quick. But that’s how we found METER, and ever since there, it’s been just an amazing relationship that we are really excited to see where it goes in the future.

BRAD NEWBOLD 14:09
We are too, I’ll say that from my end, yeah, being able to have those ATMOS 41Ws, yeah, they’re on site. Are you also placing them on, say, for instance, on the pavers, on the machinery themselves, or they just kind of, I mean, because, you know, when you’re dealing with road construction, I mean, you’re moving along, you know, over miles, and, like you said, that’s going to be changing from one place to the other. Or is it, is it just you have a specific spot, kind of a central location for for those sites?

BRYCE WUORI 14:35
It’s a combination of both. It depends on the type of work. Like we just set up a big project down in Florida, and it was seven miles, and we set up one on each end and one in the middle, just to kind of collect that data. And we are testing actually, we have one set up on a paver right now, doing a research project and just seeing how it collects that data. And. And reacts to being on a piece of machinery that seems to be very attractive to the paving world, because they are constantly moving, and now they know the conditions of that, that wherever that paver is working, they know the crews are working right there and everything. So that’s going to be very interesting in the future to see where that goes. And one thing that we’re really testing with that is we have this highly accurate data now for this location where the work is being done is taking it a step further. And can we take this data now, and as we get into more autonomy and decision making with equipment, can we make the equipment understand its environment it’s in to perform better and be safer and make decisions like a human would, because you need to know the conditions you’re in to make those changes, and that data is very important in those decision makings for those machines so.

BRAD NEWBOLD 15:53
That’s really interesting. First of all, I know from Yeah, from our end, we haven’t had too many applications of folks putting weather station, having a mobile weather station, which, which is really cool. You know, the vast majority they, you know, they got their pole, they got stuff planted in the ground. It’s going to stay there for a while. But being able to have things move around, and getting, getting that local weather data as you’re moving around is really cool. And the other side, I know, you know, we’ve talked with folks in, you know, the precision agriculture side of things, and they’ve got machinery, you know, that’s, that’s super amazing, that, you know, can basically run on its own. That’s, you know, GPS and, and it can, you know, you can program it in, and it can do whatever. Are we getting to that, to that point, like you said, with, with, I guess, construction engineering, with that equipment, where, where things can be programmed. And you can have machinery that could potentially run on its own?

BRYCE WUORI 16:43
Yeah, absolutely. One of the big pushes with that is construction industry is in dire need of workers, and so the industry has adapted and found ways to use technology to automate like down in Florida, there’s a company called tell you they’re actually setting up payloaders and stockpile sites to load trucks and move material with no operator in them, or the operators in a air conditioned office, running it from a desk right. And the project we’re starting on Monday is actually a technology research project where we’re testing the stations. We have three stations on it, and we have a new piece of equipment, first one ever. It came over from Europe, and it’s a it’s a machine that’s actually making adjustments and learning its environment, and we’re kind of looking at the data, what it’s collecting, versus our stations, and understanding how this machines operating in its actual environment. So it’s, it’s definitely going in that direction.

BRAD NEWBOLD 17:46
So along with that, what are some of these other, I guess, what are some of the main obstacles or challenges that you’re seeing when it comes to, you know, integrating weather intelligence into what you’re offering or, or any other, you know, ways that you’re you’re seeking to to impact the industry?

BRYCE WUORI 18:04
Right now, we are developing something that has never been seen before by the industry, so we’re doing a lot of behavior change. Is, is it’s always been done this way? Well, now there’s a way that can, we can do it more accurately and actually save you time. It takes a while for the industry to trust that that can be done that way and change their behavior, but we’re having good success with that. It’s a slow process, but we haven’t had a company or a pilot or anything that we’ve done where we set up stations in our software and they’ve not found value in it. We’ve never had an unsuccessful or a customer churn on us because of they didn’t find value in it. So now our big thing is, how do we, how do we implement this across an entire industry, and change the behaviors to improve the quality the industry itself and just the whole process? And that’ll take time, but we’re we got good partners at the company, industry, leading manufacturers to DOT’s and stuff, that are listening and see there needs to be change happening, and they’re supporting it so that support has been phenomenal.

BRAD NEWBOLD 19:17
Let’s dive into some, I guess, some case studies, some stories. What have been some, yeah, some recent projects where, where Pavewise has helped when it comes to impacting the industry, mitigating risks, ensuring safety, you know, all that kind of stuff. You said, you, you’re you’re out, you’ve got about you said, over 50 projects right now that are that have been ongoing with Pavewise, yeah. What are some of the big, big stories that you’ve that you’ve been learning?

BRYCE WUORI 19:42
Oh, we’re learning a lot. Yeah, we’re 50. We just hit over $5 billion worth of work that we’re now protecting or helping make decisions on in 13 different states. Now we’re just sent, actually, we just sent a unit out to California today. So might be 14 states, but. But some of the neatest things that we’re finding, like, what fills my cup a lot is helping the industry. The case studies of having that operations manager that now is saving an hour or two a day by having our system automatically journal their site conditions and their weather impacts, text them when they are in compliance, is what I really enjoy hearing. And we’re finding that’s really what a lot of the users like, is the time savings, the automation, but from more of like, a standpoint of of dollar and like, one of the cool projects that we were working on now is we have a project that was impacted by we’re up to 21 days. They’re 67% over their average rainfall. And we’ve collected all this data for three months now. I think it’s been about two and a half three months, and the completion dates coming up pretty soon, and they’re just they’re not going to complete it on time. There’s no way. They’ve lost 21 days, and the DOT, the owner has actually kind of had a mind switch of you guys have this data up here. Let’s use it to come into an agreement on this project so that we don’t have to charge this contractor liquidated damages. We you know that the amount of high accurate data is there so that they can make a good decision. So potentially, this one here, we’re looking at saving this contractor upwards of $100,000 and the state is seeing the value in it, because we’re starting to show them every contractor is building risk into their projects, right? So, I mean, it costs them a lot of money, and this tool is helping them do that. We helped a contractor proof compliance of on a paving project where they had a specification in where they couldn’t pave this thin lift over 20 miles per hour winds, and we were able to prove every day that they were in compliance. And there was one day where it was close and there was kind of a discrepancy in what, well, my app said this, and my tool said this, and we’re like, Well, we had a station less than a half a mile away that said this and and I think we’re going to trust this data more, and it kind of just went away. The data is very powerful in decision making and in, I keep saying mediation, but like, just, it doesn’t lie, right? I mean, it’s, it’s what happened, and it’s just it solves so many questions and that you used to previously be there. So that’s, that’s exciting, and we’re, we got two more projects that are kind of in the same situation. The one contractor is in $5,000 a day liquidated damages. They’ve been hurricane, actually, this was the hurricane in South Carolina came through here, and they’ve been impacted heavily, and they had some damage on their site, even some sound barrier walls tipped over. They had to file a insurance claim. They actually used our data to show that there was 93 mile per hour winds and stuff that actually happened on the site, right, and that helped them get through that process that much faster.

BRAD NEWBOLD 23:14
You’re talking about all these big events and unexpected weather events and other things like that. But I think one of the things that caught my eye was at the beginning of what you said there, because said there, because even if you’re saving folks, you know, an hour to a day, and you’re dealing with billions of dollars in projects, I mean, even just that, that savings of an hour to a day is going to be huge over the time span of that project. And so, so I think, yeah, there’s, there’s a lot of really cool stuff that that you’re doing when it comes to mitigating risks, you know, again, facing extreme weather events, but when it comes to just the simple inefficiencies that that we see, and this isn’t just, you know, with with construction, but but also any kind of, you know, project management that that folks have to deal with, it’s trying to figure out how to, yeah, streamline those, those projects, those tasks. You know, what do people need to do and, and, you know, managing those large groups, and there’s just, there’s always leakage, right? There’s always stuff that that goes on. There’s always, you know, project creep and other things and, and so being able to find ways to to have improve those efficiencies goes a long way to helping, you know, cost effectiveness of any project but especially looking at construction there.

BRYCE WUORI 24:21
Absolutely, and looking at it from a standpoint of reevaluating how the project went, and now being able to find trends in data, in the weather and seeing like well, my idle time was up 70% on this project. Why? Well, you know, if you had 21 days of rain, you’re more than likely going to have a lot of idle time if you’re trying to work. So we’re really finding value to or the users are of being able to identify, like, how can I be more efficient, and what is causing this? And making those decisions, like, I see this all the time. Like, look we just told you, you got a 90% chance of rain and it’s raining right now, you’re not going to be able to work today, shut your equipment off and call it a day. And I think that kind of confirms and helps them make those decisions a little bit that we can’t control this, and sitting around watching it rain isn’t going to help anybody. It’s just going to cost the project more money and fuel and emissions and time so.

BRAD NEWBOLD 25:17
Actually, could you go into a little bit of detail about just kind of how, how the whole process works, of people using, you know, using Pavewise what would a day in the life of a project manager look like, whether they’re there at the home office or they’re there on site? How would they use your your systems and, you know, what? What would they do? What would they be looking for in order to make those decisions about, like you said, whether to call it a day or to say hey we’ve got five hours today, or something along those lines?

BRYCE WUORI 25:45
On a more mobile crew that is moving around a lot more. They’re using it as a mechanism to help them determine where they can work the most efficient sometimes, like here, where we’re headquartered, we have five, six stations around town, and even in 10-15, mile radius, if it’s raining on this project, it could be clear on this project. So, you know, they pick up and move instead of wasting their time and going over to see what the conditions are here and scheduling reasons. You know, we do have a proactive API in ours as well that’s giving out predictions on on that, but also where it helps that contractor is waking up in the morning, and instead of having to drive out to each site and see where he can move his crews to, or send his crews out there and see that they can’t rain, that it can’t work because the conditions aren’t right, he goes on his app and he can see at four in the morning, oh, we got point seven, five inches of rain. We ain’t working there today. I’m not even gonna send the crew out there. We’re gonna stay in the office or shop and take care of things or go find let me check this site: Okay we only got point one, five inches over here. We’ll be able to work there by nine. So he’s making those switches without even having to physically be there on site and see the conditions. So that’s the huge time savings for like the mobile the projects that are longer term, and a lot of mega projects, two, three year projects, it’s getting set up, and it’s getting, you know, it’s helping with the compliance of telling you when you need to do a rainfall notification or a SWIP or erosion control, but it’s also they’re more of a set it and leave it. They’re taking the report every seven days out of it and importing it into their project management software. They’re using the data to prove conditions. They’re using it for more of a compliance tool. They don’t they’re not in it near as much they might go in it to look at the upcoming week schedule and stuff like that, but they’re, they’re in one spot. They can’t move anywhere else so they’re, they’re really more using it as a insurance tool.

BRAD NEWBOLD 27:51
You talked about, you know, working with API, and I would assume you’re pulling from National Weather Service data. Is that, is that what what you’re using?

BRYCE WUORI 28:01
Open weather.

BRAD NEWBOLD 28:01
Open weather okay, all right, so with that, are you, are you delving at all into, you know, predictive weather analytics and forecasting. And I guess, how far out are, is your, you know, are your expectations, or are, do you feel you’re you’re accurately or able to accurately forecast? It’s a huge, I mean, this is kind of, we can go on a tangent here with with weather forecasting, and especially when you’re doing, like you mentioned in South Carolina, Florida, you’re dealing with, you know, hurricanes and other big weather events. And, yeah, how do you deal with with, yeah, the forecasting side of things, when it comes to Pavewise?

BRYCE WUORI 28:33
Yeah, forecasting is always difficult. We don’t even try to go out any farther than seven days. And it’s more of a this is potentially how your project could be impacted in the next seven days. So we built what we call impact calculators into our software. So if a quarter inch of rain is going to shut you down for the day, that’s a high impact, right? So you can actually see based off of certain weather contingencies as set up like your impact, so you can actually see your progress. And honestly, we’ve had some project managers even see that, you know, the next three days of work are not very good and efficient, so they might work extra late two days prior to try to make up for one of those days. You know, we see really highly accurate times, and sometimes we’re just like, where, where did that data come from? And it’s a tool, right, it’s, it’s just there to try to give you some guidance. And that’s one of the issues that this industry was having, was trying to use weather models to prove site conditions and stuff, and it’s just, it’s not accurate enough data, and it was not helping them, it was sometimes hurting them. So we have it in there to help but it’s, we inform everybody it’s, it’s a prediction it’s not it’s not perfect.

BRAD NEWBOLD 29:55
What are some of your your future endeavors? What, what, what are you hoping to expand into when it comes to to Pavewise and and your services?

BRYCE WUORI 30:05
Oh, we have a lot of lot of ideas. When you’ve been in the industry long enough you you see all the inefficiencies. We’re really interested in using this data to help the the construction equipment perform better, and operators when a condition changes in the environment. Training them and notifying them that they should change as well to adapt is very important in that proactiveness, I talk about being proactive like if we know these conditions are going to change, we have to change as well, or else it’s just you’re going to have risk and issues happening. So being able to identify those changes that are upcoming and building them into more automation that maybe even the machine can make the adjustment for. We’re also working in insurance. Honestly, there’s a lot of weather insurance out there, and a lot of these large projects have policies on when and stuff like that, and we can help prove those conditions to either protect the contractor or help the insurance company understand that this actually happened. So that’s been kind of a area that we’re dabbling in quite a bit. And the final being in being more efficient with moisture, asphalt, concrete. They all get put through a burner or a process where it’s a heat to dry out the material and make, you know, the AC brought in. And if we can use weather conditions, the wind blowing and stuff and help them determine where and what material in the piles have the least amount of moisture, we can reduce burner fuel, reduce emissions, reduce costs. So we’re running models right now in quarries. We actually have a unit set up in one of the biggest quarries in North America, owned by Texas materials, and it’s just like a piece of food, right? If you blow on it, it’s gonna cool. So the wind blows on these aggregate piles, and it’s drying the material over here on this side. Or if the wind comes from this direction, or rain, or even if the sun’s radiating on it in a certain we can kind of predict, like this is your best chance of success if you take from right here. So we’re building these stockpile prediction models using weather, highly accurate weather on site. So, I mean, it’s, it’s limitless honestly.

BRAD NEWBOLD 32:20
It sounds like it. I mean, it’s kind of fun to hear. I mean, starting out with, you know, dealing with, you know, asphalt paving, and being able to expand out, because, like you said, there’s a lot of applications for for this kind of, you know, localized weather and what you can do with it. I mean, we’ve seen the same thing, like I mentioned earlier, with in the agriculture industries, where you will have, you know, farmers, growers, producers, where they will have fields and they will have, you know, yeah, this one, this one plot is, has its own micro climate, compared to another plot that only might be, you know, several acres away, you know, those kinds of things. And so, so being able to see these applications, and, like you said, I mean, it’d be fun to see what Pavewise will be looking like in 5 to 10 years, and and what other industries will you be able to impact beyond, you know, construction and other other things. I mean, you talked about mining, you talked about getting into and working with insurance. I don’t know. Do you have any anything that you you really would like to focus on, that that you’d like to kind of hyper focus on when it comes to what Pavewise will be getting into in the next 5 to 10 years?

BRYCE WUORI 33:24
Yeah, we, you know, obviously AI is a huge buzzword. But what AI is really good at is managing and organizing data, right? It needs large, large amounts of data sets and stuff, so being able to, you know, collect all this data in these different areas and help even potentially predictive models, models be even more accurate help identify risks. I mean, like, that’s one of our biggest things too. Is like environmental conditions do cause a lot of safety issues on these projects, from slips and falls if there’s a little bit of rain on the surface, to the wind, wind causes so much issues with door slamming and people getting hurt, debris flying, lightning strikes, obviously. So I’m really passionate about trying to find a way to help the industry be safer and more efficient, and using AI, we have some AI running in our back end now to help manage documents now, and actually, we just came out with an AI camera that can take a picture of some of the other sensors and gages we have, and it’s smart enough to digitize it and put it into a format for them and pin it to pin the location in our map. So, yeah, super excited about what the potential of AI has for the construction industry and just in making people that much more efficient in this industry without even knowing it. That’s the coolest thing about AI is a lot of times you don’t even have to have it present to really be impactful.

BRAD NEWBOLD 35:01
Now, kind of coming back around to what you said earlier about about how construction industry might be a little bit slow to adopt new technologies and processes, right? I guess, what are some of the ways that you’re that you’re dealing, I guess, with, for lack of a better word for marketing or outreach when it comes to to helping to change people’s minds when it comes to automation and having integrated weather data?

BRYCE WUORI 35:27
Yeah, we I was pretty fortunate that I’d been in this industry, so I knew a lot of people, and had a lot of people to trust that when I had a product that could help in there, they believed me, right? So I wasn’t just trying to sell them cold, I guess. But what’s really helped us is, anytime there’s a change or disruption, finding that champion company or champion within that company that is wants to use technology or wants to see a change and sees the inefficiencies and just kind of piggybacking on them to, like, you know, make it, make it happen, because they’re gonna ultimately be the ones that push it further and further and champion it. So we have a lot of those companies now that are our champions. We have some that are really pushing it hard, and that’s been huge for us, is getting those people because it’s organic. So, like we do a lot of organic, it’s just kind of the old construction way. Shake a hand. Want to meet in person. I unfortunately have to do a lot of traveling to go out and meet new companies and make that relationship, which I’m totally fine with. I love meeting new people and stuff. But we have to build that trust. If that trust isn’t built. We we have quite a significant less chance to be successful with them. So we do, we do some digital marketing as well. I’m pretty I’m pretty active on LinkedIn. I do a lot of posts about the industry, about weather, and that’s really there’s a lot of professionals on LinkedIn, and it’s a really unique platform to share and connect with people, but probably about 75% of our marketing is through organic, word of mouth, some expos, and just having good champions, users that are want to talk about how they’re using a technology to save two hours a day.

BRAD NEWBOLD 37:25
You know you’re talking about the private sector. Are you seeing much movement or potential for movement with you know, when it comes to the government side of things, when it comes to you know, policy changes, or you know when you’re doing, especially when you’re dealing with compliance, I mean, that’s huge and and being able to see how, you know those processes might move a little bit slowly as well. Do you see any any change or any positive outlooks there? Absolutely,

BRYCE WUORI 37:48
we’re working with 2 DOT’s 3 actually 3 DOT’s right now to where two of them have approved this method and this technology to be used for compliance, because they seen the inefficiencies of the original method, and they’re like, this is the way to do it. And so we’re working on some states right now. I’m working on a special provision for a contract to allow the use of a technology like ours to be the mediation tool to identify working days, non working days, and and take the risk or share the risk between the contract. So that is a slower process by far. Anytime you know the government gets involved, it’s it goes through a lot of hoops and is a lot slower. But quite honestly, it’s unbelievable how accepting they’ve been, because they they see the issues they have with it now, and the amount of money they spend on manpower and just to stay in compliance that they have to push and the automation of it can just save them so much time. They’re the ones that are paying the bills right so it will have some states in the next few years, I think, implementing the software and the technology into their contracts pretty commonly.

BRAD NEWBOLD 39:06
Well we look forward to that, and we’re glad to be a part of of what you guys are doing. I hope that we can be, yeah, definitely long term partners in being able to help you succeed in whatever you’re doing there with Pavewise, I think that’s that’s all the questions that I have. Is there anything else that you’d like to let our audience know about, about pave wise, where they can find more about you guys and and the cool stuff that you’re doing?

BRYCE WUORI 39:29
Yeah, no I mean, the biggest thing the infrastructure industry is really cool I’m always supporting that. Like, if you think of all the roads we drive on and the bridges and everything, it’s very vital, important to our industry, and I like to shine a little light on the importance of that. And next time you drive by a road construction project and stuff, just kind of, you know, say hi and say thank you. Because without this infrastructure, you imagine it’s really one of the biggest things we have going for us in the United States, is we have pretty good infrastructure compared to. A lot of other places. So keeping that infrastructure up, using technology to to keep building more efficient and better we get to do that. We’re the ones making these changes right now. They can find them pretty active on LinkedIn, PavewisePro.com can check us out and happy to talk anything, weather, construction, engineering, I will talk for hours about any of them. So reach out if you have any questions or just want to learn more.

BRAD NEWBOLD 40:31
Awesome and again, for those in the audience, yeah, if you’d like to know more about about our weather stations, especially what we talked about here with the ATMOS 41W you can check us out at metergroup.com as well. So thanks again, Bryce, for your time. It’s been a great discussion, and I hope everybody in the audience has really appreciated this, especially within the private sector, and be able to see, like we’ve mentioned before, kind of the bleeding edge of technology, a lot of really cool stuff going on out there.

BRYCE WUORI 41:00
Yeah, it really is. It’s fun, and I appreciate you having me on and yeah, we’re out just trying to change, change the industry and make it better, and we’re doing it with with your technology. And it’s fun to have that kind of partnership and just keep grinding away out there.

BRAD NEWBOLD 41:15
And if you in the audience have any questions about this topic or want to hear more, feel free to contact us at metergroup.com, or reach out to us on Twitter @meter_env and you can also view the full transcript from today in the podcast description. That’s all for now, stay safe and we’ll catch you next time on We Measure The World.