By Varuna Desai, Sean McDonough, Max Harkness, Lucia Pan
May 1, 2023
The 2023 AGC Annual Convention
On Sunday, March 12, 2023, four UMass AGC chapter students departed for the 2023 AGC National Convention at the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. The convention began on March 13 and lasted through March 16. This venue offered large auditoriums and meeting rooms for the many activities and workshops that were open to AGC members and student chapters. Our goals were to share and bring our club presence, activities, and values to other student chapters and professionals in the industry. Here is a reflection of our trip!
After landing on Sunday, we got straight to work preparing a trifold display for the student showcase. There was a room set aside where AGC student chapters from all over the country exhibit what they have been up to this past year.
Monday:
On Monday, we came and set up our trifold highlighting our events and showcase what our club has been up to. We included descriptions of events we held this past year and provided stickers to attendees!
The first event we attended was the First Time Attendees Welcome Session. There, we had the chance to begin mingling with other students and attendees. Presenters went over how to navigate the convention events and gave us tips to make the most of this trip as attending events like this may be overwhelming.
Soon after, the Opening Session began for this 144th annual convention! Notable speakers were outgoing president Dan Fordice and incoming president Les Snyder. They spoke about how the national AGC is continuing to lobby in congress for the construction industry.
They also introduced the Culture of Care initiative where businesses can take a pledge to commit to including every employee. Then, Innovation awards were presented. We found some of them exceptionally cool! Here are some to keep on your radar:
Jobsite Access – efficiently tracks and checks work and identity of workers on job site
Greenbadge – tracks waste and quality of materials used
Togal AI (First place!) – AI Take-offs in seconds, it has saved 14,000 man hours on its first project!
Finally we heard from Keynote Speaker Safi Bahcall, who wrote Loonshots, an instant Wall Street Journal bestseller. Loonshots are these crazy ideas that you can, and should take! He went over how to balance innovation while maintaining the core of a company. His main idea left us inspired, quoting “One accurate experiment is worth a thousand expert opinions,’’ and to never say something will never work, experiment!
Monday concluded with the Welcome Reception held on the beautiful terrace of the venue, allowing us to continue mingling with other student chapters and attendees.
TUESDAY:
Tuesday morning, each member parted ways to attend some workshops. Below are descriptions from each member:
Varuna attended Top 10 Reasons Contractors Succeed. This was targeted towards businesses but here are some of the more notable reasons that could potentially help you as an individual. First way is effective risk management. By avoiding disaster jobs and not letting your ego interfere can help you succeed. A statistic I found surprising was “7/10 contractor failures can be traced back to one bad job”. So if we take a minute to look at the overall process, we can avoid failure. Another reason is being Data Smart.
This starts by forecasting and tracking and having consistent Operational Strength/Performance through time management. Keeping track of all this data with a solid SOP and finishing strong sets you apart from other contractors. As students, using data and keeping track of our progress can help ease academic projects. The next reason contractors succeed is having a diversified and profitable work mix. A range of capabilities allows you to profit from diversity. The final reason is Effective Business Planning. By answering questions like “Why do we exist?” “Where will we compete?” “How will we win?” “How do we organize?” and being proud of what you are doing will allow you to succeed as a contractor. Although I can’t apply most of what I’ve learned yet, it was interesting to learn what is currently boggling contractors.
Sean first attended The Art of Partnering. The art of partnering was a workshop led by a panel of 6 highly experienced federal contractors. The speakers were Shea De Lutis, Matt McCaulley, Jeff Harper, Mac Caddell, and Matt Ferguson. A highly discussed topic during the presentation was the foundations of a good relationship between agencies and contractors when undergoing a large construction project. An example of good partnering that Sean took from this workshop was an experience Matt McCaulley had during the Coronavirus pandemic. He took part in the construction of a Covid hospital that was designed and built in 23 days. He believes the project was a success because everyone on the project shared a common inspired goal. The discussion also centered around building trust with your coworkers and partners through being direct and honest about issues concerning the project. Although he was not able to add much to the conversation, Sean took a lot from this workshop that he hopes to apply to his life and future career.
Sean also attended the workshop: Increasing Risks to Infrastructure from Climate Change: Realities and Opportunities for the Construction Industry. Joel D. Scheraga, Ph.D., Senior Advisor for Climate Adaptation with the EPA’s Office of the Administrator/Office of Policy led this very interesting and inspiring workshop. Sean particularly enjoyed it because Dr. Scheraga was able to present many problems and provide solutions to help contractors get involved. He discussed current investments in water and wastewater infrastructure construction to ensure accelerated resilience and adaptation to the impacts of climate change. Some challenges he presented were the speed at which the climate is changing, the increase of storm frequency and intensity, and the current and predicted effects of the rising sea level. Dr. Scheraga believes that through increasing the availability of training, financial incentives, tools, and technical assistance, contractors will be more enthusiastic in helping our country prepare for the effects of a changing climate.
In the meantime, Lucia attended another workshop that was happening simultaneously called “Business Transformation of a 100 year old Family Owned GC.” In this workshop, representatives from Barton Malow spoke about overcoming technological resistance, labor challenges, and supply chain issues. Times are rapidly changing and for a business to stay in business, one must adapt to its time. In order to stay relevant, the company resorted to several methods like employing offsite manufacturing, battle over data ownership, and generative design. LIFTBuild, a subsidiary of Barton Malow, is created as a data company that builds buildings. By hiring data scientists in the construction company, they use technologies like construction IQ, to increase assembly efficiency and minimize variability in the delivery process, and other technologies like Bridge, to share and own data as intellectual property. Overall, it highlights much of the complex modern day problems construction managers face and was a very rewarding discussion to be a part of.
Max attended the presentation “Supply Chain – What Should and Should Not be Keeping Contractors Up at Night” by Craig Schmidt, Stephen Shapiro, and Timothy Jed. Together, they provided real-world perspectives on some critical challenges faced by the construction industry. In particular, they noted that Covid, the Ukraine war, material and equipment availability, and shipping delays are evolving challenges that are difficult to predict, and can significantly impact construction projects at all levels. This presentation reinforced how interconnected one project really is. From sketches to blueprints, project ideas need to be communicated across multiple trades before continuing onto the construction stages. I learned that the willingness to share limited resources and to use new construction methods is important during a project. Additionally, I learned that augmented reality and visual aids can be crucial communication tools during this entire process. The discussion that followed their presentation included some Q+A by members of the audience. Resiliency, adaptability, anticipation, prioritization, and collaboration were a few points of the discussion. I appreciated Mr. Schmidt’s video showing people using tablets on sight to help in their work. After attending this presentation, I have some lingering questions about the factors influencing availability, pricing, and delivery times in the supply chain that are worth learning about. Overall, the insights shared by the speakers were valuable in helping contractors better understand the dynamic nature of the supply chain and how to navigate the challenges it presents.
Student Chapter Meeting
This meeting was the highlight of our trip! All student chapters were invited to participate in this meeting. It started off with a delicious lunch and welcoming remarks from organizer Paige Packard and President-elect Les Snyder. We were really inspired by listening to Outstanding Student Chapter Award presentations. This meeting concluded with a round table discussion with other chapters. We were randomly seated at tables and discussed how other chapters are structured, what events they do, volunteering as well as diversity and inclusion in their chapters. Here we gained connections for future collaborations. We are excited to bring some of these ideas to UMass!
Tuesday concluded with a party at Hard Rock Live which allowed us to bond while enjoying Las Vegas.
WEDNESDAY
On Wednesday, we stayed with our display in the showcase room to network and talk to anyone passing by. We had noticed we didn’t get that chance on Tuesday due to workshops.
After designated times were over, Max, Sean, and Varuna headed over to Conexpo where we saw insanely huge heavy equipment, cool demonstrations, and technology!
During the events, our group participated in a scavenger hunt where we received signatures by networking and answering trivia questions, we got to take home the $200 prize!
Overall, we had a brilliant time attending the convention! We learned about different aspects of the construction industry that we’ll be heading into. We also networked with professional members of AGC and discovered new ways of running our clubs with the help of other student chapters. If we receive this opportunity again, we hope to continue to grow the UMass Amherst presence in the industry as much as we can. We sincerely thank our CEE department for supporting our trip and giving us the chance to learn about the organization we are part of!
This is great!!!