It's Pipe, It's Not That Difficult

It's pipe. It's not that difficult. But when you're talking about aging infrastructure, a changing workforce, rising costs, and the need to get more done with less, there's a lot more to pipe installation than digging a trench.

In Part 1 of this two-part conversation, Shane, Neil, and Stephanie sit down with Josh Drummond, Operations Manager at King County Water District #90, to talk about what it really takes to build, replace, and maintain our water infrastructure.

Josh shares his journey from growing up in the field to rebuilding infrastructure in Christchurch, New Zealand, and eventually working in the water industry here in Washington. The conversation gets into aging water mains, the true cost of replacement, efficiency in the field, accountability, ownership, and where the next generation of construction workers is coming from. 

What happens when we start looking at infrastructure differently? Can we replace aging systems faster, with less disruption and at a lower cost? And where are the people who are going to do the work?

Transcript

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Josh 0:03

The case in particular was uh a big box culvert. We were working in the tide flats at Christchurch, where you literally throughout the day, twice a day, you'd watch the water start coming up the ditches while we're working. So your groundwater is that, and they they had this box culvert and we're running two HTPE lines in there. Again, New Zealand is different than the United States. What we had is two eight-inch, we had an eight-inch water HTPE, and then roughly two feet apart from that, we had an eight-inch uh sewer, pressurized sewer line. They don't, they don't, they don't believe in, I mean, it's it's sealed pipes, so we're running side by side up the highway, and there's this box culvert. And I got lucky, and I can't remember the name, I think it was wood. Is it like a global engineering firm? He was American. So we come up to this culvert, and then I'm looking at the water that's literally from the top of the road, about maybe two and a half feet down is the top of the ditch, and then about a foot down is the water, and I'm in this culvert, you know, it's a box culvert, so you're looking at like 10 feet, 12 feet to go under it. I'm like, I don't know how you're gonna do this. He says, We don't either. So I said, Well, why don't we sleeve it? Why don't we get some ductile iron pipe and we'll just freaking stick them together and it'll we'll pivot the one across the top and we'll pivot the other one down the other side and we'll just run the HTT through it, cut a hole. I mean, in essence, protect the pipes, and he's like, Yeah, well, we'll do it.

Shane 1:22

So that's your the whole 120 feet of ductile iron pipe I put in and but you guys use HTP for both water and sewer, which I think is fantastic. But is the sewer there all pressurized or is there gravity?

Josh 1:33

Oh no, when I went to work for McDowell, they were doing a section of uh of Christchurch. And of course, you go talk to them when you're having these interviews, they're like, Do you have any experience with this? And they're like, you know, these uh it was like grinder pumps. But then they go, Do you have you ever worked with vacuum sewer systems? I'm like, Ah, sure. You know, when they gave me the job, I went back to my uh my room and I'm getting on the internet, like, what the hell are they talking about? So they they they made this vacuum sewer plant that so if you if you picture it in your head, like a grinder pump, like residential grinder pump, the sewer goes into that. Well, this was uh almost a booster pump, but the valve opened when there was there was suction on the main out. So this vacuum plant would suck everything out. I mean, they were trying everything new down there to replace everything. Wow.

Neil 2:21

Welcome to the dirt with Alpine Civil Consulting. I'm Neil Tastad.

Stephanie 2:26

I'm Stephanie Tastad.

Shane 2:28

And I'm Shane Crosby. You've just heard a little excerpt from uh our guest today, Josh Drummond. He's with Water District 90. He's got world experience in construction. He's put miles of pipe in the ground. Him and I worked together for a number of years. And so welcome to the podcast today. Welcome to the dirt, Josh. It's a pleasure to have you on.

Josh 2:46

Well, thank you for inviting me.

Shane 2:48

So tell us, Josh, tell us about some of your life experiences in this industry.

Josh 2:53

Uh I love the industry. You can do a lot of things with it if you pay attention. And and kind of I we've talked about before with people working. If you show up and basically do your job, you can go wherever you want. And there's some of that. I mean, uh, thinking back to working with you back in the day.

Shane 3:13

Long time ago.

Josh 3:14

Yeah, yeah, long time ago. If you have questions, we'll we'll get to like New Zealand. But I was thinking about this the other day when logging shut down in the 90s. I think you were working with timber at the same time. And construction, we you go into construction. So I went from a small town in eastern Oregon, moved to Portland, and I remember the the the crew makeup was half loggers and half ex-convicts. And that's easily like the like the next 10 years, that's what your your crew makeup was for job sites. There was always a few ex-convicts, uh, a lot of displaced loggers, and and everybody was just angry.

Shane 3:50

Yes, but hungry for work.

Josh 3:52

Hungry for work, hungry for work.

Neil 3:54

So were you were you guys like on the road crew or something building roads, or were you actually doing the logging together?

Josh 4:00

Or no, no, no. I was I was logging to Eastern Oregon. I think Shane was up here in Washington.

Shane 4:04

Uh no, I was actually in northern Idaho.

Josh 4:06

Oh, northern, yeah.

Shane 4:07

What did you guys do in the logging industry? My first job was the chaser. Do you know what that is? Yeah, I ran ahead of the fallers and dug out the snow on the base of a tree. Okay. On the job I had, you probably, you guys, I'm older, so you guys remember remember those old moon boots? Yeah. Yep. Well, snow is about three foot deep where we're at in northern Idaho. And so I wore those moon boots, and I got a park on, I got a stocking cap, three layers of long johns, whatever I could wear. Well, after about two hours, I realized I'm an idiot. I'm wearing way too many clothes. The next day I was wearing sneakers and a t-shirt. Why? Because I ran. I had to stay ahead of the guy falling trees and not die. I made a lot of money. $335 an hour was big bucks back then.

Stephanie 4:54

Um safety's come a long way.

Josh 5:00

No, it's it's I can it's Shane's a bit older. I've had the pleasure of of shoveling stumps because uh my family had a logging uh outfit, so I didn't have a choice. So my summers, you know, I love school, but my summers were spent logging, and then unfortunately, my freshman year at damn high school burnt down. Then I got to go spend a whole month and a half shoveling stumps ahead of the phone in the store, and it's miserable. Well, it'd be challenging as a short guy.

Shane 5:28

And I'm short, don't don't anybody kid you. I look tall on my seat in here, but look, really helped.

Neil 5:34

But that just means you're closer to the stumps, closer to the ground, right? No.

Josh 5:39

You got to pitch it higher.

Shane 5:40

That's right. Well, there you go. You know, I did do that. I did that for about I shoveled snow for about two months, and then they realized that I wasn't complaining. I mean, I grew up pretty hard, so I just worked and I needed the money. And then they realized I was a non-stop worker. So then I got promoted to a uh I bumped the logs, bumping the knots on a landing with a chainsaw. Which is which is like it was like a huge step up. I could actually stop and pee. You can only get six dollars an hour for that. I I got five bucks.

Stephanie 6:12

So crazy. All right. So logging took you to Portland, Josh, and then where?

Josh 6:18

I worked on some crews there. Uh, usually it had to do with marriages and divorces. So I got divorced in Eastern Oregon, moved to Portland, got married again, got divorced, moved to Seattle. Well, it well, I'll get because I forgot about this. Uh, do you ever remember an excavating outfit called Roy Rogers?

Shane 6:37

Oh, yes.

Josh 6:38

So I went to work for them, and it was Roy and Roger were the owners of the company, and they were good guys, but they were a little over the top with this Roy Rogers thing. They had an excavator with the back of it painted trigger. The dump truck had a license plate that said bullet, and they had that's just when they came out with those goofy cowboy hard hats, and then they had these vests of bag things, and I got there and I'm like, I'll work for you, but I'm not wearing that crap. So I worked for them for a while, and that was right when uh 2001 the towers fell, and we were working an airport job, and then I was off for a while because I think everybody was kind of shut down for that period, and then I think that's when I transitioned and met. Well, I met the Gerb over at Frontier and worked for Booger for a couple years.

Neil 7:23

Neil, Neil knows Booger.

Josh 7:25

Yeah, I worked with Shane.

Neil 7:26

Booger, Booger could not keep tracks on our excavators.

Josh 7:30

I think we had that problem before.

Neil 7:32

I I don't know what he did, but every in fact, I think he still has a bunch of my tools because I'm just like, here you you figure it out every day he's throwing tracks.

Shane 7:41

Some people have that, some people have that quality where they can just like chuck a track off a machine. He'd be flat ground pavement and they get a track off. I don't get it.

Josh 7:49

He was also very good at taking the tops off manhole, not just the ledge, the whole cone.

Neil 7:54

We were we were working a job in Sand Point and it was on a steep hill, and and he was throwing tracks, and then I get a call. Uh he's exporting one day. I get a call from a truck driver just screaming at me. And I go out there, he was loading the truck over the hood of the guy's and windshield and dropping dirt and stuff all over. It's like booger, dude. You gotta be better than that.

Shane 8:17

He was a game hitter. But I think Josh, I think you and I met about that year, and you came to work with uh were we fanco or frontier at that time? We were fanco. We were fanco at that time, yeah. And we did a lot of site development, we did a lot of housing development, put a lot of pipe in the ground, yeah.

Josh 8:34

And there was a SABY, the SABE projects. Yeah, that was a little those were fun projects.

Shane 8:40

Those were really fun pro man. We put some stuff in the ground. Yeah. Back in the day when you could do that, those days are over. We don't have open ground, we don't have people don't look at it the way we used to.

Josh 8:50

And that's the thing that we've we've talked about is it was a whole different, yeah. I mean, you were there to get things done. Yeah. Um, and we would stretch. I mean, it's it's I mentioned previously that you know you're lucky if they show up at eight, they're they're packing everything up at two or three in the afternoon. And back in the day, we would stretch it. I mean, we knew times, but we would we would be like, okay, we're getting some machine off, like we're supposed to maybe be off the road at three, but we're still working. Yeah, as much out as we could, and and we would push it. I mean, the inspectors would be mad. And I don't I don't remember if it was here or when I was in Portland, but we literally would work until they'd call the police to come tell us to shut down.

Shane 9:30

Yeah, several times that's happened where we were we just couldn't stop. We had to get ahead.

Stephanie 9:34

We had is that because deadlines were recognized differently then?

Josh 9:39

I want to say it's more ownership and working. I mean, because you're working with everybody you work with, and at that time we had so many projects and not enough people to do it. So you're trying to to get the projects done so you can move on to the next.

Shane 9:53

We put, yeah, I mean, literally it was a matter of production. Everything was about how much we could get in. And we, you know, we did we cut corners? Absolutely. But we pushed the envelope a lot of the times, yes. But man, we we got stuff done. And you know, it it scares me to think we had a conversation the other day about now having to go back and replace pipe from the 90s already. It just seems really kind of a weird dynamic in my head to think that now all that stuff we put in is probably getting replaced now.

Josh 10:21

Uh well, it's it's the useful life. I mean, it's this is what we're in the industry, they were projecting 50 years is is what your pipeline's worth, right? Sometimes they'll go more depending on where they're at. But that was an industry standard. Well, we still have pipes in the ground that's been installed since the 60s, and this is where we're getting into a financial kind of crush, and and all agencies are is because we don't have the money to replace it.

Shane 10:45

And then you end up having to overtax to get budgets to cover that.

Josh 10:49

Well, it's to the ratepayers. So the issue, I mean, we live in Washington, so your uh property taxes go up, your powers going up, and then at the same time, like the cities and the counties are starting to apply these taxes over to us small districts so they can get more money. And and that's stuff that we just have to pass straight through. So it's not like the extra money that they're paying, some of it is for the BS, King County, or City Renton, just because they can't balance their budgets. It's hard on people. I mean, you're starting to see it a little bit more.

Shane 11:24

Yeah, and then I think as we're moving forward, I mean, you're you're gonna see more. I mean, we know we we've done so much work in Seattle, the infrastructure in Seattle is in such poor shape.

Josh 11:34

Oh, yeah.

Shane 11:35

I mean, it is I don't think the people of Seattle even understand how bad their infrastructure is.

Stephanie 11:41

I don't think people think about infrastructure, to be honest with you.

Shane 11:45

No, it if people saw what I saw a couple months ago with the water line that was tied into for a fire line, the amount of uh buildup in that water line oh yeah was so bad. And we're talking about a ductile line that doesn't look that old. But guess what? You would not believe the stuff coming out of that pipe.

Neil 12:03

They're just not flushing their their system. Is that why?

Josh 12:07

Or if it gets too far gone, then you can't, it's no way to get the velocity through it. I mean, they have technology that they can send, I want to call them scrubbers, but they're kind of like fin-looking things that'll scrape. You still gotta flush it, you still gotta waste water, and and it it's it's one of those that it's really not worth it. You you're better off just to replace it. I mean, a prime candidate would be pipe bursting that and pouring a new man.

Neil 12:30

Yeah, yeah. Just talking about you brought up pipe bursting, Josh, and and the cost of replacing pipe that's been in the ground for you know since the 60s, and you guys at District 90 are doing some things to reduce the cost of new water mains, like the the pipe bursting. Uh, maybe talk about the cost savings that are associated with that.

Josh 12:53

Pipe bursting is is is if you picture in your head you've got the pipe and you've got a lot of times it was rods. I worked with rods in New Zealand, but some of our contractors up here use like big ship chain to pull it. So they'll pull multiple through it and get the big ship chain through it, which they're faster. That's why we we like working with uh Jerry at UCMC and because the amount that they can replace in a day is is it's a little bit faster than rods because you're not unbuckling. So they'll hook up the sweater head with rods or chains, and you'll insert that in the pipe so they're pulling at the other end, and that splits the pipe or breaks it apart so you can pull a bigger pipe behind it. So you can upsize the pipes at the same time. That's why I mean a lot of places are are doing the uh uh the soft that they put in in and blow it up, which we can't because we need to upsize, we need more flow. So once they pull that through, then you'll come back, you can do your services, and at the same time, while this is happening, we've bypassed set up temporary lines for all the connections so everybody's still got water. But it's it's it's we're coming in about a third of the cost of what regionally everybody else is doing for their water main replacement.

Neil 14:02

Josh, is it an issue when you go back to do the services? Do you then do you have that old pipe in the way?

Josh 14:08

Do you have to do you have to cut any of it out, or how what does that look like when you go through the some of the the it's because it doesn't, it's not always straight, is the way it's split. So sometimes you kind of get this spiraling effect. And if it's we've upsized from, I want to say it was was it four inch to eight. So I mean, when you do that with steel pipe, it's it's challenging because your other pipes kind of break into pieces and it's easier to move them away. But the steel pipe, you kind of got to get in there and surgically cut it out so you can get either bands on, or we've we've switched to welded, welded on saddles, more or less. So you just get it on there, strap it, and you weld it. I mean, we're kind of moving away from metallic or products in and around.

Shane 14:51

Yeah, longevity alone is is the key for that, I would imagine.

Josh 14:56

Well, wrap your so here, I want to see Shane's shock on this because we might move away from corpses. So you've usually got your saddle in your corpse, and if we're using HTTPE in these saddles, because HTTE you just crimp off if you need to shut it off. We don't once you install it, we don't need to go back out to the main unless there's a problem. So what you've got is your saddles to a brass corpse, which become like a dielectric union, and then to poly. So we've on we have moved away from having corpses on the saddle.

Shane 15:27

Wow.

Josh 15:29

So it's it's you go to the the saddle itself, the HPE saddle, and then you butt weld on your service and run it up and cap it because when you're working at the other end, you can just pinch it. Yeah.

Shane 15:39

Well, that just makes it so much more convenient.

Josh 15:42

Yeah, and it's another $300 part that we're not buying to put in the set there to crew.

Stephanie 15:47

And less invasive to the community, right?

Josh 15:51

Uh it is. It takes, I want to say time-wise it's the same, but you don't have the amount of trucks and excavators, and because usually if we're running a new pipe, the tradition, you know, the open cut method, we have to move locations. The only locations left is like in the middle of the road. So then you're pulling up the asphalt, excavators are in the way, loaders are going back and forth, and and people, you know, they get angry about it, but it's it is a little bit less disturbing, I think.

Neil 16:20

So with milk cork, Josh, then when you guys abandon a service, how do how does that work?

Josh 16:26

Well, you could go down and and pinch it, cut it, and cap it. I mean, it's a so it's just a piece, it's the the HTPE pipe, or you could go down and and put a band over where the saddle was and remove it. I mean, most cases with our new pipes, they're not locations that they're in existing neighborhoods that you're you're probably not gonna be in there to abandon.

Neil 16:48

So you're still going back to the main to abandon that that service?

Josh 16:52

If we had to, yes.

Shane 16:53

Yeah. That's pretty amazing. So do you are you having a lot of pushback doing pipe bursting in the industry?

Josh 17:00

I don't oh, yeah, I pretty much fought with everybody.

Shane 17:04

I know you've had some challenges, and I know you and I've had this conversation before. Um, but kind of explain to us some of the challenges you're having and and some of the battles you've had to fight in and push in a more progressive idea of installation.

Josh 17:18

It most of it is your diehards, it's people don't want to change, they think it's something new. And actually, if you historically HTTPE and Deathline Iron Pipe were created at about the same time in the 60s. So it's just different chemical variations of the HTTP has gotten better. And you know, same with Duff Al. I mean, they've started putting zinc in it and things like that. But they don't they can't wrap their heads around because most people have never used it. So most people most people that work for utilities haven't spent the time installing the product. They they do maintenance on it, right? So when you install it and you work with HTTPE and PVC, I mean it it's so much quicker when you're using those materials as a physical labor on it than ductile. I mean, if you've ever had to cut 16 or 24-inch ductile iron pipe, you'll you you know what I mean. Yeah, it's it it's a process and it's not something that happens quickly.

Shane 18:12

A whole lot easier cutting out HTPE when you use chainsaws. Exactly.

Josh 18:17

Yeah, I mean it it the speed. And that's what in New Zealand it's been challenging here because in New Zealand we were still production, or that's kind of my drive was still. I mean, we were doing, I want to say on the on the thousand feet a day, and that's two pipes going down the ditch. I mean, we had stuff going, but then you get here and and some of these contractors are celebrating and said you got a stick in, you know. Like, what have you guys done all day?

Shane 18:43

Yeah, that's probably frustrating to see that on your end now, huh?

Josh 18:47

Uh it's challenging. I think I sneak up on contractors because they're not used to people with with pipe backgrounds. And and I'm not I'm fairly direct. Like if I can I can source out pretty quick. There's a few times where I've told one of the foremans to to go find your dad so I can talk to him, kind of thing. Because I can tell you don't know what you're doing.

Neil 19:12

Yeah. A lot of the the dads are gone, right? So you got the yeah, guys coming up that don't have the experience. And I think when COVID hit, a lot of the guys just didn't come back to the industry. So now you got guys coming up and you and you have to train them. So how do you how do you train your your staff to do the production where guys grew up doing this, you know, digging pipe or laying pipe for 20, 30 years?

Josh 19:42

I think what I it's the accountability. I mean, if you look back to when we were most successful, we had to be accountable for what we produced that day. I mean, there were people, you know, shame. I mean, it's you know, it's like, why is this taking so long? Or or there's no accountability. You go out to site and you talk to some of these guys, it's like, well, how many you ask a simple question, how many feet of pipe do you guys need to put in to make money? Nobody on a site will be able to tell you that. It's it's just there's no understanding of like why they're there.

Shane 20:16

Just they're there for a they're there for a paycheck, and that's it. They don't look at getting a completion of the job, production, installation. You know, back in our day, when you were the pipe layer and you had a crew, a pop like pipe layer, top man operator, you were a team. You guys owned that pipe till it was sold off. Yeah, you took pride in that pipe.

Josh 20:35

Yeah.

Shane 20:36

And it it you just don't see that today. You just don't see that kind of pride in your work the way we used to.

Josh 20:43

And it's it's running through and doing what you need to do. So as you're running pipe, you know, if you've got some free time, we might set up a test and test behind us while we're waiting for the next run, just uh get that out of the way. I mean, you don't you I have my guys directing on other projects that are not ours, telling these guys out there what they probably should be doing. It's and that's what's killing me. It's the leadership on site that is really struggling.

Stephanie 21:11

And understanding that you have to be proactive instead of having people stand around watching somebody do it, somebody's coming behind or in front, and everybody's moving, everybody has a job to do. I think that goes back to the schedule. And I know when I started Y'all started testing on construction 23 years ago. I started, I came in three years ago and joined the team, but to understand the schedule and to find out that a lot of our guys just didn't understand we had one day to do this part of the job, or we had five days to do this part of the job, and we only had two people allocated for it, or three people, and it had to get done. And I think that was missing.

Shane 21:54

Well, and you're right, Stephanie. And a lot of it was like simple stuff like okay, you're doing this right now. What's Next step? What's the next thing you need to be looking at? If you're putting sewer in the ground and you know that you've got a tea coming up in two sticks, that tea better be there by the time I get there. Yeah, you better be ready to cut pipe and let's get this thing slapped together instead of today. They wait, oh, I think we got a tea coming up. Oh, I I think we need a T. Do we have T's? Years ago when Josh and I were working together, we had if you were good and you had a good loader guy, that loader guy would be stringing pipe and parts and fittings, and that stuff would be laid out before you touch the ground. So when you were digging, that pipe was already there, those fittings were already there, and it was just a non-stop machine. I miss those days.

Josh 22:38

Well, it's you I saw it a few times when I was working overseas, but you would get everybody would be clicking. So from the outside looking in, it didn't look like we were doing a whole lot because you know we were so efficient that everything was there when you needed it, so we're waiting for the excavator to dig a set. So we'd come up, we could have a snack, you know, and talk it for a minute and put it in, but we were still doubling the footage of all the other crews, and it didn't look like we were working that hard, but it was because everybody knew what their job was.

Shane 23:07

Yeah, boy, that's so productive. That's such a good production. When everybody's clicking and you've got your stuff laid out, you just it and then it's not busy, you're not running.

Josh 23:16

You're not trying to catch up.

Shane 23:18

What what what industry challenges are you having today with engineering and doing workforce?

Josh 23:23

And well, we've got so you've got a group, and you can see this on all the different sites that we go to. If you can tell the guys that just come there because they need to do something, and you got very seldom do you run into the guys that are like go-getters, and and you know, you're like, Oh, this is a decent guy. I mean, Gus has got a huge eye opener. He's kind of like, I call him the project manager, he's our inspector. I'm working with some contractors is going out and and I told him how frustrated I was when I first came back from overseas, and I'm like, what happened to the industry? I mean, it just completely changes like you know, nobody's accountable, nobody's paying attention, they're not they're not doing their jobs. And he started to see it, even with contractors that used to be pretty good as they struggle with having any kind of experience in decision making, nobody will make a decision, and the projects just take forever. I mean, you're seeing this on a grand scale with like the 405. It's these projects are so far gone that that it's just millions and millions of dollars being wasted, and it's everywhere, it's in uh all parts of the country and the world.

Shane 24:27

I I realize the industry is trying to change and and and be more productive and be better, and but it seems as though with what they've added, RFIs that now delay projects to no end, there's no real communication with an engineer on a site, it's just different.

Josh 24:42

Well, that's a huge issue. So as I came in, we had uh an engineering firm that was managing our projects, they were doing the inspections, and then we were getting this shit that uh, you know, it's like here's a change order from three months ago. And I'm like, Well, why what is this? I mean, this is where we took a whole step back and said, Okay, I'm done with the engineers inspecting, we're gonna do it in-house.

Shane 25:06

Yeah.

Josh 25:07

Because if they if there's an RFI or they need a request, we know now, we make a decision now, because they're waiting for us. I mean, this is this is where we will get dinged if you wait too long. So I said they're waiting for us. So as soon as we kind of started doing that, we have not had a lot of uh back charging or or change work because we deal with them on site and we address it at that time because we're not, we don't want, you know, it's like told them I said, if you delay the contractor, they can technically charge us. And and that's where this whole, you know, we've moved away, stepped out and said, we're doing it in-house.

Shane 25:40

And all the jobs I've seen over the last several years, it's not like that. No, it's a three-step process getting information, even if it's even if it's critical, if it's if it's critical path stuff, the delay costs at least two weeks a month, just because it they get seven to ten days to look at the R5, they got it in the response, then you got to reprice it, it's gotta go back to the ownership. It's just like this long drawn-out thing. Just somebody give me an answer.

Josh 26:08

Well, and that's where you get to the engineer question. So before we had old engineers, you've met some of them, and that was their system. That's right. They're they're stuck in the they're stuck in the process of this is how it's been, so this is what we're gonna do. Now we've changed to where the engineers we work with, they know we want to turn things around quickly so they don't delay. I mean, a lot of it, because it's their stamp that's on the so they have to buy off on what we're saying. If we agree with it, then then they do it. But it cuts that delay down, you know, to where it might be an hour or two. It's pipe, it's not that difficult to yeah.

Shane 26:43

No, well, with what you're doing, you know, with your projects being public work stuff and stuff for your county or your district, and having your own engineering company you're working with all the time, that dynamic goes away because you guys are in communication all the time. In the private end of things, you don't get that connectivity with the engineer. Engineer is just like everybody else, he bid the job and he did this and he did that and this and that. And before you know it, you've got three entities trying to navigate something you guys have simplified.

Josh 27:12

Well, it's we haven't simplified it, we just look for what the direct thing is. And we look at okay, so we look at it because a lot of these public utilities have this animosity against contractors, which makes no sense because you guys have to build the stuff for the utility.

Shane 27:30

Yeah.

Josh 27:31

Understanding from both sides is that you can't you can't have that kind of relationship. I mean, you have to, they're doing their job for us. So if you delay them, it's it's a reflection on ultimately me on this project.

Stephanie 27:44

And that's a wrap on part one of our two-part conversation with Josh Drummond. One thing we know for sure is that there's a growing need for experts in our field, people who understand not just the plans and specifications, but what actually happens when those plans hit the dirt. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure you follow the dirt with Alpine Civil Consulting, leave us a review, and share it with someone in the construction world who would enjoy the conversation. We'll be back next week and tell them if they've been.