Brad Wyant (00:00)
welcome to management under construction, the podcast. I'm Brad Wyant.
Dee Davis (00:03)
And I'm Dee Davis.
Brad Wyant (00:04)
we are here today to talk about. A sustainability topic that is near and dear to our hearts, specifically sustainability on the job site job site trailers that we often work and meet in. So the big question for today is why are the field and trailers always left out of the sustainability conversation?
Dee Davis (00:25)
this is one of my biggest pet peeves. We have all of these sustainable things that we do for the buildings that we build. We have LEED, we have all these different programs for helping us define what a sustainable building is and how to build something sustainable. But when we're building, the active building is not very sustainable. We have terrible habits on our job sites and in our job site trailers.
that we don't do at home. We do things in these trailers and on these job sites that we don't do at home. And it absolutely drives me crazy. So my question is, why are the field and the trailers always left out of the sustainability conversation? So if you've been around construction for any length of time, I'm sure you have been on a green build type project where you're maybe the LEED or some other kind of sustainable
building practice that you're using. Net zero, there's tons of them out there. But these only apply to the building materials and not so much about what's happening on the site. So trailers are their own little ecosystem and our commitment to sustainability stops. originally when I wrote this, I said at the trailer door, I'm going to back that up and I'm going to say it stops at the gate. It stops at the gate to the site.
If you have a gate on your site, our habits in the field contribute greatly to waste. And we just don't think about our habits so much when we're at work in general. This is very true in construction, but I think it's true in a lot of different places, no matter where you work.
Brad, do you have some examples of things that you've seen on job sites or in job site trailers that are just things that we don't do at home or just really horrible sustainability practices?
Brad Wyant (02:18)
So I've got a couple examples here. My dad's favorite is from the Terry Tate linebacker office. Culture videos that ESPN used to put out where there's a linebacker who gets hired to come and police office. Habits for people and. some office worker like pours the last of a pot of coffee, into his cup for.
the break room and walks away without making more coffee. And out of nowhere, Terry Tate just tackles him out of the frame. And he goes, you know the deal, Terry. You kill the Joe, you make some more. And it's just like, it's what everyone who works in any office ever is like cheering for. Yeah, you can't be that guy. You cannot be the guy who ruins everybody else who doesn't make the next pot of coffee. Especially in job site office trailers where
It's a temporary structure. It's cheap linoleum tile. It's crappy fluorescent lights. Nobody wants to keep that environment safe. It's just like, my God, when can we get this thing out of here and be done on the next project? don't like it. I'm throwing plastic water bottles on the ground. I'm not treating anything in here that's sacred, even though we all spend a lot of our lives working in these things. Job site office trailers are an environment that are specifically culturally
under appreciated and under kept. They're always messy. We barely keep them clean ever. And especially when the job is busy. If you walk in and the trailer is a mess, it's a sign that everyone's got their heads down. But it's also a sign that no one's happy that everyone is not in a good place, not a good state of mind.
Dee Davis (03:56)
we do all kinds of things on job sites that just blow my mind. Like one of the things that has happened on pretty much every job site I've ever been on is the AC or the heater is running with doors and windows open. Who does that? Have you ever done that at home? Of course not. You turn on the AC or you turn on the heater and you go, close all the doors and windows. But in a trailer, people just prop it open. They're like, whatever,
Brad Wyant (04:24)
so it's a little bit also who's paying for it in those cases, I think sometimes.
Dee Davis (04:28)
Well, and a lot of times the owner's paying for the jobsite trailer bills. you know, it comes out like the GC will pay the bills, but it's all reimbursable through the owner. there's some of that. It's just our attitudes get really weird when we're in these jobsite trailers. Buying cases of plastic water bottles for the field is another pet peeve of mine. And we're going to talk about some alternative examples of things that can be done. the back in the day,
We never did that before. And now all of a sudden I see the foreman or the project manager or whoever, or P.E., whoever's responsible for buying all that stuff, pull up with a truck bed full of cases of plastic water bottles for the field. And it drives me absolutely crazy. The best example I've ever had on a job site.
Was a large job site. It's easier to be better when it's large. I get it. So not everybody works in large job sites and so sometimes the smaller the trailer the kind of worse it is. But I had a large project about probably five, six hundred million, that kind of big. And we had a large like 20 trailer complex. They were all put together.
Brad Wyant (05:35)
Bye.
Dee Davis (05:45)
all the trailers were put together into one huge trailer and we had a big kitchen. Yeah, we had a big kitchen area and it was a full kitchen. had two or three full-size refrigerators for people to put their lunches in. We had a dishwasher, a sink, all those things. That was the best example that I ever had. And when you have big job sites, there's really no reason not to plan for that.
All those people are going to need all those resources and we can do that and we'll talk about some of that as we go forward.
Brad Wyant (06:15)
I have good example of a big job site. Trailer complex that we were trying to put together, not quite 20, but I was on the team that was designing a new trailer complex that was going to end up being 13 trailers glued together. And the project never went. We won the job and then we were on a word of the job, which is another story for different day, but. It was a similar thing. We were like, alright, well, we're going to be here for awhile. We're going to be here for three, three or four years.
let's make it nice to be here. Let's make a place that people feel more comfortable having some permanence in dishwasher, reusable dishes. We were going to put in break areas. We were going to put in big and small conference rooms. We were going to put in a meditation slash workout room where people could stretch and take care of their bodies, which we don't do enough in construction. It's not just with the environment we think need to think about sustainability. It's also our bodies. Are you going to be able to come to work in 20 years sitting at a desk for nine, 10 hours a day?
What do need to do to be able facilitate that? Yoga and Pilates, my hot take, but anyway.
Dee Davis (07:18)
That sounds wonderful. That sounds like a great trailer. I've never had a trailer that had a space for that, you know, for people to just like you're saying, meditate or stretch or anything. That's a wonderful idea. love that. depending on what piece of the construction world you're in, what kind of construction you do, you might be working out of a truck or anywhere from
from working out of a truck to a huge trailer complex, your job site might have a single 20 foot trailer or a whole slew of 20, 30, 40 foot trailers. And everybody's in their own. That's kind of a lot of the old way of things on job sites is that every trade has their own little trailer complex. I was on a job not too long ago where it was a big enough job where we could have and should have had communal big trailers.
And for whatever reason, didn't do that on that job and everybody kind of had their own thing. So you really end up with way more trailers if everybody's sort of doing their own thing I'll just pause here for a second. I want to talk about the communal trailer. I was the biggest skeptic. The first job I was ever on when the owner said, I want to put everybody in a big shared trailer,
I was a trade contractor at the time. was a mechanical contractor and I said, no fricking way. No way I'm not doing that. I have stuff that's private. I need to have private conversations and I have my private stuff. we get into that mentality of just mine. This is my territory. This is my space. What if I'm with all these other people and you know.
There's a lot of swearing that goes on, at least in my trailers, there does seem to be a lot of swearing. And like, what if there's people that aren't okay with that? I don't want to have to worry about what I say around all these other people. And, you know, there's inspectors and there's owners and there's designers and there's all these people. And I was very, very skeptical and I was not excited. My first shared trailer, I shared with mechanical, electrical and controls. And we had our little
group of trailers to all in one, you know, put together and we shared conference rooms and common space and things like that. But we kind of had each discipline kind of had a closed door that they could have, you know, some privacy if they wanted to. And then there was a little breezeway and then there was another group of trailers where the designers and the owners and the GC sat. So it was together, but we had a little bit of privacy and it worked out great.
I was with the people that I needed to talk to the most and everybody else was right next door. I didn't have to, trudge across the job site to go talk to the electrician or whatever. Worked out really good. The job site that was talking about with the 20 trailer complex, that was literally everybody from owner to designer to every major trade in one huge complex. And there were very few private offices. I think each discipline had
one or two private offices, everything else was communal and open space for communication. And it took a little getting used to, but I got to tell you, it worked great. So for those of you who thinking, I never want to do that, I never want to do that, I would say try it. Just give it a try before you dismiss it.
what is the biggest trailer complex you've ever worked in?
Brad Wyant (10:53)
it's the one you're thinking of. It's the synergy one where we have the three and the three and the deck between them.
Dee Davis (10:58)
I was thinking you were describing the one, then you said you guys didn't get the job. So that would have been an amazing trailer complex.
Brad Wyant (11:04)
It's so cool. I had so much fun designing it. Honestly, it was such a bummer. I now understand the pain of architects when they get to do you want to design this cool thing? Yeah, I do. You just get to do all the design and then, sorry, we're not going to get set up. was so I can't. Yeah, that that is a special kind of to have poured your heart and soul into something for people that you know and then have it be that it doesn't go.
Dee Davis (11:31)
Well, I tell you deciding who sits where, having worked on the owner's side for permanent structures, and this has even happened in trailers with the design of that particular 20 trailer complex, who gets how much space, who gets how many seats, where people are sitting, that can be quite touchy.
Brad Wyant (11:51)
The thing that we were designing that 13 plex that was that was going to be a shared space between us and another contractor and a few others. And it got heated people because the one we were a company that had to open floor plan as our philosophy. Everyone can walk up to everyone and ask them a question and talk to them no matter what they where they sit in hierarchy, which is something that a lot of companies have employed recently as a revolt against the barred.
closed-door office policy of many stodgier older companies. The company we were sharing the office space, or we were going to share the office space with was a closed-door single private office company. And it was a pretty aggressive conversation because it was a JV between the two companies and, well, no, no, this isn't our way. This is not the way we do business. It's like, it's not the way we do business either. So we had a, was a very contentious moment.
Dee Davis (12:46)
Yeah, it is funny how the just the the mere fact of who has a closing door and who sits where and who sits closest to the window and who sits next to who it's like planning the world's worst dinner party. I swear it's.
Well, whether you're in a 12 foot trailer or you're in a 20 trailer complex, looking at how we can contribute more sustainably to how we behave on a job site or in any workspace is important. So I got to tell you, I tried to do some research and I've tried this multiple times. So wasn't just for this podcast. I've tried to research how much job site trailer environments.
contribute to waste on a job site and nobody's studying this. I've never been able to find a single study or a single metric or anything on it. So it's really hard to make a case and say, well, we're contributing this much to the waste of a job site, except that I've seen it with my own eyes over and over and over, year after year after year.
I don't know who needs to be studying this. Maybe I need to commission a study. I don't know. But we need to get some numbers around this. The only thing I was able to locate is information on what we do in offices, which are kind of similar. What do we do in a job site trailer? It's a weird combination of like an office space, a lunch room.
a kitchen, a meeting room, and a complete pigsty. Like, they just is. It's a complete pigsty most of the time.
Brad Wyant (14:29)
What are you saying to you saying that construction workers and people that work in the construction business are messy. What are you talking about? That's crazy. I've never heard of such a thing.
Dee Davis (14:39)
We work in the dirt. And it's so funny. We're so used to this environment that it doesn't even click that we're in it until somebody from the outside shows up inappropriately dressed in their nice shoes or their nice suit or, you know, women, that's the worst when a woman shows up out there and she's got heels and a skirt on. I'm like, what are you doing? That, when somebody shows up like that
You can see they're getting all dirty. Well, we've been dirty. Our boots are dirty. Our jeans are dirty. Everything's dirty. they're like, it's really dusty and dirty out here. well, yeah, it's the field. Of course it is. So we track in everything, mud, snow, dust, dirt into our trailers, which is why for the most part, they have tile floors.
I've had trailers with carpet. don't recommend it. I've had people ask, why don't you put carpet in these trailers? And I'm like, you don't want to do that. I've done that. I've had that one time. You don't ever want to do that. It's the grossest carpet you've ever seen.
But we get into these trailers and somehow we forget, and the job site out in the field too, we somehow forget everything our mothers taught us about picking up after ourselves. I don't know why this happens or how it happens, people will take a water bottle, they'll finish it and they'll go like that and they just throw it. Or they leave their empty soda cans or wrappers or half-eaten food.
Do you do this at your house?
Brad Wyant (16:16)
think it's a self perpetuating cycle. think that when one person is messy and somebody realizes that if they want to keep it as clean as they want it, they're going to be cleaning up after that person. There's a big barrier to overcome mentally like, okay, well, I'm not that person's maid. This is a place where I need to work and get out of here and go home to my family. I'm not going to spend any more time cleaning up after them than I would clean up after myself. So and then it just goes downhill from there.
You know, I think it's a roommate's thing. If anyone's ever had a roommate who's listening to this podcast, if your roommate is messier than you, and I'm looking at my kitchen right now thinking about my beloved roommate, love him, so that's a great guy. But boy, if he wasn't just the messiest person I've ever lived with I'm not gonna go into it. But it's, I think that's the thing that happens. People will only make it.
As clean as they want to be for themselves and they won't pick up after others because that's not what they signed up to do. That's not the agreement that they have and nor should they. That's why companies hire people to come clean offices when they have a nice office to go to And that gets into this really interesting thing that we can talk about as managers as leaders in the construction world of how do you think about cultivating a space that.
meets the needs of your business. On the one hand, you do need to keep costs down. Cost is a real thing and you've got to make sure that you're making your numbers every month, every year. So buying a cheap off-stray or renting a cheaper off-stray or not spending on money, your money on things like a cleaner for that office trailer or or somebody to deliver the water. If that ends up being more expensive than buying the $5 pallets of water, the 24 packs that they have that are wrapped in plastic, then you have to consider that. But
What does it say about the environment you're creating for your employees and how does that environment impact their performance? If coming to work is like a, it's dirty and I don't like it and I want to get out of here. What does that mean about the way your employees do their work? If it's a place that they want to stay, if it's a place where there are snacks and there are clean places for them to sit with a colleague and go over things in private, then maybe they're going to be doing their job better. Maybe they're going to have
better work outcomes. But like Dee said, we don't have the data on this. for this pressure environment that we put our employees in on these jobsite trailers to understand how these kinds of features of the environment impact us.
Dee Davis (18:44)
What we do know is that we have lots of empty wrappers, bottles, cans, and paper everywhere, Blue Beam has helped us tremendously reduce the amount of paper we use in construction. However, we still have paper strewn everywhere. I don't know how that happens. like you said, nobody wants to be the one to clean up. I'm not your mommy. I'm not here to clean up after you. And especially if there's a bathroom involved.
I have to tell you a quick little story. I've always had a no bathroom in my trailer rule. When I was a trade contractor, I'd say no bathroom in the trailers because no one ever wanted to clean it. Everybody went in and made a mess and I'm sorry, whose job is that to clean it? It costs a lot to have somebody come and clean on a regular basis. And you know, cleaning a bathroom, it's nobody's favorite job, right?
Brad Wyant (19:35)
You can do it when you're married to somebody or you can do it, but it's to do with coworkers is that's that's not something that we keep in our culture. That's for sure. The Japanese do the Japanese rotate who cleans every part of the office. From the CEO to the, most menial entry level worker and they they all pitch in, but that is not our culture. I think if we asked people to do that in our business or in any American setting, they would they would shirk that duty.
Dee Davis (20:04)
tried that. I tried that strategy. I tried that everybody is assigned a week, anybody who had a spot in the trailer, whether you're a PE, a PM, a foreman, whatever, everybody had their week well, your idea of clean and my idea of clean might not be the same thing. it just that didn't work out. So I said, Okay, that's it. No bathrooms in the trailer.
Everybody use the porta pots. If it's good enough for the field, it's good enough for us. And that was my philosophy for a long time. And I've never really minded using the porta pots. I know that's not everybody's favorite thing to do, but I'm like, well, here's the thing. If I'm out there as a project manager using the porta pots, just like the field is, I know what the status of those porta pots is. Is there toilet paper in it? Are they clean enough? And I can make sure that those things are all true because I'm out there using it too. That's kind of how I viewed it.
That's not something that anybody should ever have to put up with as a dirty porta pot or not enough toilet paper and things like that. And these guys had all been with me for a long time and we were mobilizing, do a new job. and they got together and figured out how much it was going to cost to hire a cleaner, how much more it was going to cost to get a bathroom in the trailer.
And they put together this whole thing and presented it to me. They sent the superintendent of the job to sit down with me and present it. Now we figured out how we're going to fund this and they had a whole plan and I got to hand it to you. I was like, I was impressed. It was awesome.
Brad Wyant (21:35)
But what does that say about how important it was to those people? think about the time that they spent on that because they cared so much about it that could have been saved if the conditions had been better from the beginning. I just it was important to do that because they were telling you that that's what they wanted and that's what they needed to be able to focus on their work. But yeah, that's that's just an amazing example of what it means to create a space for people where they can do their work.
Dee Davis (22:00)
Yeah, and each trade, each foreman contributed a piece of their budget to help fund the whole thing. I couldn't say no. first of all, yes, it's clearly important to you guys, number one. And number two, you've eliminated every potential argument a project manager could have, right? I said, I have one ask and that's we use towels, like towels, just like you would do at home. You dry your hands on towels, real towels.
that we swap out, however often we need to swap them out every day, every couple of days, whatever, and I'll take them home and wash them. I'll do that work. But no paper towels. We're not going to have all this disposable stuff. That was my ask. And so that's what we did on that job.
Okay, so we don't have any real stats for job sites specifically, but here's some for offices. Even with going digital, each person averages a generation of two pounds of paper and cardboard waste per day. And a study from Xerox showed that almost half of all printed papers are thrown away within 24 hours, and approximately 30 % of all things printed
are never even picked up from the printer.
Brad Wyant (23:19)
gosh.
Dee Davis (23:21)
like to say that I'm shocked by these statistics, but I've seen it. How many times have you walked up to a copier or a printer in an office in a job site trailer anywhere and there's a stack of stuff sitting there that's been sitting there? There's only so many people in the trailer. Somebody printed it and never went and picked it up. You see it all the time and then after a couple of days you just pick it up and you chuck it in the recycle bin.
Brad Wyant (23:48)
Mm-hmm.
Dee Davis (23:49)
Hopefully, a recycled bin
So I would like to say that I'm shocked by those stats, but I have seen it firsthand. Somebody prints something, they use it for an hour or less and they chuck it or they never pick it up. An average person uses over 150 plastic water bottles per year. I'm happy to report that I'm far below average in this. I use zero plastic water bottles a year.
but that means somebody else is using 300.
Two and a half million with an get thrown away every hour. Hour. Two and a half million every hour.
Brad Wyant (24:40)
Now, is this domestic United States or is this international? Yeah, still. That's a
Dee Davis (24:43)
United States.
Americans are far bigger offenders of most of this stuff than anybody else. Offices are big offenders of plastic flatware, paper or plastic plates, single use coffee cups and single use water cups. I would say job sites, the the water bottles, the paper, the flatware, the single use items are rampant on job sites as well.
Brad Wyant (25:11)
Hmm.
Dee Davis (25:14)
So we can easily see how this stuff translates to a job site environment with a few modifications. I would argue that on a job site, we're probably producing much more cardboard waste than most offices are, unless it's a really big office, because we get, what do we get every day? Deliveries. We're getting some kind of job site deliveries every single day, usually multiple times a day, multiple trades, multiple things are coming.
Lots and lots of cardboard waste. The paper waste has definitely reduced with the use of blue beam, but still somehow we go through reams and reams and reams of paper on job sites. I try really, really hard not to print anything unless I absolutely have to, but not everybody has that mentality. There's a lot of people who really, really like to feel or see that piece of paper in their hands.
Job site water. This is one of my favorite topics. So what do we usually see in offices, Brad, in job site trailer offices with water?
Brad Wyant (26:22)
seen it all. I've seen faucets tapped that people just drink out of the domestic water source that they have tapped into the job site and in some jurisdictions that's fine. I've seen the 24 pack wrapped in plastic water bottles, and I've seen the jugs, the big five gallon jugs and the little bubbler thing that you flip on and you can get hot or cold water out of it. And on one job site
The project manager I was working with was unwilling to get the five gallon thing. didn't bother to do the math on what one way would be or the other way would be. I didn't want to argue with them on it. So I just brought in water in my backpack every day, like in three big 40 ounce jugs so that I could have enough water to drink every day and not contribute to the plastic waste. Maybe I was thinking too hard about it. was being a little bit indignant, but that was my choice.
Dee Davis (27:15)
So his solution was to buy the disposable water bottles.
Brad Wyant (27:19)
Yeah, the one use eight ounce wrapped in plastic 24 packs.
Dee Davis (27:23)
I don't even have to do the math. can tell you he spent more on that than he ever would have spent on the five gallon jugs. What I'm also starting to see in the last five or six years is they look like the coolers with the five gallon jugs, but there's no five gallon jug. It's just piped in. Cold water's piped in and there's a little heater on the inside. And then they have the ones too, which are huge back savers.
The five gallon jug goes underneath. You open the bottom and it slides in and you just connect the little thing and it has a a dip tube and it pulls it out with a little motor. I became really, really good at the five gallon jug jiggle, you know, where you just, and this was before they came up with the ones that have just the little thing that pops out. It was like you had to take the whole thing off.
And then you had to go, okay, ready, one, two, three, try not to spill it. I got really good at that. I could do it with no spillage, but thankfully we don't have to do that so much anymore. They have a little pop out things that, that help you with that, or there's all these other methods. So in the office, we have all these choices and we are required by OSHA to provide drinking water for our staff, including our field crews.
So we have to come up with some kind of solution. How are we going to give these folks water? And you have to be cautious about not just providing the bare minimum. Cause I gotta be honest, I've looked it up. The bare minimum is there's a hose bib outside, figure it out. That's, that's literally it's potable water and it's available.
is that what you really want to do to your people? No, we want to do better than that. So we come up with these other solutions. And sometimes I think we take it a little too far. we're trying to make it easy and convenient, but we're really ending up costing ourselves way more money than it needs to cost. And then you got to remember too, that all of that waste has to go somewhere. And whether you're putting it in the trash can, you're putting a recycle bin, you're still paying for that waste to go somewhere.
So you're paying for it on the front end, you're paying for it on the back end. So what else can we do? And the other thing that you see a lot in offices, whether it's a job site office or it's a brick and mortar, is the single use disposable cups. they used to be like the more rigid plastic and they would flat on the bottom that the sparklets or whoever was delivering.
And then I noticed they started getting tricky. They're like, well, we're going to make them out of paper, but they would make them cone shaped.
So there's no hope of reusing this cup. on this one job site, I will never forget it. I always had my reusable water bottle and I was just filling that up, but I had a couple of foremen that were a little bit resistant to the reusable water bottles. And we were providing the cups, I just, didn't really question it. Sparkless delivers the cups with the water or whoever your water provider is
They would deliver it in this one form and would come in.
I couldn't even tell you how many times a day, a lot. he would pull the cup out, fill it up, drink it, throw it in the trash, And 10 minutes later, he'd pull the cup out, fill it up, drink it, throw it in the trash. And I couldn't scold him for not reusing It was a cone shape. You couldn't even set it down. I'm watching this trash can fill up, fill up, fill up all day. And I'm thinking, this is the stupidest thing I've ever seen.
Why are we doing this? And I finally said, okay, you guys time out.
What if I bought everybody a cup? Just a cup like you use at home.
If I buy everybody cups, I'll buy you all a different color. Will you use that for water instead? And they were like, yeah, sure. So I did. I went to the dollar store and I bought everybody a different color plastic cup, put their initials on it. I told the water guy, no more cups. Don't deliver me any, because you're paying for that. They're not free, in case you didn't know.
I think they used to be free a long time ago and they are not free anymore. You're paying for that. So it's costing you money and it's costing you money every two weeks when you get water delivery or whatever it is. And then it's costing you when it leaves too because it's either going in a recycle bin or in a trash bin. So I always have to go back to asking myself, what do I do at home? Why is my behavior at work?
different than my behavior at home. Why is using a single use cup okay at work, but it's not okay at home. I don't do that at home. I have glasses in the cupboard. So why can't we have glasses in the cupboard at work? Why not? We're on your desk or wherever you want to keep it. So these things don't have to be expensive. You don't have to go buy anything expensive. You just go to the dollar store. In the field,
The thing that I tried out and it ended up working really well was getting, again, I wanted to get rid of the single use water bottles, the cases and cases of water that were being bought. And back in the day, again, before bottled water was even a thing, we used to get those big five gallon, I don't know, maybe they're eight gallon igloo things with the spigot at the bottom, you know, like when you were a kid and you played soccer.
Brad Wyant (32:46)
He's
done on the coaches head when they when you win the game.
Dee Davis (32:49)
that thing. when I worked on smaller job sites, that's exactly what we used. that was the foreman's job was to fill the thing up and bring it and my husband would even do that. We had ones that we used when he was working on smaller job sites because he would just bring it home. He, sanitize it every week and fill it up every morning, throw it in this truck. And that's what
he drank out of and the crew drank out of during the day. If you have a bigger crew than that, the five gallon jugs that you get from the water guy work really well. You can buy a manual pump that goes on the top of that. It just screws right onto the top of the five gallon jug and you can refill water containers from that. My crew loved that. I just distributed it in different places on the floor out in the field and we just would
rotate those and the water guy picks it up, they sanitize them, refill them and bring them back out every week. Those work really, really good. It was very inexpensive option. I had a safety guy who said, hey, I don't like that you're doing that I think I had gotten all the guys a reusable water jug that they could refill. And he says, well, if
we buy it for them, then I'm afraid they're going to expect us to like clean them and sanitize them for them. And I said, well, I'm not doing that, we, made a policy of bring your own container, like whatever you want to fill it up and drink out of, bring your own container. And then I also kept some just in case somebody came to work and they didn't have a container, I kept them in the trailer for anybody that needed one.
Brad Wyant (34:23)
And that's what I love about American legal system that there would be a court case for that. That like, yeah, because you gave them the water bottle. Now it's on you to clean the water bottle you bought them. That's what's so great about our country.
Dee Davis (34:35)
Yeah, I feel like that was a massive overreach and just an extremely, liberal view of something that might happen. it reminds me of that legal term and an abundance of caution, it's I that was a safety guy that I worked with for years that would always come up with these crazy scenarios like that that would tend to make
our jobs a little bit harder. It's a good opportunity for some company swag. Hand out company logoed water bottles. I even found some like mini they look like the five gallon jugs, but they were mini. They were like, I don't know, there might've been like one gallon or half gallon. And they had a little, you know, spigot on the top for the guys to drink out of. And I think I had gotten a whole bunch of those and given them away.
So anyway, there's lots of options out there for you. Throw your company sticker on it if you want to and give some company swag away or, you know, sell them for a dollar or whatever. I don't know, whatever you want to do.
Job site coffee cups. so coffee cups are the second biggest contributor to garbage just in general. And plastic bottles, water bottles being the first by the way. To the tune of 108 billion with a B, 108 billion cups per year, 1 million with an M per minute.
Brad Wyant (36:04)
That is, when I read that, that number just blew me away. That is so, and I don't even drink coffee. that's just, that's a lot of coffee cups.
Dee Davis (36:11)
I don't think we can be friends anymore. You don't drink coffee?
Brad Wyant (36:15)
Yeah, I just run on anxiety and the pressure I put on myself. I don't need to have that energy. It's coffee.
Dee Davis (36:24)
I'm willing to give up a lot of things in my life. Coffee is not one of them. I've done it before. I have done it before. I was off coffee for a few years, but I can't resist the smell. It smells amazing in the morning. So 1 million disposable coffee cups a minute. And I guess I shouldn't be surprised by this, but I am a little nauseated. I am not one of those people that
subscribes to this drive-through coffee phenomenon that this country seems to have embraced full force. I've been through a coffee drive-through exactly one time in my entire life and that was with my friend who loves to go through coffee drive-throughs for some reason. And I went with her, which I just don't understand the concept. it's a hundred times more expensive than anything you could make at home. And
It creates a ton of waste. And by the way, it takes forever. We were in line for 15 or 20 minutes. I could have brewed a whole pot of coffee and been half done with it by then. I don't get it. But I am in the minority apparently because in our little itty bitty town that we live in in Colorado, I think there's three drive-through coffee stores.
Brad Wyant (37:20)
Hmph.
like we're losing our audience here, Dee. We're out of touch. We're not we're not with it. there's huge consumer demand for this because I think it's convenient because now you can be on your phone in the car. You can feel like you're getting other things done. I don't get it. I agree with the waste of it, but it's certainly something that's done and it's a habit thing. this is the way I've always done it. I always get a drive through breakfast for people who are getting that.
egg mcguffin on their way to work because they don't make breakfast at home. And I don't want to begrudge anybody their habits because that's not my value judgment to make. But if you're somebody who is considering the impact that you have on the planet, if you want to eat healthier, if you want to set better habits for yourself, maybe consider not is what we're suggesting.
Dee Davis (38:21)
Okay, so I have to admit there was this one job site that I was commuting to via car every day and it was an hour to an hour and 15 minutes there in the morning and it could be two hours plus with traffic on the way home. So in the morning my habit was this, I got into this habit and when I realized, when I kind of woke up out of my coma and realized what I was doing, I did stop.
I was having coffee in the morning. I would pour it at home and drive and around the corner from the job site, there was a Starbucks. so I would, now I had my cup, my reusable cup. was not doing the disposable coffee cup thing, but I would stop in, get another coffee and then go around the corner to the job site.
I was doing it once or twice a week. Then the next thing you know, it's like four times a week, five times a week. And I don't know how long I did it for a few months. And then I woke up and said, what are you doing? Is there some reason you can't have coffee once you get to the job site? Why are you buying coffee around the corner? know, it's still only five or six in the morning. There's going to be coffee.
When you get there, just get coffee when you get there. So I changed my habit and stopped spending all that money. And I don't order through the Starbucks app, actually. When I do, on the very rare occasion that I do have Starbucks, I don't order through the app because then I can't use my own coffee cup. I go in and I stand in line. But all the people are in line at the drive-through. They're not in line inside so much anymore.
Brad Wyant (40:03)
You
Dee Davis (40:05)
So disposable coffee cups are a really big deal everywhere, job sites included, job sites offices, everything. what I did on one job site was I said, okay, we're not going to do that anymore. I'm not going to keep buying these cups that then we're then using and throwing away. And yes, some people do reuse them a few times before they throw them away. And I get that.
but there's still a very short lifespan for these things. They're not really made to be used and used and used over again. So I said, okay, I'm gonna stop buying these and I'm gonna bring in regular ceramic coffee cups. again, you don't have to spend a lot of money to do this. You could go to the dollar store or you could do what I did, which was I raided the cabinet at home.
Does anybody else have a cabinet like this where you put your coffee cups in and behind closed doors they multiply and then you open the door and there's more coffee cups?
Brad Wyant (41:05)
You
Dee Davis (41:06)
Anybody
else have this problem? I feel like I have to clean out my coffee cup cabinet every couple of years because the next thing I know I have 30 or 40 coffee cups. I don't know where they come from.
Brad Wyant (41:08)
Okay?
Dee Davis (41:22)
So I just cleaned out my cabinet and brought a whole bunch of them into the site and we used those. a lot of them were Christmas ones, I don't know why. But that's what we used for the whole rest of the job. And they were all unique. They all looked a little different, so they were easy to tell apart. Some people had adopted their favorite coffee cup and that was the one that they used. I have to say, it was very exciting when years later,
I was working with one of the project managers. He was a project engineer that worked for me at the time. We all took the coffee cups when we left. Everybody picked their favorite coffee cup and took it with them. And I think we worked together on another job years later and he still using the same coffee cup.
Brad Wyant (42:00)
Hmm.
Dee Davis (42:01)
My sustainable heart was happy, so happy. You can do the same thing with job site, bowls, plates, flatware, dollar store, garage sale, clean out your cabinets, whatever, and provide all that stuff. And I just took it from job site to job site. I did that for years. Doesn't cost a lot. If you're able to provide an automatic dishwasher, people appreciate that.
instead of having to hand wash dishes. I personally don't mind hand washing dishes, but if you can put an automatic dishwasher in and task somebody to start it at the end of the day or every couple of days or whatever you need, that's nice. A sink with a sponge and some soap works just fine too.
The thrift store, the dollar store is your friends or just have somebody contribute odds and ends from your cabinet. Ask everybody to go home and just bring in whatever odds and ends that they might have that they can contribute for you.
Brad Wyant (43:02)
would say if I were working at a job site and that was the ask that went out, we were building some really nice product for some amazing client.
If I were the project manager side of it, I could see, okay, we're trying to save money. We're trying to be sustainable. We're trying not to put more waste in the world, but I can see how some people might argue. This is a big job. Why can't we just buy some dishes that we know are clean, that we know are perfect? Some people have a stigmatism about things from the dollar store or things that are used from somebody else's home and using them or things that have been bought at goodwill. So I totally see where you're coming from there, but I think I would also.
Approach it from a what is going to be the thing that is all things to all people make sure that nobody would feel strange or weird about the source of the dishes. I think some people might have an ick there for a millennial word and I think that there might be something to consider there.
Dee Davis (44:03)
Interesting. I am a complete germaphobe and I would not feel that way about a reusable dish because it gets washed and reused and washed and reused. Now, as long as it was clean to begin with, actually am one of those people that has nightmares about opening a cupboard or a drawer and finding a dirty dish. I had one last night. It's probably one of my most frequent
nightmares is to open up a drawer or a cupboard and there's something dirty in there. I would flip out if something like that happened. I don't know. I did not have that issue. The whole idea is to create less waste. yes, you could go buy something new, but I guess the point is, is that you don't have to. It may not be necessary.
And by the way, the stuff in the dollar store is the exact same stuff that you're paying full price for somewhere else. I have a whole set of dishes from the dollar store. have a story in the self-paced sustainability book about how I needed to buy a large volume of plates for a party that we were hosting. And yeah, I went to the dollar store and bought them all. There's about 60 of them.
Brad Wyant (45:15)
Wow
Dee Davis (45:17)
Well, I wasn't going to buy throwaway plates. That was my commitment.
And we have a lot of large parties with over 30 people at a time. And I just use them again for a baby shower where we had about 50 people and I've used them over and over again. They are in the rotation of our daily plates and stuff too. it's possible that somebody could have that major thing. I have actually been on job sites where people bring their own.
I had that same project engineer as a matter of fact that had that coffee cup and kept using it year after year from the one job site. He used to bring his own bowl. It was a regular ceramic bowl he was a big soup guy and he was always eating soup. And so we brought his own bowl and you know, somebody, if they had a big issue, they could very well bring their own. carry my own silverware, not because I have a phobia about other people's silverware, but because I use it on the go all the time.
So it's a good point and it's something to consider if you have somebody on your team that's just like, I'm not eating off of other people's whatever or stuff that other people are using, then they can bring their own.
Brad Wyant (46:32)
Absolutely.
Dee Davis (46:35)
So job site sustainability shouldn't stop at the gate or at the door to our trailer. we haven't talked a lot about the site itself, but I think we've all been on job sites where the food trash, the water bottles, especially if you're using those single use water bottles, they're just everywhere. what I always tell the guys is clean your room.
It's time to clean your room. and it's this job site safety issue. When you're working on jobs, if you have waste everywhere, regardless of what kind of waste it is, you're going to attract things. You're going to attract things like ants, rodents, skunks, possums. They can smell the food. They can smell the drink. And they're going to come into the building looking for it.
that's the last thing anybody wants in their job site is a, animal control problem. every job, it seems like we have skunks and raccoons and possums and rats and mice that show up because there's a lot going on and there's a lot of food trash. There's a lot of good places to hide.
We find them in pipe and duct work if you leave things uncovered they'll go hide and they'll nest in there. So there's always these critters around and we want to keep things cleaned up. But if you don't throw it on the ground at home, don't throw it on the ground on your job site either. And it becomes a safety issue. You want to take pride in the places that we work. We want to live a little bit more sustainable trash and recycling.
We have to pay to haul all those things off. So we want to minimize how much we're producing on the job site, not just with the building materials that we're using, but with the other things that we bring on just as crowds of humans at work.
Brad Wyant (48:24)
The anecdote I wanted to end this with was from a business case I read a couple of years ago. Not a lot of people think of the longest sports dynasty of world championships all time and think of Formula One, but that is in fact the sport where a team has had the greatest world championship dominance for seven years in a row. The Mercedes F1 team won the world championship every year and
the person who had been brought on to renovate the team, to bring the energy back to that team, was a former private equity investor named Toto Wolf, famously German, famously very subdued in his interviews, if any of you are drive to survive, he's a character. But the first thing that he did when he came onto the team was he hired a new cleaning company to clean the bathrooms, because he came to the team, they're traveling around the world to exotic destinations like
Azerbaijan, Monaco, Tokyo, these incredible cities. And it's very stressful trying to get the cars and everything else there that the team uses. everyone's at their wits end and the bathrooms are just filthy. And he's like, this is the first thing we're going to do. We're going to demonstrate that we're going to get the small things right first. We're going to demonstrate we care about this team. We care about the environment you work in. And we're going to go from there as we continue to improve an environment in which you can be the best version of yourself and which you can do your best work.
And that always struck me that he would start there, this big private equity guy with this huge brain on finance and strategy and competition. was a former racing car driver himself that he would start with something so small like that for a team that he went on to win the most world championships with of any Formula One team, any sports franchise in history, starting with cleaning up the bathroom is really, really impressed me.
Dee Davis (50:14)
That's an amazing story. Well, first of all, I did not know that that was the longest winning franchise. That's very interesting. I don't really watch a lot of Formula One racing. guess maybe that's why I don't know that. But I think you highlight a really important point, though. And when I was working out in the field with project teams, and I would meet with the field, and I would say, look, if there's one thing
One thing on this job site that you could change or that you want to be better, what is it? And the one thing that would come up the most often is the bathrooms.
It's just basic. It's just basic. I had a job site that I was on where that was a chronic problem, especially, you know, how it gets in the summertime. Ooh, la, la, right?
Brad Wyant (51:01)
Don't bring me back there Dee, I have a sense memory associated with that you're activating.
Dee Davis (51:08)
Anybody who's been on a job site in the summertime knows what I'm talking about. And I mean, they were only having them cleaned once a week. And it just wasn't enough. It just wasn't enough with the number of people we have on the site. there's rules about how many porta pots you have to have based on the population of your job site. We're meeting it, but just barely. And
They weren't being cleaned enough in the summertime and there just wasn't enough TP. was buying cases of TP for my guys I finally went to the GC and I said, look, I don't know how else to say this, but I am seriously going to do something radical if you don't fix this. I cannot have my guys focusing on, do I have TP?
and that bathroom's disgusting and I don't want to use it.
this is a basic thing. And just like the formula one guy is saying, we have to start with the small things. If you're not getting that right and you're not paying attention to it, this is a basic human need that every single one of us has, no matter what your position is or what your situation is, it needs to be clean.
and you need to have TP, and that's it. End of discussion.
Brad Wyant (52:24)
Yeah, I just think it comes down to respect. think it comes down to what are you saying about how your business is going to be run? What are you saying to your people about what matters to you? Are you saying your people matter to you or are you saying your bottom line matters to you? Are you saying that your bottom line is more important than your values if you're a sustainable company and you. By the 24 packs that are wrapped in plastic for your guys. People read everything you do as if it's a reflection of your character. What?
Are they reading? do they have to see of you in the world?
Dee Davis (52:58)
what we do in the field matters and all of these things matter to our people and forming good habits at the job site.
is a reflection of who you are as a project manager, as a leader. keeping those job sites stocked, sustainable, clean matters. let's get those trailers cleaned. Let's pick up after ourselves. Let's recycle or better yet avoid. Let's just find the zero waste options that we can on our job sites. So I would love to hear from our listeners. What have you done?
on your job site or what would you like to do? What have you seen done? I'd love to hear from you guys on this. Thanks so much for joining us today. We'll see you next time.
