Episode 25: Eliot Wagonheim from WagonheimU

On this week’s episode of the #PowerToTheTrades Construction Podcast, our host Rob McKinney has a conversation with Eliot Wagonheim who is a practicing construction attorney and founder of WagonheimU, which is an online education platform that provides training courses about contracts for Contractors.

The Meaning of #PowerToTheTrades

We discussed his thoughts about the many meanings of the word power in regards to the construction industry and specifically to Craft Workers and Trade Contractors.

What does “Power to the Trades” mean to him?  Eliot said “So what I think of his balance of power because as we just went over was the food chain owner, GC subs, second tier Subs, Suppliers, right? And that’s normally how the power was allocated, you know. The GC had it and that’s how the contracts are written. The Subcontractors don’t get to write the contracts. They get to read the contracts and if they’re lucky negotiate it.”

How has technology has powered the operations of Contractors you have worked with? 

We discussed the impact of technology on Trade Contractors for improving communications. Eliot explained “The way you do it is if you can capture the knowledge and instantly find, you know, the 10 progress meeting minutes, the deal with issue 20 and the… the 14 memos and the… and the change order request, the deal with issue 46. If you can marshal the knowledge of what happened on that job, better, if you are the most prepared person in the room, you win, and my job is to win. And so what I see technology doing is when somebody says, well, you know, they made this mistake and that… that resulted in the workforce being this allocated to this area, the project. If we get to say, no, no sure. The time cards here are the, here are the sheets here?”

Let’s continue to bring #PowerToTheTrades!

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If you would like to improve your management processes so you don’t experience construction labor shortages, schedule a demo to learn how eSUB can help.

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