Eddy, AXA XL and American Global discuss insurance and leak prevention

Good afternoon everyone and thank you for joining us on today's webinar tech and insurance from claims to prevention. We're really excited to have you here with us. I'm Shakai Gagarian, the chief strategy officer at Eddy Solutions, and I've had the pleasure of spending the last decade in the leak detection and water risk space, working closely with insurance carriers and brokers to integrate technology into risk management programs for both construction and operational buildings.

At Eddy, I lead our insurance strategy, partnering with carriers and brokers and their clients to help mitigate water damage through technology and data. Eddy provides a complete solution for water risk management. We supply meters and valves for flow detection and automation enabling remote and automatic shut off anytime anomalies are detected.

And we pair that with our H2O sensor that gives insights into the exact location of the leak as well as ambient temperature and humidity changes. We pair all that with our 247 monitoring team to ensure an alert is never missed. And our goal is to give clients full visibility and control over their water risk during construction and through operational as well.

Over the years, I've seen how technology and collaboration between carriers and brokers and solution providers can drastically reduce losses and help shift the industry from reactive claims management to proactive prevention. And that's what today's discussion is all about. bringing together perspectives from across the insurance ecosystem to explore how technology is changing the way we think about risk.

And I'm joined by two incredible leaders who have spent many years driving innovation within insurance. first we have Christopher Green from American Global. Chris has worked extensively with contractors and carriers to help bridge the gap between technology and risk and he's been a strong advocate for practical innovation in construction insurance.

And also we have Sheree Haynes from AXA Excel who has been a major force in bringing technology and datadriven solutions into underwriting and risk engineering helping clients adopt preventative tech enabled approaches to manage risk. Chris I'll pass it to you to intro yourself. Awesome.

Thanks Shakaya and great to be here with you both Shere and Shakaya. this is a definitely a topic that I love. It's a huge passion of mine.

So I'm thrilled to be here to have this conversation with you guys today. as it is November 11th, I just want to say a few things here. So, thank you to our fallen soldiers, our current soldiers, and all those who served.

We definitely appreciate everything you've done for our country. And, as as we kind of talk about tech and innovation and insurance today, I just first of all, I'll introduce myself. I'm Chris Green, vice president of innovation and insight at American Global.

We're a construction focused insurance brokerage and advisory firm that works with some of the largest builders and infrastructure groups across North America. My role is really about helping contractors make better decisions with the information they already have. A lot of builders are collecting tons of data today already from project controls, safety systems, financials claims, and we're now starting to get emerging tech like IoT and AI.

But the question is how do you actually turn something into actionable insights and data and how do you actually make a different decision that helps you with all of the data that you have. so that's why my team at American Global built out what we're calling Crisisk which is a connected data approach that ties together the contractor's exposure, the policy structure, their historical loss patterns and also connects them into the technologies that they use to mitigate risk. the goal is simple.

See risk sooner, make better decisions faster, and ultimately build safer and more predictable projects. So, at American Global, we sit at the intersection of contractor operations, insurance, and shity strategy and technology and data enablement. my job is to make those things work together in a way that's actually practical in the field and not theoretical.

And I get to work closely with the executives, project teams, risk managers, tech partners, the people that we have on the call today. And that's why I'm so excited to see what we're going to talk about today with these questions that that are coming in. Perfect.

Thank you, Chris Sheree. Hi. Yeah, thanks.

Thanks for having me. Really, really glad to be here. obviously this is a passionate subject for me, innovation and technology and the reason that I'm so passionate about that is my background is in construction.

I still consider myself a construction professional even though I've been in insurance since 2012. I joined AXA XL as a construction risk engineer and working so closely with our clients as risk engineers do like we could see the risks that they were facing. But truly the impact that it was having on them and that led us to think you know what can we what can we do to help them adopt the technologies that we were also seeing that could have ameliated those risks.

So that's how what was then called the AXA XL ecosystem was born. And you I work in that construction vertical. So all of the lines of insurance that touch construction, we see all of those risks in a really visceral way.

So we started vetting technologies like the we think these are some that would really help you. And that became our ecosystem which ultimately became what we're now calling the GCP marketplace. And it's like an app store for technologies that help folks reduce their risk in meaningful ways.

And I don't just mean for claims. I mean their bottom line numbers get assisted significantly by adopting these technologies. So thank you for having me.

Really really excited to be here and talk about this topic with you today. Perfect. Thank you for your great introductions.

I also want to thank our audience for sending in some great questions for this discussion for us today. so let's get started. The first thing that we get very commonly from the audience were how are insurance actually using technology today and from your perspectives on the broker and carrier side?

Where have you seen the biggest impact of technology so far? Sheree, do you want to go first? Sure.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I just mentioned the DCP marketplace. Obviously that's a response and to exactly that trying to help really really actually reduce actual risk as far as water fleet safety worker management etc.

When we when we combine that view that risk engineering has with vetting technology and partnering with them we get to be really in tune with the challenges that are out there and then bringing the potential solutions to our insureds in a way that's I mean it's a consult it's a consulting service basically but it just comes with their policy right we're able to align those really specific needs that we see on their project sites within their corporate organization with specific tech recommendations. I mean, we're cataloging over a thousand texts. We've vetted over 300 at this point, and we're partnered with 35ish.

It's a very narrow funnel. So, by the time we get to the point of saying, "Hey, we think this tech would be good for you," we have a ton of confidence. so if folks out there, first of all, aren't aren't leveraging their risk engineers, they're really really missing out because they're they're the a big connector there that's going to make a big difference.

And we spend a lot of time in conversation with those risk engineers to understand the needs, the use cases they're seeing. If they see something that somebody's using on a site that's been really excellent for them, like by all means, we want to know about that as well, just to make sure that we're partnered with the right texts and can make the right recommendations that are that are really going to help move the needle for them through that marketplace. Perfect.

And Chris, want to add? Yeah, I think like some of the biggest impact that we're seeing is when people kind of collaborate together and come together and if you've got like Shereice saying like your risk engineer team with your your site team and your seuite and everyone kind of leveraging the technology all at once in a way that benefits the company's culture. that's huge impact.

It's about 50% people or even more and then the other 50% is the technical aspect here. So, I think we've seen over the past maybe 10, 15 years a lot of the tech out there kind of come to fruition. And I think we've really learned about what tech has an impact with all the information and data that we're collecting now.

And kind of like going forward, I think a lot of the best players out there kind of rose to the top. So, we're able to really leverage those and find additional insights and actionable data from the current tech stack environment right now. So, if you're not leveraging it, if you're not collaborating with your entire company, I think you're at a disadvantage here.

That's great. I think one thing that you kind of both talked about was vetting the technologies from a technology perspective. It's a lot easier to talk to general contractors and developers when you're working with carriers and brokers and they know that you've gone through that vetting process and that your technology is actually going to do exactly what you say it's going to do.

So on the tech side, it definitely makes a big difference having that endorsement from an insurance and broker perspective. So we say like there was a lot of vaporware out there, right? Like not all I mean a lot of tech knocked at your door and said we can solve all your problems.

Very much not the case, right? But I think we needed to figure out which ones actually had an impact on the construction industry and I think we've all been working to do that. Definitely.

And we can definitely say that there's been a lot of progress as it comes to tech within the industry, but there's still a lot of untapped opportunity. where do you both kind of see the biggest gap or areas where technology could make the most impact next? Yeah.

Data sharing honestly that has been historically very challenging. I don't don't I don't blame people for having some questions about sharing their data, right? It feels somewhat uncomfortable.

But carriers are not they're not like your car insurance. Like [laughter] you're not going to tell us something happened and we're going to be really surprised that something happened and then you know attach that in some way unfavorably for you. But you know if we understand that you've had a challenge or whatever you know we can see it through your data right and you managed it and your tech helped you manage it that's so positive like it's not a negative connotation at all.

So if folks can share data with us with their risk engineers with their insurers and we're just going to be able to work on better solutions and better thought leadership for them. The risk engineers particularly are really good at that. So yeah, full stop data sharing is the biggest opportunity and the biggest gap right now.

I would say like obviously AX Excel is very sophisticated in this space with your data architecture and you thought a lot about how you design data and leverage it. I think not everyone is there on the GC side just yet. I find there's a large spectrum from GC saying hey we want to be more innovative.

We want to leverage data all the way down to more larger sophisticated players that have all the data at their fingertips but maybe don't even necessarily have the right structure or data architecture in place to actually start leveraging that data. So I think trying to design what you do with the data is a very crucial point. and that that's a huge gap I'm seeing right now because you can have all the data coming from all of your different tech sources.

But if it's too much and if it's too unstructured and that's just going to make you choke on the data, right? So I think being able to boil down a million different data points into say like your top 12 or whatever that's going to actually make an impact on your decision- making is a crucial step here. But you also need the hardware to leverage that on the architecture side because you can't just kind of just do it blindly and off the cuff.

You have to prep and plan and design what this looks like. Yeah. And I thought one of the things that was really interesting in previous discussions that Sheree and I had had was about GC's or developers that have water events that take place on a site, but they don't want the carrier to know because they don't want their premier deductible to go up.

So they're going to probably take care of the expensive themselves. And Sher, you had provided some clarity from a carrier perspective, how you look at clients like that and how it's not about it being a bad risk, but you look at it about how it's kind of proactive. I'd love for you to unpack that a little bit more here as well.

Yeah, absolutely. Like I said, I come from a construction background. I know it very well.

That the fact is that a lot of construction is emergency management and how good you are at emergency management is how good you are at construction like the it is a risk business. There is no project that doesn't have some things come up over the course of the project. It's a huge complex human endeavor to build anything.

So things are going to happen and the true business of construction is how do you handle those things that aren't planned, aren't, perfectly following the plan that you made for the building as you go. When we see someone fully own, hey, we had this incident, here's what we did, and here's how we're going to prevent it in the future, man, that's that is gold. that's music to a risk engineers ears, right?

They they love to hear that and they love to see that you had an event, you handled it well, and furthermore, you've taken that onto that next level of learning from it. Yeah. So, that's a brilliant construction company does that really well, right?

That's the differentiator. It can be scary for a lot of people to be more transparent about what they're doing. data kind of opens up that door, but like you're saying, Sheree, like there's I think the benefits kind of outweigh the disadvantages here because it's a huge thing.

It's a shift in company culture on safety and risk to accept what's going wrong and leverage all the tech and all the people and networks around you, your brokers, your insurance companies to try to get you past that point so it doesn't happen again. Yeah, a really good point about safety there because it's really the same thing like we used to kind of maybe not be as forthcoming with things that happen around safety and then we started collecting near misses and talking about you know what almost went wrong or what went wrong and what the root causes were and what we're going to do to change that. It's the same around all of these quality schedule and related issues.

It's the same. The more we talk about, the more we bring them into the open, the better we all get at this. I love that.

So, transparency is important across the It's a tricky one, too, because like I mean, Shakaya, how many times has someone said one of your water sensors saved X number of dollars, but like how do you know how much you actually saved with that sensor going off, right? It could have been tens of millions of dollars, but you actually stopped the problem from happening before it turned into a problem. 100%.

And that's always one of the biggest things from the tech side to get around. It's like, well, we're able to mitigate it, but what if we didn't? How long would it have ran for?

And it's like, depending on who you talk to, everybody has a different answer. If it's a construction project and you captured a leak at Friday at 700 p.m., that probably you can assume would have ran till Monday morning at 6:00 a.m., right? So, it definitely changes the dynamics of how much of an impact the technology can make as well.

So, one of the things I loved about this discussion with you both is that you kind of sit on two different sides of the equation. Obviously, Chris on the broker side, you have Sheree on the insurance side. So, how are carriers and brokers working together to bring technology into the process early on, maybe even before buying the policy if that's what's happening?

Yeah, the brokers are the magic here. They're the connector. They're they're who brings the needs and the carriers together, right?

Helping their clients understand what's available. They do a ton of work to understand what risk the client is facing. That helps us align with their client's needs.

That could not be more crucial. That's what makes it all happen. With without that link, the chain is broken, right?

So, so major kudos to the brokers both on this call and out there. You are the ones who really bring those concerns to the right people within the organization and get them the answers that they need. And one service that we encourage all of our brokers to bring to their AXL CL clients is the tech adoption maturity index, which can help them dial in better on their technology maturity versus the industry versus their peers.

Like how are they doing? What's what would be smart to put on the road map next? And we do this as a service for all of our policy holders and it's really meaningful.

But our clients aren't going to know about that necessarily without that broker's voice in there saying, "Hey, you know what? You have you have access to all of these services from a carrier who really cares about your risk and being a partner to you in it." They help frame that transparency that we were just talking about as a positive thing in a way that helps us be a better partner to our clients, which is our goal. We want we want to be a partner in their risk.

Yeah, I would echo that. I think developing something early on so that we have a feedback loop and a design and know kind of somewhat what to expect with you know the capacity side and the risk and what the client's capabilities are what their level of sophistication is. getting all that on the table definitely helps.

And you know a lot of this stuff is like it's the first time we're doing it right like big projects are very unique. what is the risk profile of a large bridge in a given region with with certain risks and how do we mitigate that through tech I think that conversation needs to be had very early on to kind of leverage the biggest benefits that we can see both for letting the GC become a better builder but also so the carrier you know has a better ROI and kind of can underwrite things with with a little bit more degree of certainty because we understand the risk a little bit more so I think having those conversations early on sharing more transparent conversations with everyone at the table is kind of the way to go. So I love working with tech forward carriers like Axel and I think just the level of sophistication is growing and I hope more kind of come on board with this as well.

[snorts] Yeah. And from a technology perspective, that was one of the first lessons learned coming into the insurance industry where you had a we had a great technology. We want to talk to all the carriers about it.

And then we realized that the brokers are ultimately the ones that are going to have the discussions with the end users and they're the ones that are able to push these programs. So even from the tech side, we kind of changed strategies a bit where it's like, hey, let's create u more programs on educating brokers on leak detection and what we do. And naturally that carried up to the insurance side to provide incentives and mandates and recommendations for the technology as well.

So I think the clients, the technology partners, we all appreciate a great ecosystem between the insurers and brokers working together to be able to push technology. It does have to start with education and awareness, which is why we do a lot of continuous education at American Global on what's the latest tech out there, how can we work with the insurers. in it's a lot of it is new to people to be honest quite frankly but I think the more it becomes table stakes and just normal part of the conversation the better it is for all of us.

Yeah. And technology is still very new. Nobody wants to be the first, right?

Yeah. So, how do you guys deal with that when you have customers that are trying to look at technology and they just want to make sure that it's been adequately vetted and they're not the first customer that's going to sign up. Yeah.

To the point earlier about us vetting so many techs that that's our that's what's in our you know eyes when we're trying to look forward at a type like is this really going to reduce the risk? Is it a scalable solution? Is it going to solve just one problem or can can we look at something that's a little more broad or that they may already have within their you know tech stack?

Like that happens a lot. like you're already buying a tech that does this and you don't really realize that that's one of the functions of that particular tech because that's not what you bought it for, right? And getting in there and understanding through that Tammy process, through risk engineering, where they are, what they're using, what their gaps are, and then being able to make a really targeted recommendation is h super valuable.

And that's why we undertook the whole project of the ecosystem to begin with because I don't know if anybody else's inbox looks like my inbox. But if I took five minutes to read each of the tech emails that come in every day that want just 15 minutes of my time to tell me about their their their thing that's going to make my life perfect, I would not have any time to do actual work, right? And I think a lot of people are in that situation.

So the taking and we take a really construction dcope type pro approach to vetting these technologies like anyone in construction would recognize where the inspiration for how we do that comes from because it's just like comparing subcontractors right and we try to come out at the end of the day with this incredibly high level of confidence that what we're going to recommend here is going to be meaningful and we like to hold the hands of our clients right because sometimes it's new sometimes they're already using a great tech stack But it is getting easier because like I said in the past 15 years we've seen who's risen to the top when it comes to the tech and vendor side. I'm sure Sheree you would agree like we probably reviewed thousands of techs over our careers and that list is only growing exponentially, right? And at least we have that advisory service that we have to give to our clients that say, "Hey, we do have a vetting system in place and we can be nimble and agile depending on what your problems are." And I think a lot of it starts with the claim side too, right?

That's an easy analysis that we can do to say, "Hey, what are your problems? your biggest problems that we need to address first and then figure out which solutions to the deploy. Yeah.

Something something really interesting that's coming out of our Tammy data right now is we track year-over-year the increase in tech adoption across the industry. We've seen not it hasn't stopped going up but it's slowed like the curve slowed down a little bit this last year. And I think what we're seeing there is folks taking a beat, assessing what they already have on board, taking a minute to think, okay, is this really accomplishing what we set out for it to accomplish.

In many cases, the answer is yes, absolutely. It's doing exactly what we wanted. But in some cases, it's like, yeah, we're buying two things that do that or at this point solution was really it was just vapeware.

We just it's just inertia that's keeping us purchasing that product. And I and I love that. That's a perfect spot.

Like we had this huge boom in construction technology that was available. People got really excited, bought a lot of tech, and now they're now they're like in that digesting, okay, is it doing what we wanted it to do? Is it really making our risks lower?

And I love seeing that. Perfect. That leads right into the next question.

So, let's talk about the data coming out of this the technologies that we're using. How are you seeing the data influence underwriting? Is it starting to shape real decisions?

Is there incentives being available for clients that are being proactive? And I should say on the tech side, that is the most common question we get when it comes to insurance. If I'm going to be proactive and protect my project against risks of water, what is my carrier going to do for me?

What is my broker going to do to make sure I get the best deductible premiums and rates? So, maybe Chris, do you want to start? Yeah.

I mean, from my perspective, like the data is getting a lot more live and I think we're not necessarily seeing quarterly snapshots or annual snapshots of information anymore. and I like the fact that we have a very live view of your project health kind of going forward. And that helps you kind of manage your retentions.

Think about like what the predictive capabilities look like for certain projects, certain asset types, certain regions. so I think if you can harness that, I think it definitely helps both the underwriters and it helps you become more aware of what you're good at building and what you should focus on. Perfect.

And Sher, what have you seen from the data side and how it's been affecting underwriting for you guys? It's still it's still more or less in the stage where it's pretty bespoke, right? it does happen that people are, let us know they're using Eddy, for example, and that ends up coming out well for them in their terms, conditions, premium, what have you.

But it's very bespoke from from one to another. however, the use of technology and all risk reducing strategies are baked into risk engineering. like maybe we don't do a very good job of making that plain.

We don't take you we don't take any credit for that, right? But when our risk engineers are looking at account, that's what they're looking at. How how well a builder uses technology to reduce risk and every other risk reduction method.

That's the bread and butter of what that team does. So they it is getting baked in whether it's obvious or not. But the more we can share information, data, the more we can talk about the text that the company's using and the experiences they've had with those technologies, the better we're going to be able to dial it in for them.

And of course, like all of our goal is to figure out, okay, if you use this tech, that should mean yeah, X on your on your premium or policy, right? And I have seen like in underwriting talking to underwriters a lot of times it's just about like how well are you using the tech and you said the word experience Sherry like like what is your experience with this? Do you even know how to use it properly?

Those kind of questions pop up all the time and I find that could be more impactful than the actual data coming out of the text sometimes. Yes, definitely. we talked about this a little bit.

I love this discussion around data sharing because it's a sensitive topic for some folks and I laugh about it because I think about my the telematics day. I went to go get car insurance and they had offered me something I could put in my car and they'll give me an incentive. I can't remember what it was but they're going to find out about more about how I drive and when I break.

At that time I thought, "Wow, this is such an invasion of my privacy. I don't want the incentive. I don't want to share data." how are you guys seeing clients being as it relates to kind of being able to get data points from them and then being open to sharing data on the construction and operational side of things?

Yeah. So, I mean the big clients that I'm seeing, yes, that does exist very much. They want to hold it close to their chest.

Which is fair. I think a lot of them operate under very unique circumstances and they want to remain competitive, right? U I think at the same time, like I said, if you want to be transparent, then you have to kind of like clean your house a little bit too.

So that definitely comes into play and you have to really address your pain points and what is going wrong with you and your company. I think it's a bit of a short-term pain for a long-term gain if you open up that door, but in the long run, I do think it gives you a competitive advantage. I would never put a telemetics on my car because, I have a bit of a lead foot, but like it's just [laughter] like you, I'm sure you feel the same way, Shikaya, but it's something that I think the industry needs to shift together all at once in different tranches, maybe.

But you know I'd like to see people open it up a little bit more so we get the rising tide lifts all boats scenario. Yeah. And Sheree from your perspective, I would say first of all from the fleet perspective, me personally putting telematics in my car, which is not not not something I've done yet, but it's a really different thing than putting telematics on a fleet, right?

That gets used to defend companies as often as it has any negative impact on any, particular driver, right? So like it's it has two sides and they're both very important, right? as far as, being more open to sharing technology data, I would like to think that we're getting there.

That that that could be true. we haven't seriously tested those waters recently. Data sharing was part of our initial idea when we launched that ecosystem.

But we very quickly understood that our clients weren't really interested. That was just back in 2020. So, that's been basically a millennia ago at this point.

Even though it's only been you know five years it just became obvious that that wasn't in our client's appetite to share that kind of data with us. So we pivoted and I'm very interested to see if we're in a different place now because it does feel like that is shifting and people are understanding hey you know we really are just trying to use this to respond better to what you need. Yeah.

Yeah. I think it is shifting. sorry.

Like I was going to say it's as we get more structured and clean with our data coming in from all these different sources and we are getting more knowledgeable on data architecture that kind of leads the way to data lakes that we can leverage where we have a pool of data and that can be within your own company that you can leverage that but I think what I might end up seeing in the future is groups of companies that kind of share similar goals and cultures bringing their data links together to at least leverage a smaller group and hopefully that expands going forward. Yeah. And I think technology vendors, we have to make sure it's framed as something that's going to earn them better terms and deductibles and insurability in the future.

And clients should see it more of a collaboration and not surveillance from their carrier. and I think if we continue to have this discussion, then people would definitely feel less likely to not want to share data. Water is a little bit different because they're like, they're just going to know how much water runs through my building.

No problem. let them know, right? Telmatics obviously a spot for everybody.

Let's get into the economics. How do you see prevention tech actually changing the financial side of claims or have you seen it change the financial sides of claims? Yeah, that is a really important question because the first thing you think is I'm going to have a big insurance claim if I don't use this tech.

But honestly, the most impactful thing is probably not those big claims that people are thinking of. That is important. But those frequent smaller below the deductible events that come right off our insurance balance sheets, that is their money, dollar one.

Those smaller events happen much more frequently and can really add up in terms of cost and disruption of course on a construction site. So in case of attack like Eddy that can be really significant with reducing rework with all the cost and drag and safety issues that come from rework because of uncontrolled water on a project. So like thinking thinking you know at the smaller level like ah this is just a 50,000 this is just a 100,000 that really that adds up pretty quickly and construction margins are thin right and then you know the technology also gives us a great opportunity to gather accurate root causes that we translate into lessons learned and better understanding you know what happened or what almost happened to that safety example earlier that leads to better prevention and mitigation steps in the future and focusing really hard on using that resulting data from tech on real sharable accessible.

You got to make them accessible. and tech's part of that as well. lessons learned has to be one of the most effective and efficient ways to get the most out of your tech spend and make a really big difference going forward.

Definitely. Yeah. I think the claims if we start off in different stages, we can learn a lot from our past claims.

And Sheree, you mentioned root cause of loss, right? If we do an analysis right away, we get some amazing insight, especially with all of the AI out there that can like read unstructured thousands and thousands and thousands of lines of information and give you insight from there. that's just half the battle.

I think you're absolutely right, Sheree. getting into the near misses, the incidences that happen on a very high frequency basis on a daily basis can teach us a lot more about our project health and what we're doing right and what we're doing wrong. I think if you actually get a better understanding of your incident rates and what's happening, stuff that doesn't even turn into a claim, we could get to a point where we have a lot less claims and we're just dealing with things as they come up on the very micro level.

And especially with AI looking at things going forward if we were to understand the prediction of when A and B and C happens, it could turn into a claim. Now, we can intervene at A and B once we see that pattern. specifically for your company so it doesn't turn into a claim.

Right. So I think we're getting to a very interesting point in our data journey in construction right now. Yeah.

And when an event is stopped in minutes instead of hours, it's saves money for everyone. It's the insurer, the broker, the owner. so obviously the impact of that is massive from an ROI perspectives of from the technology.

So what are some of the lessons that we've learned from early adopters who have already implemented technology? What have they kind of showed us in terms of what works and what doesn't? Chris, yeah, yeah, I can I can take it.

So I think the early adopters, I think a lot of the early adopters had very passionate innovators that they had within their company and they were doing it for the excitement. they they love tech, they love innovation. And I think that that mindset kind of started spreading across and that's why a lot of companies now have AI teams and innovation teams and you know leaders of data in the space.

But I think the early adopter lessons is you have to bring everyone to the table, right? So like you still have to sell the story to your owners, to your clients, to your colleagues in you know let's do something a little bit differently. you don't necessarily have to do more work a lot of the times, but we're going to get a better outcome at the end of this, right?

So, I think half the battle is just sharing the right story telling the story and using that to get other people passionate about leveraging technology going forward because I really don't think that we need failure in this space. We just need to learn how to be resilient and pivot when we need to. Yeah, just just building on what Chris said, bringing in that diverse team when you're looking at a technology could not be more important.

The more voices that you hear, the more the more folks Yeah, you got early adopters out there in your organization who have tried some of these things whether you know it or not that may be able to tell you some things about how that technology worked or did not work for them or at least give their perspective. And that is so important. And then you know it's that lessons learned thing again but now with technology you know what worked what did your peers try and discard what you know what did they scrap because it didn't do what they thought for Axel clients we get them in a room with their peers through our innovator circle knowledge network so they can share this type of information with each other you might think they would not share but all of these problems are too complex for anyone organization to solve alone so they really they really do rely on one another for information and understanding of these challenges.

And if someone's not part of our knowledge network, they can reach out to other networks that they are a part of. Everybody's a part of something that they have peers that they can talk to. Just ask.

I promise folks are going to have a lot to say about this and it's valuable. And you know what's that saying? It's better to learn from someone else's mistakes than your own.

Like totally leverage that and don't just look outside, harvest that diversity within your own company, those early adopters that you have within your own company, like how did it work? Is it scalable? What did you think about it?

Sometimes it won't work, sometimes it didn't work. And that's valuable, too. I just I just heard someone call learning from your mistakes dirty unicorns, [laughter] which is hilarious.

But to take that that metaphor, just because it's dirty doesn't mean it's not a unicorn. Clean it up and use everything you possibly can from what seemed like a bad mistake. Like use it.

You already paid for it, right? [laughter] Yeah. And one of the things on the tech side that we're seeing from the early adopters that were using Edd's technology is now they're looking at the data and they're really able to quantify the impact of the technology, which is huge for looking at how you're going to continue to use the technology in the future.

So, use an example, PCL was one of the first general contractors that we were working with and they put together some of their data looking at one year of use of Eddy's tech and they were able to quantify $8 million of savings in what would have been potential water events and that's really powerful and I think because they were one of the earlier adopters now they have enough data points to be able to go back and cross reference from previous years without tech to with tech and now continue to pave the way for themselves in the space as well. Yeah. Brilliant.

I would say like one of the biggest lessons I've also learned personally is don't focus on the tech, focus on your people. change management, human behavior, those are all huge parts of all this. And I don't think you should start with the tech and shove it down someone's throat.

You start with your people and you talk to them. You figure out what do you need? how can we make your life better?

I think that's a huge way to make sure that this is sustainable and that it works right off the bat. And I think that's A good point. Go ahead, Sheree.

I say start with the why. Like why are you doing this? Yeah.

Perfect. Which kind of gets into our next question. So when you look at scaling kind of tech across multiple sites, projects, portfolios, what's going to be the toughest part of making these programs stick?

I mean, the first thing that comes to mind is funding, right? who pays? If owners and developers don't see the value that leaves builders, and I mentioned except for construction, right, that the extra margin is not just sitting around to pay for some of some of these things that that might be really beneficial, but money is a real thing.

And that's why we negotiate better pricing through the DCP marketplace. But the case for a biller to fund a new tech really needs to be rock solid for them to spring it on one project, not to mention at scale. And then and this is probably more important and to Chris's point, bandwidth, adding clicks and work to a workforce that's already stretched thin and adding just grunt work and potential for double entry.

That's the opposite of what tech is supposed to do for us and it's just too much at some point. So, if you're not thinking about am I piling on and you're adding a bunch of extra work or duplicative work to people's days, it will not succeed. It just won't.

Yeah. And from what I'm seeing, even when GC's are leveraging tech, very often it's more like project based. So, one project manager has a great tech stack and they're using on this project, but it doesn't necessarily work for other project managers or other sites.

And I think there's a balance between finding field solutions that work from the bottom up to corporate solutions that work from the top down, right? And yeah, scaling is always going to be a challenge, I think, but I think just like we're doing the right things to get there. We're figuring it out as we go.

And I think you know everything that we talked about today if if you can make it work I think like some of the best tech out there is very low tech solutions as well and the stuff that you see that's tangible and just makes sense I think start running with that before you get into the more complex things. Yeah, and I think on the technology vendor side, we play a role in trying to simplify things for our customers, right? every building is going to be different.

Their construction goals are going to be different, but if we have easy enough packages for them to be able to quickly know what's going to be deployed, what the price is, it makes it easier to be able to standardize a solution across a portfolio. So, I think technology, we also play a role in making it easier for implementing the tech as well. Sorry, Sher, you were going to say something.

No, I was just going to say I Chris made me made me think of the fact that like when we think of scaling a tech, we think, oh, we're using it on everything. But if we can think of it more like a library where this project has these parameters, here are the technologies that may be helpful for that. Pull them into that project and you know 50% of them may not be useful for this other project, but there might be several others that would be like if if we can get beyond thinking of scaling as an all or nothing type of thing and make it really material to what's going on that project, that's just going to be a better way to look at that.

And that's why I love tech benchmarking in this space right now because we can classify things by asset type, by region, by location. like how big is it, what are the contract models that you're using and then look at, okay, what's working as far as a tech stack specifically for a sliver of the how you build this or where you build this or how big this is, right? so I think like you're right, Jerry, it's not a one-stop shop solution that that's a blanket coverage.

You really need to be a little bit more bespoke, but like having those the like the Tammy menu of options out there in your ecosystem that that helps a lot. Perfect. And as the space kind of continues to mature, what's next?

What do you think the next stage of the carrier broker tech partnerships look like now? So I think it'll be a lot more featherated. I think people are coming together a little bit more.

Think I hope we actually start impacting contract delivery models and we start to get everyone from the owners to the GC's to the subs and even the suppliers on the same page here because I think the value chain goes all the way up and all the way down and the more data that we kind of have to leverage so that we're not contractually downloading risk all the time but like we're bringing value across the whole value chain that makes sense to me. So I think just a lot more connected and a feedback loop with signals across the entire value chain I think is what we're going to see going forward hopefully. Perfect.

Yeah. I think, if we're if we're looking for an evolution, I do believe AI is going to be part of it. And what it's going to allow us to do is bring like construction and insurance are very much the same.

And that we have so much information that is hard to access or analyze because it's very distributed. It's like a library dumped out on the floor. you can't find the book that you need.

It's there. But I really think AI is going to move us into that space where we have access to the full body of our historical information. Imagine on construction if your lessons learned database really consisted of all the lessons you've learned, which it does not.

It's just like right now it's which whatever somebody has decided to put into whatever database you're using. But what if it could what if it could look at oh on you know hospital projects we always have RFIs about X Y or Z. here's where that's going to lead you.

Here's a better way to approach it, right? Like, yeah, that would be magical. And it would it would help with with our workforce shortage.

It would help with better outcomes. It's going to help with safety. It's just going to be impactful across the whole business.

And it's going to take a technological evolution to get us there. And I think we're at the beginning of that. Amazing.

And to kind of wrap us up to our last question in a perfect timing because you guys have both used AI a couple of times in the discussion. So we have to wrap up with an AI discuss question. So AI has become a part of every industry discussion lately.

How do you see it practically changing how insurers are assessing and managing risk? So it's being used in many ways. We're we are like as insurers we're like everyone.

We're trying and testing many use cases. certainly it could be useful in assessing the completeness of a submission or of claims documentation right before an actual human starts to dive in and do the real work on it. Like is everything that we need here or do we need to go back for something else.

That's a that's a no-brainer use case. and then hopefully as I was just saying it helps us better understand that history and identify also you know looking forward what are the emerging trends that are starting to bubble up and get us through a you know quick analysis of vast diverse data sets. Many of us use it to quickly get to speed on whatever risk is arising right now.

Like AI is good at pointing you in directions for research. It's not great at doing the research for you to be clear. It's like a it's like a herd of mediocre interns, but it's good at bringing you things that you should look at and then you got to do the real human work.

Use your art, use your expertise on analyzing, what it is that has come your way, but AI can really help bring it to you like create a curriculum of sorts. and it could also be useful on picking up on fraud in insurance, right? I'm certain that's going to be a future use case in insurance for AI and that less fraud really does help everyone.

So that that's that could be very powerful. Yeah, I think when I think about AI I think we need to learn it personally first like how do we have AI add value to our personal lives? I kind of like made the mistake before of trying to adjust AI to specific functions or roles or projects, right?

But I think like if you learn how to use it personally, and practice using it, then you start to figure out how to use it yourself to do your job better to make yourself more efficient at work. it could be risk reduction. It could be looking for trends and patterns.

But I think, Sheree, you said like it's like interns, right? like we need to provide context more so than ever before and if I'm about to engage with AI or say like a chatbot or something I think a lot about the context I'm going to give it and what I can get out of it so like there is some intelligent design in how we interface with AI I think we're a long ways away to go where it solves all our problems but I think at least I'm seeing a lot more people practice it and I think we'll figure out different ways to use it but like on our our own terms. The industry has come a long way but there's still quite a way to go.

Perfect. Well, I want to thank you Chris and Sheree for joining us on this discussion.

It was great having you here and for having you a part of our webinar. I want to thank everybody for joining. If you have any questions for us after, please let us know and we would be happy to address them.

Thank you everybody who joined today. Thanks everyone. Thank you.

Thank you.