Proper Precon Podcast

Who gets to decide what great pre-construction looks like? Not the GC, the architect, or the trade partner. According to Justin Brodnax, it’s the client, because they’re the one paying for it.

Justin has spent more than 20 years in the industry. He started as a plumber’s apprentice in Gadsden, Alabama, then earned a building science degree and a master’s in design-build from Auburn. He spent about 15 years in pre-construction and business development at Hoar Construction in Houston and Austin. A little over a month ago he joined White Construction, a 50-year-old commercial GC headquartered in Austin, to help it grow into new markets and regions. His line on the move: “I didn’t lose 15 years of pre-con experience overnight because I started doing business development.” He still builds conceptual estimates for his clients, sometimes in Excel and sometimes on a napkin.

Trey has known Justin since they started at Hoar about six months apart in 2011. Both of them were doing early model-based estimating and VDC work in different offices. In this conversation the three of them cover the overlap between BD and pre-con, why trade partner feedback is the most underused relationship tool in the industry, and why Justin thinks every new construction hire should start in estimating.

In this episode:

• Why BD and pre-con have to work together constantly, from steel lead times to steel-to-concrete conversions to rebar price swings driven by data center demand
• The “15 minutes or end of day?” question Justin asks every client so his effort matches what they actually need
• Why the most technical BD people get the phone call before the connectors do
• Negotiated vs. hard bid: why 70–80% collaborative delivery is the target, why a good hard bid is still a true test of the market, and why projects under $10M may suit competitive sealed proposals
• Trade partners vs. subcontractors: why giving feedback on proposals builds the relationship faster than anything else, and why “if you think you need leverage, you don’t have the right partner”
• How to talk about cost certainty before it exists: ROM gut checks, conditions of satisfaction, target value design, and the “squishy goals” that define success
• Cost should inform design, not always drive it, and how to spot the sacred cows an architect is protecting
• Where human judgment still matters in the age of AI, and why Justin is skeptical of handing takeoff over to it: “That’s how you learn the project”
• Why every field engineer and PM should spend six months in estimating first
• Justin’s “single-use plastic” view of the flood of one-off AI point solutions, and why cloud-based collaborative estimating beats PDF markups from six different people
• The Fast Five (which wasn’t so fast): trust, network vs. relationships, why it’s OK not to have the answer right away, the case against lump-sum trade proposals, and the “escalation crystal ball”

Pre-con sets the table for success. The teams that get the most out of it know their client, know their trades, and know the job from cover to cover.

🎙️ Proper Precon is a podcast about pre-construction, estimating, and construction technology, hosted by Troy Simon and Trey Darnell. Follow the show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube, and share it with someone in the pre-con world.

Proper Precon is powered by Ediphi, the cloud-native preconstruction estimating platform. Learn more at ediphi.com.

Every GC wants trade partners who show up early, price accurately, and help close scope gaps before they become change orders. But how often do we stop and ask what that effort costs the subcontractor, and what they get back in return?

This week, Troy Simon and Trey Darnell sit down with Ryan Elder, founder of BidIntell.ai, who has lived on both sides of the bid table. Ryan spent roughly a decade in general contracting, including time as a project engineer, project manager, and purchasing agent at Turner Construction, before launching and running a Division 10 and 12 specialty subcontracting business for more than ten years. When that business ran into the margin, capacity, and workload problems that sink many subs, Ryan shut it down, helped his team land new roles, and turned those scars into software built to help trade partners make smarter bid/no-bid decisions.

The result is a candid conversation about what great pre-con looks like from the trade partner’s chair, why “partner” gets used a little too loosely, and why the simplest fix in the industry might just be picking up the phone and giving feedback.

In this episode:

• What great pre-con looks like when you’ve been both the buyer and the bidder, and why trade partners need to treat pre-con as a business expense, not a favor
• What GCs and trade partners misunderstand about each other, and the moment Ryan realized subs are running businesses with real financial limits
• The three-bid mentality, “spray and pray” bid invites, and why mass distribution through plan rooms can turn into a race to the bottom
• When trade partners should be engaged in pre-con, and why specialty scopes like motorized shades and operable walls create gaps engineers don’t catch at schematic design
• How BidIntell.ai scores incoming bid invites by location, client history, and trade fit, with customizable weighting and estimator overrides that teach the system over time
• Why AI should support estimator judgment, not replace it, and the danger of building confidence in the wrong information
• Deposits, stored materials, and contract terms: are GCs and trade partners managing risk together or just pushing it downstream?
• Trey’s “subcontractors as a service” idea, and whether annual trade agreements could change how work gets bought
• The pendulum from point solutions to platforms to integrated, workflow-centered tools, and why not all APIs are created equal

Ryan closes the Fast Five with an answer we haven’t heard yet, sparking a deep dive into prefab rooms, labor shortages, and why the right owner matters as much as the right project.

Partnership isn’t a word on a bid invite. It’s feedback, honesty, and respect for each other’s business.

Proper Precon is powered by Ediphi, the cloud-native preconstruction platform built for estimators who want to move faster and win smarter. Learn more at ediphi.com.

Follow and subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube, and share this episode with someone in your pre-con world.

Connect with Ryan Elder on LinkedIn and learn more at bidintell.ai.

Most pre-con teams play defense: wait for the drawings, price what’s there, cut what’s over. Derek Brown has spent 28 years learning to play offense instead.

In this episode, Trey Darnell sits down with Derek Brown of Alston Construction for a wide-ranging conversation about what great preconstruction actually looks like. Derek has worked on both sides of the table, with about 17 years on the GC side and 11 as an owner’s cost consultant. His projects range from a backflow preventer funding budget to programs worth $5 billion. That dual perspective gives him a clear view of what separates top-tier pre-con teams from the rest, and why the best estimators lead design rather than trail it.

In this episode:

• What great pre-con looks like: Acting as an owner advocate, “blocking and tackling” for the design team, and why continual cost management beats traditional value engineering’s price-it, bust-it, redesign-it cycle
• The estimate as a design tool: How a detailed conceptual estimate built like a “recipe cookbook” can get out ahead of design, even with only three sheets of drawings
• Respecting trade partners: Using bid tabs to make sure every trade partner is whole, protecting VE ideas from being shopped, sizing partners to the work, and why courtesy numbers damage relationships
• Relationships you can’t fake: How five trade partners delivered detailed conceptual numbers on a Spartanburg industrial site that wouldn’t be priced again for six months
• Price vs. cost certainty: Benchmarking, board-approved budgets, and real-time estimating through an SD-phase pivot on a UAB emergency department renovation after a shooting forced the team to harden the walls
• Where judgment beats process: Setting design, construction, and escalation contingency by trade rather than with a blanket percentage, plus two cautionary benchmarking stories about hurricane uplift in Myrtle Beach and seismic design in Memphis
• Are we teaching pre-con the right way? The business side, billing, presenting to a CEO, soft skills, career pathways, and capstones that sell pre-con services rather than just fill a spreadsheet
• Certification and integrity: Derek’s ASPE ethics story, why he treats certification like a diploma, and his work restarting the ASPE chapter in Nashville
• AI: leverage or distraction? Treating Claude as an intern, an argument over walls in a corridor during an AI takeoff, the risk of “making ourselves dumber,” and Derek’s vision for a front-end decision tool that turns decades of judgment into early-stage risk and option analysis

The drawings will never be complete. The best pre-con teams don’t wait for them. They quantify what’s visible, qualify what isn’t, and help owners make better decisions before anything is put on paper.

Proper Precon Podcast is powered by Ediphi, the cloud-native preconstruction platform that carries the cost story from concept to GMP. Learn more at ediphi.com.

Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.

Contractors usually start target value design with the construction budget. By then, the target has already been set somewhere upstream by land, density, financing, operating costs, and the returns a project has to hit to get built at all. In this episode, we follow the number back to where it starts.

Justin Ballantine returns to the show from Mill Creek Residential, a vertically integrated developer, builder, and operator of multifamily communities nationwide. He spent nearly a decade in pre-con at Callahan Construction, a third-party GC, before moving to Mill Creek. That gives him a view from both sides of the table. He walks Troy and Trey through how a project's target is actually born and how Mill Creek is working toward target value design and integrated project delivery. He also explains why the phrase he most wants removed from design meetings is "if it works with Justin's budget."

In this episode:

• How the pro forma drives the target: max density, unit mix, parking, and return on cost before a site plan even exists
• Why target value design is not target cost design, and how developers define value differently than contractors do
• The biggest cost levers in today's market: site conditions, soils export, trucking, and municipal pressure on truck trips
• How energy codes like the Massachusetts stretch energy code and passive house requirements set a cost baseline before the "pretty stuff"
• The MacLeamy curve and why 80% of project cost is set in the first 20% of design
• Set based design and cost buckets: treating the entire facade as one $10M bucket and flexing the mix of fiber cement, metal panel, and brick inside it
• Balancing form and function so one system, like triple-glazed windows, doesn't consume the whole bucket
• Continuous estimating, design phase pull plans, and moving from reactive value engineering to proactive decisions
• The real barriers to IPD: contracts, pre-con fees for trade partners, and getting investors to see cost as value
• Why vertical integration and a consistent core of design partners make value decisions easier
• A reworked Fast Five, including whether a bad number or a slow decision is more dangerous and the trade Justin wishes came in earlier

The best projects aren't the ones that hit the number. They're the ones where everyone at the table can see the number, trusts it, and makes decisions in meetings instead of months.

Proper Precon Podcast is powered by Ediphi. Catch every episode at properprecon.com, or subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts. Share it with your favorite builder, trade partner, developer, or architect.

Curious about Ediphi? Visit ediphi.com and click Schedule a Demo.

Every software vendor in construction has an AI story right now. Very few can explain what's happening underneath it. In this episode, we skip past "is it cloud?" and "does it have AI?" and ask the questions that will decide which pre-con tech stacks survive the next five years.

Troy and Trey sit down with Dustin DeVan, founder of BuildingConnected and CEO of Ediphi. Dustin spent six years as a GC before building software, and he's spent fifteen years since in construction tech. He's blunt about why most estimating tools aren't ready for an agentic future. He also explains why the question buyers should be asking has nothing to do with where the data lives and everything to do with where the calculations run.

In this episode:

• Why "it doesn't matter what software you use, it matters where the data goes" is the wrong way to evaluate pre-con technology
• The hidden problem with browser-heavy and desktop-to-cloud tools: what happens when 50 users and dozens of agents are calculating the same estimate at once
• Why the schedule of values is the most important document in construction, and how building a cost graph around it creates a real learning system
• The difference between AI clicking buttons for you and AI performing authorized work on the server
• A first look at Eddie, Ediphi's AI assistant planned for Q4, and why it depends on server-side architecture
• Who settles the argument when the historical steel price, current market price, and the estimator's judgment all disagree
• Estimated vs. bought vs. built cost, buyout context, and why the foreman on your project may matter more than the subcontractor you prequalified
• Why the static cost database is going away and unit costs should become dynamic, driven by quantity, location, and history
• MCP (Model Context Protocol) explained, and what real integrations look like beyond exporting and importing spreadsheets
• The one question every pre-con leader should take back to their team: can your system reproduce and explain the number two years from now?
• A Fast Five with the most overused phrase in construction tech and the danger of bad data fueling bad AI

The easy button is coming for pre-construction, but only for teams whose tech stack was built to handle it.

Proper Precon Podcast is powered by Ediphi. Subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts, and share with someone in pre-con who needs to hear this one.

Curious about Ediphi? Visit ediphi.com and click Schedule a Demo.

Construction tech promised to simplify the work. Instead, we ended up with 15, 20, sometimes more point solutions—and Excel quietly holding it all together. So what went wrong, and is the answer really one platform to rule them all?

This week, it's just Troy and Trey working through one of the biggest tensions in construction technology: point solutions vs. platforms, and why the real problem might not be either one.

In this episode:

• Why point solutions were never the actual problem—disconnection was
• Whether "one platform, one login, one database" really fixes anything, or just centralizes the complexity
• The case for building around the workflow: concept → cost model → estimate → VE → bidding → GMP → handoff
• How AI could kill software sprawl—or accelerate it into "shadow software" chaos
• Why domain expertise gets more valuable as building software gets easier
• What happens when AI becomes the interface, and your systems disagree on the number

The future isn't just connected data. It's connected context.

Proper Precon is powered by Ediphi. New episodes every week—subscribe wherever you listen.

Most people think a project's cost is set on bid day. But by the time drawings go out, the decisions that determine cost, schedule, risk, and success have already been made—or delayed into becoming problems.

In this episode, we sit down with Charles Bradshaw and Sloan Walker of Scout Program Management to look at construction from the owner's side of the table. Both spent years on the GC side—estimating, precon, and VDC at firms like Hoare and Doster—before moving into program management, and that dual perspective shapes everything they do for their K-12 clients.

We get into what owners need to get right long before the bid: how funding sources and debt service shape a budget, why soft costs can add 15%+ on top of construction, and how a smart drawdown schedule can reinvest millions back into a project. Charles and Sloan share why they favor add alternates over VE exercises, how they build both design and bid-day contingencies, and what happens when the number misses on bid day.

We also dig into the human side—defining what "success" actually means to an owner, understanding the "sacred cows," building communication plans so decisions don't fall through the cracks, and why the GC who "joins the dance mid-song" needs an advocate who already has the owner's trust.

Whether you build every year or once a decade, this conversation is a masterclass in the early decisions that quietly determine how a project ends.

Learn more about Scout Program Management at scoutpm.com.

The Proper Precon Podcast is powered by Ediphi.

Technology That Actually Moves the Needle — with David Haley, DPR Construction

Twenty years ago, a CD burner could triple your bid coverage. Today, there are hundreds of tools fighting for your pre-con team's attention — so how do you know which ones actually move the needle?

In this episode, Troy Simon and Trey Darnell sit down with David Haley, Preconstruction Manager at DPR Construction, who's spent 35 years in the industry — from counting light fixtures on paper drawings with his grandfather to leading pre-con on billion-dollar healthcare projects. David shares how one of the industry's most tech-forward GCs evaluates, tests, and rolls out new technology without burning trust with its teams.

In this episode:

• How David defines "moving the needle" — and why it's harder than ever with so many tools in the marketplace
• Why DPR still teaches interns takeoff the old-school way before handing them AI (hint: you can't mentor someone who can't show their work)
• The bid leveling gap: where AI compares words but misses what's missing
• Why the trade partner who's double everyone else's price might be the one you need to call first
• How live option engineering — accepting and rejecting alternates in the room — turned 75 scope options into a $10M contract increase built on trust, not cuts
• Predictability as the next frontier: turning mountains of historical cost data into numbers owners can bank on two years before market input exists
• How DPR rolled out Ediphi to 100+ pre-con professionals — and why letting people poke holes drove near-total adoption
• Prefabrication, unit costing, and getting granular earlier: what David hopes technology solves in the next five years

Plus, the Fast Five: the one part of pre-con David says should never be automated, and what pre-con teams must figure out to win the next five years.

The tool doesn't build trust — the person using it does. But the right tool gets you in the room faster.

The Proper Precon Podcast is powered by Ediphi. Learn more at ediphi.com.

Subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube at properprecon.com.

What separates software that digitizes old habits from software that actually moves preconstruction forward? Ediphi Director of Product Eric Walker joins Troy Simon and Trey Darnell to talk about the discipline of product — why good PMs dig beneath the feature request, how AI should support estimator judgment instead of replacing it, and why the companies that house the data will win the next era of construction tech.

Episode 9 defines what “great” looks like in Target Value Design (TVD) with Preston Hite (Hoar Construction). We break down the real (non-textbook) TVD workflow: starting with an owner’s target, building trust early, designing to cost, and using real-time estimating to guide decisions before drawings are complete. We cover owner + architect alignment, the precon team’s upstream role, historical cost data and scenario modeling, where TVD fails, and how technology enables faster, more credible cost feedback and shorter cycles to GMP.