Welcome to Advanced Automation, a podcast by Calvary Robotics, where you'll find industry leaders and experts sharing their thoughts on the world of automation. Hello, everyone, and thanks for listening. I'm Josh Gravel, your host for this installment of Advanced Automation. Today, we have with us Jeff Smith. Jeff Smith is a project manager for Bolter Industrial Contractors. Jeff began his career as an ironworker apprentice in nineteen ninety eight before transitioning through the ranks to his current role as project manager in twenty thirteen. With a concept to execution approach and extensive knowledge of steel fabrication, rigging, and preventative maintenance programs, Jeff successfully oversees a range of projects while adhering to the customer's deadline, budget, and scope of work. Jeff, thanks so much for being here. Thank you. So I kinda wanted to start off with having you take us through your timeline, past up to now. You know, early life, schooling, career, that sort of thing. Sure. Early life. I, grew up in Walworth, New York. I moved away for a couple years and moved right back to, the house across the street from where I grew up, as a matter of fact. Played a lot of baseball as a kid, but I also worked. I worked a lot on farms, worked for landscapers. Kinda understood that if I wanted to buy something, I needed to work and make some money. Good lessons right there. And for, schooling prior to joining the workforce? Yeah. I went to Wayne Central High School, and from there, I went to SUNY Morrisville. I started out taking forestry. And as, time went on, kinda discovered that there weren't a lot of job opportunities. So I took welding and electrical and carpentry and anything I possibly could that was skilled trade related, knowing that that was probably the direction I was gonna go after school. My father was in the skilled trades all his life. He was a pipe fitter. He worked for Eastman Kodak right in Rochester. And occasionally, on weekends, I would go with him to different jobs. So I would see different projects going on, see the different trades working, and that really sparked my interest in the trades. Wonderful. Good foundation, it sounds like. Yes. Absolutely. So could you give us an overview of a Volter and what goes on for shipping, the rigging, logistics solutions, and, you know, overall how they play into the global and local aspects of, the supply chain? Walter is a hundred and thirty year old company. Started out as a provider for ice and cold delivery service, you know, the horses and horses and buggies. And through the years, expanded the fleet to trucks and tractor trailers, went moved from, the ice and cold delivery to moving just about anything anybody needs moved. We provide a lot of service to our customers from rigging to steel fabrication, creating and packaging. We try to offer as much as we possibly can to help the customer make their life easier when it comes to completing a project. If they can do more with one contractor, it's a lot easier than having to farm out to several different contractors to complete a project. Absolutely. And I know that Calvary and Volter have had a long relationship, and you've the guys have been wonderful for us over the many years. Speaking of that, how many projects do you think you've managed in your career now? I don't even know how I would count the number of projects. There's been many. A project can be from a half a day to a couple weeks long to several months long to to years. Each one's very interesting. Every project from the four hour project to the month long project is a lot of planning and coordination, between the rigging and transportation scheduling. Scheduling is a big one, for sure. Staying in contact with the customer is is very important. Yeah. Especially as the project manager, I would think. Yes. Absolutely. Can you tell us about one of the more challenging projects that kinda sticks out to you? We recently installed some new tanks for the High Falls Brewery in, downtown Rochester. These are exterior tanks. They were seventy foot tall, fourteen foot in diameter. And, the project was underway, and then the pandemic hit. So the job site wasn't quite ready to receive the tanks, which were already fabricated on their way. So to try and help out the customer as best we could, we had them deliver the tanks right to our yard and said, you know what? We'll take it off your shoulders, we'll unload the tanks to our yard and store them until, you know, the dust settles a little bit and you guys get your groundwork done and you're ready for the tanks. So we did that. We received the tanks. We stored them. And then when the brewery was ready for them, we loaded the tanks up, took them from Webster to Rochester, offloaded the tanks, stood each one individually, tied them all together with catwalks, and created the the finished product that the brewery is looking for with these new tags so they could get them get them piped and get them ready for action. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but there's a nice little video of that either on LinkedIn or YouTube channel that people could check out to see even more about that. Is that right? Yes. That is correct. Yeah. It's quite the project. So as a subcontractor, how have delays and shortages in the supply chain affected business for you? Delays and shortages, have really affected us with materials. Our crating and packaging shop, seeing lumber shortages, lumber price increases, and same with our steel shop. A lot of materials that used to be able to get next day, we may be waiting three, four, up to eight weeks to get some of the materials now. Even though they're they're common, they're just not available. Delays, there's a lot of delays in trucking, which affects our machine installation projects. There may be a project that's been on the books for months that gets delayed because machines are delayed in transit. We're just not receiving them on them on time. These delivery delays really change our schedule on a daily basis. Yeah. Just gotta react to whatever new challenge is thrown at you, I'm sure. Yes. So what measures does Volter has Volter taken to eliminate what they can for these delays or minimize them? We stay in constant communication with our customers and the vendors. Everybody that's involved in a project, we all need to stay in constant communication. If lead times change for a machine that's being built for a customer that's gonna delay that project, We may be able to work with another customer whose machine is running on time or ahead of schedule and just, you know, work with every customer to change our schedule around to try and accommodate everybody as best we can to get everybody's project done and in the time frame that they're looking to get it completed in. Right. So everyone has dealt with shipping delays or shortages during the pandemic. Is there anything that companies can do to better manage their projects to avoid, you know, additional supply chain related stress? A lot of it starts with the paperwork, making sure all the paperwork is in order for for shipping. It's the slightest little thing can hold a sea container or a trailer up at at a port or anywhere where it needs to move from, and it it could delay transportation for for weeks, really, if the paperwork's not in order. Customers, really, because our voice had to deal with the delays and the shortages, a lot of the customers have learned how to account for it. When they're making project schedules, they know that that schedule is liable to slip a little bit due to these delays and the shortages. But everybody's done really well and has tried to avoid setting unrealistic, you know, benchmarks or schedules just knowing that there's possible delays to be dealt with. Yeah. We need a flexibility clause written into all our contracts, I think, at this point. Yes. Correct. And then currently, everyone's kind of got the idea that order early, order extra, and expect delays. Do you think this is the new standard or that things will go back to a prepandemic status status? I feel this is gonna be the new standard for a while. I don't see everything going back to pre pandemic status a hundred percent, but there's there's good reason. There's some positive changes to consider, the way people are dealing with the delays and the shortages. Like I mentioned before, schedules aren't quite as aggressive as they as they used to be. Not all of them. Some are still pretty aggressive, but we we do what we can. Right. It's just the pre pandemic status, I don't think we're gonna see that again for a while. I think it's just dealing with the changes on a day to day basis. And and like I said, customers are doing really well with with dealing with it. Yeah. Considering it's global, I think everybody since everyone's affected, it has to realize that this is going to be part of it, you know? Sure. Have you witnessed any new and emerging technologies that are being used to combat, you know, the supply chain slowdowns? We're seeing a a lot more robotics, smart warehousing, meaning material handling robots inside of warehouses, automated robots for moving materials around. As far as Boulter's concerned, we may eventually see driverless trucks. You know, there's a lot of technology out there. Who knows what's, what's to come? You never know. Yeah. It's exciting exciting time. How speaking of exciting, can you tell us about anything that's happening at Boulter that everyone should know about? In the last year, we actually built a new warehouse, so we create a lot of storage space for a lot of new customer materials and new machines that come in. For ourselves, we've bought a lot of new new equipment, forklifts, trailers, stuff that we use every single day on a day to day basis to complete our projects. Outside of Boulter, we try to work a lot with up and coming possible employees, like kids in BOCES programs. Next May, we're gonna be hosting a career day for BOCES students to kinda introduce them to the skilled trades and and the different aspects of it to see if there's kids that are coming through the ranks that are gonna be interested in in working the skilled trades. That's wonderful. And could you say one more time for the listeners what when is that is happening? That is May seventeenth. Alright, mark your calendars everyone. So Jeff, you talked about living in the greater Rochester region your whole life and what what's about Rochester that keeps you living here and working here and other favorite aspects? Sure. As far as living here, especially in my small town, Woolworth, it's like I said, I grew up there. I moved away for a little while. I came back because I love the small town atmosphere, the region. I love the weather. I love the changing of the seasons. The the the question it's asked every year is what's in store for this winter. You never know if it's gonna be a terrible winter or not too bad, mild or real cold. I like that. I I don't think I'd like to have the same weather possibly all year long. Working in the area, there's so many different businesses that do so many different things that there's there's never the same project twice. Every project is different. And I I think that's there's a lot to be said for all the different businesses in the area. I agree. I totally agree with you. So to wrap it up, what is the best way for our listeners to get in touch with you or Bolter? Listeners can visit bolterindustrial dot com, for more information on Bolter. You're certainly more than welcome to call our office and speak with any of our project managers. We'll help you in any way we possibly can. I'm also gonna include a link in the notes with my digital business card. Well, thanks to you, Jeff, and Bolter for the time. We appreciate it. And to our listeners. Thank you very much. Make sure to subscribe to Advanced Automation wherever you get your podcasts and head over to calvary robotics dot com to listen to other episodes, watch our series, Calvary TV, and lots of other great content about Calvary Robotics. Have a great day.
