3️⃣ insights from 3️⃣ months in contech After 12 years in construction as both a project-based field champion and a national innovation and IT manager with two large global orgs, in June I transitioned to an exciting role in technology that serves our industry and others. After 3 months with DroneDeploy, I’ve noticed 3 things that I didn’t realize from the other side of the table: 1️⃣ Each company has unique projects, projects and personalities, but many face the same pain points and challenges with buy-in, implementation, and adoption. 2️⃣ Construction companies could learn a lot from adopting similar tools and workflows as contech companies for issue tracking, enterprise knowledge search and onboarding and employee training. 3️⃣ That AI notetaker joining your demo, discovery or check-in meetings is actually helping customers have your voice heard by surfacing issues, new ideas and product feedback. For others who have jumped into contech from industry or “joined the dark side” (why do we even say this?!), I’d love to hear from you. Any other insights worth sharing?
Glad to hear your move to ‘the darkside’ is going well, Evan! In my opinion, businesses are ultimately made up of multiple individuals all trying their best to work together towards a common goal/mission. Often the end goal is the same across many businesses, I.e become more competitive, reduce risk, incorporate sustainability, but how they reach it and in what manner they do it is dictated by their people, process and technology. I have found that being genuinely curious and interested in that individual business and how you can work towards supporting them as a trusted advisor is always well received. At the end of the day, the industry is changing (for the better) and everyone wants to be doing the right thing.
What does it mean if you have always been on the "dark side"? 😂
Really appreciate these insights! Coming from the GC side, I see a lot of the same pain points you mention around buy-in, adoption, and training. What’s interesting for me is that we’re often on the receiving end of these contech tools, trying to make them fit into fast-moving projects with multiple trades and owners at the table. I’d love to hear more from your side—especially on how contech companies think about aligning their tools with the realities of field execution. As someone still deep in GC work, I’m always curious about where the gaps are and how we can bridge them better together.
Great insights. The biggest shock for me moving into contech was how structured the workflows are compared to construction. In construction, we’ll “figure it out on the fly.” In tech, issue tracking and onboarding are built in disciplines. If we adopted even half of that mindset on projects, we’d waste a lot less time and money.