Using Technology to Reduce Costs and Maximize Efficiency in Real Estate with Aakash Prasad

Sean: [00:00:00] Thank you so much for being on the show today. Go ahead and introduce yourself and let us know who you are and how you got into real estate.

Aakash: [00:00:06] Yeah, so, my name is Aakash Prasad. I’m the founder and CEO of a company called Design Everest. What we do is we’re kind of a tech company meets engineering company. So we do building design and engineering but we’re powered by technology. So these are residential single-family and multi-family as well as commercial. So my company has designed or engineered about 4000 projects in the last three years, going from home remodels to high-end custom Homes to fire rebuilds and Sonoma County to… We’ve done work on Oakland Airport from Microsoft, Holiday Inn, Starbucks, King Co’s. So basically, while we ourselves are not developing real estate per se, we’re actively involved with that. We’re working with developers, investors, owners, etc, contractors, in terms of designing and engineering buildings and helping get permits so that ultimately the contractor, the construction company, can build it.

Sean: [00:01:14] Yeah, that’s awesome. How did you guys even get into that business in the first place?

Aakash: [00:01:18] For me the story goes way back. My dad is an experienced structural engineer and his dad, my grandfather, he was a civil engineer. So that’s run in the family in terms of some of my cousins are structural engineers. I myself am not a structural engineer, but I come from the technology domain. So I was inspired by what I saw my dad doing growing up. But they my backgrounds in technology. I went to Berkeley, studied electrical engineering and computer science after that. I helped start a couple of venture-backed technology startups. And then in 2016. I was kind of thinking about it. You know, I think there’s a unique opportunity to bring the two fields together and that was when I started really focusing on Design Everest full-time three years ago. And since then we’ve grown and scaled up quite a bit.

Sean: [00:02:16] Yeah, it’s incredible. How big is your team right now?

Aakash: [00:02:19] Well are our core team is nearing 40 people now, in fact, we just had three people start this week. And then we have a large network of you know hundreds of engineers and designers and architects that we work with. So we have kind of our core in-house team and then we have hundred plus architects and designers and structural engineers and civil engineers that we work with.

Sean: [00:02:48] So what is the exact product that you are selling to customers? And who are your customers exactly? Is it the investors themselves? Is it the structural engineering firm? Contractors?

Aakash: [00:02:58] At the end of the day, the end customer is whoever’s, paying for it: the building owner or investor or developer. But we get our business both ways. I mean from… In many cases, it’s the investor, developer or the building owner. Whoever’s initiating or funding the project coming to us. But in many cases it’s also like they’ve hired a contractor for example or they’ve hired an architect and they’re bringing the project to us for engineering so it works both ways.

Sean: [00:03:32] So what do you guys exactly producing? Are they just architectural plans, structure engineering, like plans?

Aakash: [00:03:38] What we’ve built is like a one-stop… we call it a design hub. It’s a one-stop hub that is powered by software. For all these different services whether it’s structural engineering, civil engineering, drafting, 3D rendering, as built, observations and inspections during construction, kind of all the white collar work that needs to be done on a project outside of the physical construction. So you can think of it as a one-stop preconstruction shop. But what’s unique about us, it’s a few different things. It’s the fact that we’re this one-stop hub for all these services as opposed to the investor for example having to recruit an architect, having to recruit a structural engineer, a civil engineer, a Title 24, and find all those people and manage them and coordinate them and deal with that whole project management mess. We do that, we take care of that. So we’re that convenient one-stop shop where you can just come to us and we can kind of do everything. And then we built a ton of software like custom software to make all of this happen and manage all these projects and be very efficient and deliver these projects. That’s all custom proprietary software that we’ve built in order to be able to power our business and deliver our projects. You know, that’s how we’re able to work on like 200 plus projects at any given time, close to 200 projects a month, and turn these around pretty quickly from a few weeks to a couple of months. For the last majority of heavy stuff, smaller and midsize projects that we do. And in terms of how that software helps the customer. It’s really in the project management and tracking and scheduling, being very efficient. So what that means is the time for the customer… from the time that they start the engagement to the time they get the plans and you know permits, it’s just a lot faster than it would be if they were trying to work with a lot of mom-and-pop shops that don’t have the software and economies of scale and efficiency where things just take a lot longer.

Sean: [00:05:43] Yeah makes sense. Actually, I kind of want to dive deeper into what you just said. So you mentioned that you are kind of like a combination of the traditional architectural structural engineering company, but also using technology as well. I mean, it’s always the technology part just that you have your software to… I got confused about that part. What exactly is the software technology part of this business?

Aakash: [00:06:06] Yeah, we’ve looked at kind of the whole workflow of from when the time an engineer or designer, drafter, civil, structural. It’s from the time they start a project to the time they finish it and even construction. And we’ve looked at all the steps in that workflow, all the inefficiencies in that workflow, and we’ve built software to help with all those different steps. Whether it’s providing support during construction in terms of the speed of answering support question during construction from a contractor, or it’s keeping the project on track on schedule, or templates for the engineers and architects to use, we’ve looked at every step of the workflow. Even like capturing the existing measurements, there’s certain technology that we use there that’s pretty pretty new in terms of capturing scans of buildings and getting the exact measurements quicker and more accurately than how engineers typically do it, they’d just take out a measuring tape. So they try to optimize every step of the workflow through software. One parallel, you know, maybe a lot of the viewers of this podcast, they may be familiar with Compass which is like a big real estate brokerage that’s taking a lot of market share in the realtor industry, in the brokerage industry. And you know what they’ve done is like they have all these realtors just like Coldwell Banker or some of the companies acquired like Pacific Union. But they’ve built a ton of software for those realtors for every step of the workflow. So for example in the case of you know, the parallel of Compass they’re like a tech enabled real estate brokerage. We’re like a tech enabled, you know design and engineering company. So the Compass parallel would be you know when the realtor is with you, you know viewing a property, showing you a property, they’ve got these apps that Compass has built where you can find really accurate comps where you quickly figure out if the price for this house is fair or not, is reasonable or competitive or not, right? So that’s like one step of the workflow for realtors. In our case those parallel steps in the workflow would be when the engineer goes out to capture the existing conditions at the building. The more accurately you capture that using technology, the less discrepancies there are during construction, the less hold ups and delays that are doing construction from having to change plans in the middle of construction. That’s one specific step of the workflow, but there’s also other steps of the workflow in terms of how they prepare the engineering drawings, how they prepare the engineering calculations. We’re working on AI for helping with the engineering as well. That isn’t fully developed yet. But that’s one of the things that we’re working on developing is like, how do you develop AI for example doing structural engineering of say a wall removal in terms of the calculations and the engineering drawings. Things like that. So each step of the workflow whether it’s actually preparing the drawings and calculations or it’s doing a structural survey of an existing building or it’s providing support during construction or its scheduling site visits and evaluations and inspections, we’ve tried to apply technology to all of these things and really ultimately what it’s about is it’s combining humans and technology. The output is something that is a lot more efficient and scalable and a better customer experience for our customers, saving them time and money and just getting things done a lot smoother and faster, than as if it were just humans in an old-school kind of traditional architecture engineering firm. So it’s really trying to leverage software everywhere that we can to make things more efficient and better and scalable or correct, etc. So I think Compass is a good parallel in a different domain is maybe something that the viewers here may be already familiar with quite well, yeah.

Sean: [00:09:59] I mean Compass has been doing really big. They just acquired Alain Pinel. I think a few weeks ago

Aakash: [00:10:05] APR, Yeah, exactly and Pacific Union. And you know, it’s a similar model in terms of you know, they’ve got the realtors, they’re selling the services, but their edge compared to the traditional brokerages is just all the tools and apps and software that they have built for the whole end-to-end customer experience and realtor experience and workflow that really gives them, their realtors an edge over a traditional mom-and-pop brokerage, which is everyone else out there. So you can look at us as that parallel within design engineering.

Sean: [00:10:41] That makes sense. So just to clarify, your software and your tools that you’re building in house is mostly to make your own personal process more efficient. So you can you know, turn out these designs quickly for your customers.

Aakash: [00:10:53] Yeah, our process enables our designers and engineers and drafters, etc. For them it kind of turbo charges them. Just the way, again, with the Compass parallel, their suite of apps kind of turbocharges their realtors and helps them do their job better

Sean: [00:11:11] And I wonder does it ever make sense to try to sell that software. At what point does it make it more sense to use that software as a business rather than having to use it for yourself?

Aakash: [00:11:19] You know that that’s something that we have definitely thought about. At some point down the road we may consider it but I think that my take is that ultimately people aren’t really looking for software. People have a problem. They need that problem solved. And what we want to do is we want to give solutions to our customers. We want to give them ultimately what they need, which is they need a good set of plans that’s not going to cost too much to build, that gets done in a competitive time frame, at a competitive price and gets code compliant, gets the permit, something that you know allows them to make the project successful. That’s the solution that they want. And you know down the road maybe if we’re successful on the AI side, you know, maybe we develop some ultimate AI that can just do all of that. But until then it’s really a combination of humans and software. So that’s why we’re in the business of like we’re delivering the solution. A good parallel would be if you look at Uber. Uber is not just the pure taxi company while they are giving you rides, but they’re also not a pure software company. Uber did not just build an app where you can track your ride and make your payment and sell that to taxi companies. The magic happen when the two things came together: the service the solution that you need, which is I need to get from San Francisco to Berkeley and the software that allows that to happen. So we’re kind of looking at it in that same way which is how do you bring the two together to deliver a superior product and service and customer experience. And it’s really the intersection of the two fields where the magic happens. And going back to my story of kind of how I started working on Design Everest. It’s really, you know, the tech background plus my dad being a very experienced engineer and we try to bring the two together. I think I think when you bring two fields together that’s where the magic happens as opposed to just being a pure software company or just being a pure traditional engineering company.

Sean: [00:13:17] Absolutely. And so you say you saw your dad working as a structural engineer for a long time and he’s probably seen so many inefficiencies in it and you’re like, “Hey, I have this tech background. I know of a way to solve it. Let me help you out. “

Aakash: [00:13:30] Exactly. I mean that it was really seeing all the opportunities and efficiencies in his field having grown up seeing that and then also seeing that hey, you know, it is possible to solve a lot of these problems and make this feel better with software and technology and were trying to bring the two together and that’s kind of what we’re about. That’s what we’ve been doing and you know, that’s how we’ve been able to scale pretty quickly in the last three years or so.

Sean: [00:13:57] Yeah, can you give me a case study like a comparison between traditional methods versus using you guys in terms of cost and turnaround time?

Aakash: [00:14:07] Yeah, absolutely. I can give you two really solid examples off the top of my head. The first one. This is a really good example where we saved the client a ton of money. So these are building owners. The client here it’s few people who own a pretty large residential building in the Marina District in San Francisco on Beach Street. The building is almost a hundred years old. It’s one of those Marina Mansions, 10-12 thousand square foot plus. And there’s multiple owners. There’s multiple units in the building. So there’s different… that’s why there’s different owners, but the situation there was that they wanted to do a pretty extensive remodel addition and they wanted to have a nice roof deck. They went to a traditional engineering company and they got the engineering done and they paid a lot more money. And the construction cost came to a million dollars and they had sticker shock because their budget, it was like a good 15% plus over their budget. Like the worst case cost they had anticipated. So they really had sticker shock. Once they got that engineering done by that other company, which was one of those traditional old school established engineering firms that doesn’t really use technology that much and has been doing things the same way for 30 years for the most part. And they brought those plans to us for $20,000 and three weeks. We redid the engineering and saved them $150,000 in three weeks and they were actually able to proceed with the project with the scope of the remodel addition and roof deck that they wanted, they didn’t have to remove anything from the scope. They didn’t have to sacrifice on the design that they wanted. And because of our project delivery method, because of our software, because of how we value engineer, how we pay attention to the construction cost, we were able to really reduce the cost of the construction and save them a ton of money. It was a really good ROI for them. They put $20,000 in and they saved a hundred fifty thousand dollars three weeks later and more so than you know, the clients were pretty rich. I mean it wasn’t necessarily just about money. It was the fact that they could actually pull off the intention of the project and the design that they wanted and the architect in that case, it was an architecture firm in Mono district in San Francisco and they really in a modern design and they’re kind of one of the leading architecture firms in San Francisco. They were really happy that because of our work we could actually make that project a reality as opposed to them having to sacrifice on the design in order to make it work in the budget. So that’s like a good example of where we can save on construction cost.

Sean: [00:16:47] So just to clarify on that one. It’s the same contractor. It’s just because you guys went in and did a better, you know, quote better job as structural engineering using your software methods or because of your company, you’re able to save the money?

Aakash: [00:17:00] Oh, yeah, it’s the same contractor building it, it’s the same architect and the same design ultimately. But through the engineering and the sizing of different methods and the structural systems that were used and the amount of material that would require and you know do designing engineering things in a way so that it is more practical and easier for the contractor to build it, which again saves you material cost and labor costs. That’s what ultimately results in the cost reduction.

Sean: [00:17:28] And in this case the other structural engineer. Do you happen to know how long they took to do their plans? And how much did they charge their client?

Aakash: [00:17:35] I don’t remember off the top of my head. But I remember the timeline; they taken months. They had taken almost six months to do the engineering. Lot of back and forth. And as far as cost, I don’t remember the exact cost but I do know it was quite a bit more than what we had charged. I would not be surprised if it was in the 30 to 50 thousand dollar range, you know after the client had already paid that engineering company, they paid another $20,000 for us to basically redo it and granted you know part of why we were able to do it that quickly for such a decent sized building was because you know that other company had already done a lot of the work. We didn’t have to exactly start from scratch like we could really optimize it. So that helped in terms of the timeline, but still I do remember that they had taken like almost six months to do it. As far as cost. I don’t remember the exact figure but it was definitely a lot more than our price. So at the end of the day, the client was like “I should have just found you guys at the beginning. I could have saved like several months in our project.”

Sean: [00:18:34] Absolutely. So if you were to just do it from scratch, what do you think the cost and time would be for that.

Aakash: [00:18:39] Well, you know in those cases the cost would have been roughly the same ballpark because even when we’re redoing it, ultimately were responsible for the whole project making sure everything is correct, everything meets code. So we’re… even though it’s like, well they already did some work and we’re optimizing it, were taking liability and responsibility for the whole thing. We have to check everything, make sure everything works. We have to run our own calculations. So the price would have been roughly in the ballpark the same. But as far as turnaround time and if we’re doing everything from scratch, maybe it would have been four to six weeks.

Sean: [00:19:11] You mean the same as in it will be 20 grand or be the same as with the other structural engineering company?

Aakash: [00:19:16] That’s 20 grand, our same price, but the timeline would have been for starting from scratch. Maybe, you know on a project like that we would take four to six weeks. In this case because there’s some leg work already done by that other company we were able to do it in three weeks.

Sean: [00:19:30] Yeah, I guess it’s so interesting that you got into a structural engineering field. What were those other tech companies that you helped create?

Aakash: [00:19:37] Very different. The first one was online education, basically teaching people how to code. Like programming online. That was venture backed. That was a long time ago, that was like end of 2011, start of 2012. And then the second company also venture backed. It was an enterprise software company for HR software. So it was like a platform for actually evaluating software engineers, totally different spaces of education. But I think you know Design Everest really caught my interest because it was like, it’s in my blood. It’s in my family. My dad, his dad, it’s been running in the family and I felt like I was in this unique position where I could combine these two fields and really try to do something much more innovative than what I saw kind of the traditional firms in this industry doing where you know, they’re very low in their technology adoption. Forget creating their own software, even just adopting software. They’re very slow at that adoption and it’s kind of an industry where people are really set in their ways and they’re used to doing things. You know, we have some clients who are architects who are like 70 something years old and for the last 45 years, they’ve been hand drawing plans. And even today in 2019 they are hand drawing plans. In fact, they come to us with their hand drawn plans and we digitize it for them. So this is an industry that is very archaic. And and you know, that’s why we’re really trying to apply and build, not just apply, but really build tools and software to help kind of modernize it.

Sean: [00:21:30] It’s funny because I feel like we have pretty similar backgrounds. I’m a WE major. I went to UCLA and I’ve stumbled into the real estate field because I enjoy real estate. My dad has been a broker the past 20-plus years. And you’re right. There’s so many opportunities out there for technology and real estate. I’ve been personally trying to find out that intersection where I can provide value. I haven’t really figured that out yet. What kind of tips you have for someone who wants to start a technology business in real estate?

Aakash: [00:21:57] I think the biggest thing is, you know, what really helped us was that as we started, as we were just doing engineering projects, we didn’t necessarily start off at the focus of “hey, how do we build technology?”We started off, “Hey, let’s do projects. And let’s see. What are the pain points. Where the issue is. What are the problem areas? What are the inefficiencies?” And then that naturally led to the identification of “hey here are opportunities” and then once you know what the problems are. You don’t have to be an amazing technologists to come up with the solution. I mean, most people today are pretty tech savvy especially here in the Bay Area so you don’t have to be like some genius or whiz kid, or technologist to necessarily come up with the solutions. But once you know what the problem is, it’s a lot easier to brainstorm, “Hey, how can we help with this problem?” Even partly solve it or fully solve it and you know with software or technology. So I think the biggest thing is not starting with the technology. I think a mistake that a lot of people do is they start with the technology. I’ll give you an example. Obviously up until a year back, you know, Bitcoin and cryptocurrency was a huge huge fad right. Huge deal, whether people call it a fad or not. You know everyone has their opinion on it. But the thing is a lot of those projects, didn’t work out and they took, they had taken it with the approach of “oh, here’s this fancy new technology. You know, how can I find a use for it?” That’s like a very much a crapshoot and then once in a while, once in a hundred times, you might find some interesting real world application of the technology. Although today I can’t think of one company that’s actually affecting my life by blockchain, right? So I can’t name one company that’s delivered a meaningful product or service or value to me using blockchain. But there’s all these people are super excited about blockchain technology. That’s like one way to do it. But I think what works better is when you don’t start with the technology and you start with what are the actual problems. Like if you were to look at real estate, you were to maybe look at your dad’s business or his brokerage and what are some of the real world problems that he actually faces or that you face in real estate or your viewers face as investors or developers or realtors or you know people on real estate or managerial state. Once you identify the problem, coming up with the solution’s a lot easier. I think the mistake, you know, a lot of people do is they kind of start with the solution and try to work their way into a problem. And then you have to kind of win the lottery because you’re working backwards. If you start with the problem, it’s a lot easier to come up with the solution and then you don’t have to guess if there’s a demand for that solution or not because if you know that this problem exists and your solution actually solves that problem, there is demand because other people are facing that problem. If you start with the solution and try to identify a problem, that problem may not exist or you may not find that problem or it may not be a big enough problem for anyone to care about or pay for.

Sean: [00:24:56] That’s some really good advice. So basically just do it, find out where the inefficiencies are, and then solve it.

Aakash: [00:25:01] Yeah, a lot of people they really focus on ideas, they’ve really focused on “hey, I don’t have a start-up. I want to be an entrepreneur. I don’t have a start-up idea. I don’t have an idea for a project or something to build.” I think that’s the wrong way, it’s not about ideas. Once you start doing you start learning you start getting data and that data tells you, you know what the opportunities are. That’s your edge over other people. So if you’re sitting in an armchair or an ivory tower then you better hope that your a lottery winner, but when you’re actually going out and doing things and your learning and experiencing getting data, you don’t have to be a genius anymore. You’re seeing firsthand, what is needed in the world, in that industry, in that profession, in that space, or however you want to look at it, once you know what the problems are, what the opportunities are, I like to see them as opportunities as opposed to problems. But you know, it’s two sides of the same coin. And then that’s where you can think of. “Hey, what is a way that I can help solve this problem?”and when you start with problems, when you start with like real problems, those are the problems that are ultimately going to be valuable to solve because those are the problems that other… people will probably have that problem too. If you can solve a problem, that’s where for example businesses are willing to pay for things because you’re solving a problem that they have.

Sean: [00:26:27] Have you ever had that I guess fear that “man this problem exists” and you go online and there’s ten versions of that product already kind of available. But you know, it’s like yes this problem has been solved with technology, but you could probably do it better?

Aakash: [00:26:39] Yeah, and that’s going to be often the case. I mean it’s where you invent something totally brand-new that no one, you know, none of the eight billion other people have thought of, that’s just not going to happen. And if you take that approach then you know, there was no logic and starting Snapchat. There was no logic in starting Facebook. There’s no logic. There’s definitely no logic in starting Google and there were a hundred other search engines going pretty well, right? So it’s not about like “hey other people are doing this or not.” In fact, if other people are doing it, it just means that it is a big enough problem that other people are seeing it too and trying to solve it. So then it’s more about can you execute better? Whether it’s you’re developing a better product or you’re executing better in the sales and marketing or distribution of that product or the monetization of that product. It’s again not always even about having the best product. It’s ultimately it’s about execution across all areas of the business. Whether its product or its sales or its marketing or its finance or its risk management, you know, ultimately it’s about execution. So you may see that “hey there’s 10 other companies that have tried… they’re trying to do this.” But if you believe that for some reason you can out-execute them. Maybe you have a better solution. Maybe you feel they’re missing something or they’re not the right go to market or distribution strategy, right? Then you have some edge and you have… you know, the fact that there are ten other companies doing that it means that there’s demand. If there weren’t demand those 10 other companies would not exist. So that also shows you that there is already demand for what you want to do.

Sean: [00:28:13] Yep. That’s very true. So, how are you able to grow design ever so quickly?

Aakash: [00:28:17] Yeah, as far as kind of scaling up, I mean, it’s really been a few things that’s been really sharp focus on the quality of the team, the people we hire. And when we hire it’s not so much about “hey, this person went to Stanford or Berkeley or UCLA or MIT.” It’s about how well they can execute. What their track record has been in executing whether it’s been in a professional environment or academic environment. Because ultimately you need people who are going to do the hard work and heavy lifting, the attention to detail to build up your company whether it’s HR or it’s finance or it’s engineering or software or it’s design or marketing or sales. Whatever it is, you need people who can execute in their respective areas where you are. So it’s not really about how long is their resume, what brands are on their resume. It’s about has this person proven that they can execute because that’s what’s ultimately going to help you in building the company.So definitely the people and the focus on quality of execution and culture, that’s really important. And then besides that it’s been a lot of focus on metrics really trying to measure every area of the business and have key metrics around every area of the business because if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it. You have to keep measuring every area of the business whether it’s engineering or customer sat or sales or finance or legal, recruiting, you have to measure every area of the business. They have to keep improving. That’s what serves as a North star for each of those teams, those team leads, those the team members in their respective functions. The more you kind of turn things into clear metrics then people know, people understand what matters and what to focus on. When you don’t have the metrics then it’s just a matter of opinion. And then if I’ve smart people, five equally smart people, I’m going to have five different opinions and who’s right who’s wrong. It may just come out to who speaks the loudest right or who’s been at the company the longest those are all the wrong reasons, right? But when you have the metrics, it doesn’t matter. Which employee how new or how junior or how senior they are. It’s about who has the best ideas to drive the metrics in the right direction. As long as you have the right instrumentation and framework of metrics, that helps a lot in focusing people. So hiring people with the right culture fit, the right attitude the right growth mindset. And really the focus on execution combined with the right metrics that give them direction on what the North star, that helps a lot and then all the software and IP we’ve developed, you know, that’s that’s what has allowed us to scale up and do so many projects. In one month the volume of projects that traditional engineering companies may do in years.

Sean: [00:31:05] Yeah exactly because you do what 200 or so a month?

Aakash: [00:31:08] We’re nearing 200 a month now.

Sean: [00:31:09] And what about traditional firms? What do they usually do?

Aakash: [00:31:12] A few.

Sean: [00:31:14] Yeah right probably like 5 at most?

Aakash: [00:31:16] Yeah, they do a few projects a month and you know in one year, they might not even do what we do in a month and that’s because we’re trying to create something scalable. We’re not trying to be a traditional engineering consultancy. That’s not interesting to me. We’re trying to create something scalable. So I think just how we’re building a business, our approach, our ambition, everything is very different from the traditional engineering company where maybe an engineer had worked somewhere for 20 years decided to go out on his own, hire a couple engineers, set up a small office and it just kind of a lifestyle business for them. You know, that’s not really what we’re trying to do.

Sean: [00:31:50] Yeah. So with your method you can do more and faster and cheaper.

Aakash: [00:31:53] And I think the most exciting thing is we can innovate. Like we’re always… the culture that we have, we’re always looking at how can you do something better. How can you do it faster, how can you do it more efficiently, how you use data, how to use software. You know, we survey our customers a lot. We’re always collecting their feedback and try to look at how we can keep optimizing and do it better. It’s really that culture of continuous Improvement. I think that’s what has been one of the biggest things for us, whether it’s our salespeople or engineers or legal team, or finance team, or HR team, or operations team or you know, project management, whatever team it is. There’s this continual focus on improvement. They’re always looking at what can I do better every day, every week, every month, every quarter. And that culturally, that’s what allows us to keep improving at everything we do and ultimately all of that translates into more value for the end customer.

Sean: [00:32:45] And so you have so many different clients in so many different projects. What areas do you actually service?

Aakash: [00:32:51] So right now we’re all over California. We’ve done everything from fire rebuilds in far-flung areas in Mendocino County where they had one of the big fires last year.And also in a big forest fires end of 2017. Two projects are down south as San Diego. Although our key markets are really the Bay Area, Metro, and the LA metro. You know with the density of real estate and population density, that’s where the vast majority of our projects are. But we did nine houses in Mammoth Lakes. We did fire rebuilds in Redding and Shasta and Mendocino. We’ve done, in the Bay Area, we’ve done everything from houses and remodels and additions to custom homes in Atherton to renovation in Terminal 1 and Oakland International Airport. In fact, if you go to Oakland Airport Terminal 1 there’s this really nice Kaiser branded green wall. So we did the engineering for that for example, we’ve done brand new hotels. We’ve done several Starbucks in LA. We’ve done just a number of residential single-family and multi-family as well as commercial projects all over the state and our focus is really on small and mid-sized projects. We’re not trying to do Salesforce power. We’re not trying to do a two-billion dollar airport project. You know, there’s enough big engineering firms where that’s all they do and let them fight with each other over those projects. We try to democratize and help everyone else not just the mega projects and the mega customers. We’re trying to help everyone else which is your ordinary Joe, your homeowner, your investor who flips houses, the developer, the family office that you know has few generations of real estate and constantly needs renovations, or new buildings or additions and retrofits. So we’re trying to help everyone else. We’re not trying to do the mega projects for Salesforce at SFO airport and you know City Hall. We’re trying to be the answer for everyone else. We’re really trying to democratize some of the benefits that those mega-projects get from these huge engineering companies to everyone else because for everyone else, you know, they can’t go to Bechtel. Bechtel is like the largest engineering company, like a thirty billion dollar company, but all they do is like mining and oil and gas and dams, Hoover Dam and you know stuff like that. They don’t help your average Joe. They don’t help the person who wants to flip houses. They don’t help the person who wants to build or you know retrofit their apartment building or do a soft story retrofit in San Francisco. So if you’re everyone else, if you’re like 99% of people with projects, you’re going to these kind of outdated mom-and-pop shops where they’re doing things the same way, maybe even hand drawing plans and doing the same things the same way that they were doing 30 years ago. Even though there is technology out there in the market, a lot of the technologies for the big companies, a lot of the small firms are not even really interested in adopting that technology. They’re not tech people. They’re not tech savvy. The result is a lot of that value of technology has not really been passed on to consumers in this industry because a lot of these businesses, they’re not very tech savvy, you know, they’re not really on a scale where they can invest in software and RND. With us, if we want to be successful long-term, then I think that’s an area where we can bring a lot of value is we’re modernizing this industry and passing on those benefits to our customers.

Sean: [00:36:04] So I was wondering also since you guys work in so many different territories; isn’t it pretty cumbersome because I think every city has their own different rules setback laws, etc.?

Aakash: [00:36:16] Yeah,so we have a presence all over California. We have engineers, architects, designers, drafters, civil, structural, title 12, all over the state and local to all the different areas where we do projects. But there’s a couple of things beyond that. So on one side we’re all over the state, on the other side were also local in each region. But more so than that, there’s a couple of things to keep in mind. When it comes to the building codes everything’s kind of based off of the California building code which changes every three years. So right now the cycle that we are in is the CBC 2016, California building code 2016, which was rolled out officially in January 2017. Now again in 2020, 7 months from now, there’s going to be the next cycle of the building code that is standardized at a state level. Now each city, each county, each building department, they have some tweaks, but at the end of the day physics is physics, engineering is engineering, architectures architecture. Yes, you have to look up, “Hey, here’s some of the specific requirements for Atherton. Here’s some of the specific requirements for San Francisco.” But you know, ultimately they’re all in the same seismic zone, you’re looking at the seismic cones. Everything is based ultimately on the California building code. So it’s not that different, you know city to city is people think. A lot of the fundamentals are the same. Again, whether the earthquake is in LA or the earthquake is in Atherton physics is physics, lateral forces are lateral forces, gravity’s gravity. They’re both built out of wood or steel or concrete. None of that changes. Some of the setbacks might change, some of the zoning requirements might change, right? So obviously the, you know architects and engineers, they’re paying attention to the local tweaks on the building code for each jurisdiction. Ultimately what we do is we work with the client all the way up until permit approval. We’ve gotten, on every single project we’ve done, we’ve gotten the permit approved . The city comes back with comments. But you know they do, that’s their job. Otherwise plan checkers won’t have a job. We address them all the way until they’re satisfied and the permits approved and even help the contractors during construction in terms of answering any questions or clarifications they may need. So ultimately the basics are the same. That’s regulated at a state level. But if you’re talking about California versus New York, then the fundamentals are going to be different. In New York, you’re designing buildings like in Manhattan for wind. In Florida, you’re designing buildings for hurricanes. On the west coast whether you’re in California, Oregon, Washington or even British Columbia or Alaska you’re designing for earthquakes. Right? So those basics are the same, but then obviously we’re paying attention to the local jurisdiction’s requirements. One of the advantages we have on the data side is because we’ve done so many projects, we have the data on what are the things that the plan checkers look for in that specific jurisdiction when you’re doing an addition in Oakland versus a custom house in Atherton versus apartment soft story retrofit in San Francisco. We’ve got enough of those projects where we know this is what the plan checkers look for in that specific jurisdiction. So that cycles back, turns into feedback cycle back into our engineering and QA process as well. So that helps. So on one side. Yes. It’s very local to each jurisdiction. But on the other side the basics and fundamentals are very much the same throughout the state and with some tweaks in each jurisdiction.

Sean: [00:39:37] Nice. I was wondering how our clients finding you guys.

Aakash: [00:39:41] Yeah at this point we have a lot of existing relationships in clients where they keep bringing repeat business, so that’s most of our business. But you know, a lot of referrals, repeat business, that’s really the bulk of it. And right now we’re just in California within each region in California. We’ve got enough partners that we work with, customers that we’ve already done projects for. Like let’s say it’s a construction company, an architecture firm, developer, investor, Where you know they’re regularly doing projects, right? Like for example, like with a homeowner, they might have one project in 10 years or in their lifetime. Most people don’t have multiple houses or if they do they build a house it will be once in their lifetime. If they do a remodel or addition again, it might be like once in a lifetime or once in a decade they might be doing it. So I am working with construction companies, investors developers, they’re obviously in that business and so they have projects all the time where they need our help. Kind of after we’ve worked with a number of them they’re able to keep sending us projects. They’re happy with the service, with the results and they’re able to keep sending us projects. So that’s kind of the bulk of it.

Sean: [00:40:54] And what’s next for you guys?

Aakash: [00:40:56] What’s next is just growing? It’s that continual improvement mindset. Improving every area of the business every day, every week, every month, every quarter, and just getting to the ultimate perfection that we can in our execution. That’s really what our focus is on, making sure our customers are as happy and satisfied as possible, that we’re executing as well as possible; growing in California and then we’ll be getting into other states as well. But our focus is very much on California and just nailing it in California.

Sean: [00:41:28] Great! And what are some final words that you have for our guests?

Aakash: [00:41:32] I think given that the audience is a lot of people who are interested in real estate or doing projects, I think one thing is that what surprises a lot of people especially people who are kind of new to doing projects, to developing, or you know, flipping houses or adding or remodeling or building new buildings, I think one thing that surprises a lot of people who are new to it is just that how much difference good design and engineering can make; like that example I gave where we got the construction costs down from a million to 850K. You know that’s pretty substantial. I mean if you’re doing a flip, you had bought that building and you’re doing this project in order to add value to it and sell it, that construction cost difference of 850K versus a million will make a significant dent in your ROI on the project. Right? So a lot of the people who are new to it they just think “oh, you know, I just need a set of plans. I just need a permit”. There’s enough people out there who would do that, but getting that done well makes a significant, significant impact. Not just your project timeline. Not just the timeline of getting the permit, not just how smooth the construction goes but in how much your construction costs because at the end of the day the construction is like 90-95% of your cost. Yeah, you have to pay the city fees and all that stuff. But in terms of the actual cost, whether you’re developing a new building, a new house or apartment building or commercial space, or you’re doing a renovation or addition, whatever upgrade you’re doing, 90%+ of your actual cash outlay is going to be on construction. Just like with anything in life. If you invest in good planning ,that’s going to optimize construction, which is the bulk of your cost. And the planning is the design and engineering, that’s what’s guiding the contractor in terms of what materials and labor and steps they have to take. That’s like your Ikea manual of how you’re building the furniture, right? That’s how you’re building a house or the building. The better that is done, the better your construction goes, and that’s where you’re spending most of your money. That’s the thing to optimize. Again, you know, maybe someone does the plans cheaper. Well in that case they also did it more expensive and the construction cost more expensive. But let’s say even if that other company had done the engineering cheaper, I mean at the end of the day if you’re getting $150,000 higher construction costs then you’re better off investing not seeing the plans as a cost but as an investment in order to get a better ROI on your project.

Sean: [00:44:01] Yeah, very well said. So how can people get in contact with you?

Aakash: [00:44:02] Yeah, they can go to our website www.designeverest.com or Google us. You can shoot me an email personally Aakash@designeverest.com. I encourage you to check out our website because we just launched a new website this last weekend and I’m really proud of it. I’m really proud of the work that we did in designing this new website. And I really like the design and just the content and everything and I think it’s a beautiful website. So I highly recommend people check it out and I would really appreciate any feedback on the website because we just launched it, we just did this redesign like five days ago.

Sean: [00:44:41] Oh, congratulations. I’m excited to check it out.

Aakash: [00:44:43] Yeah and love I’d love to get your feedback on it.

Sean: [00:44:47] Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you so much for taking the time and giving us all this advice about your company and letting us know about structural engineering.

Aakash: [00:44:54] Yeah. All right. Thanks for inviting me.

Sean: [00:44:56] Thank you very much. Take care.

Aakash: [00:44:58] Bye.