Understand Your Contract: Safeguard Your Rights And Maximize Your Profits | Ep. 217

COGE 217 | Understand Your Contract

Why is it so important to understand your contract? It can be a lot of work to negotiate contracts. But the truth is, understanding your contract can make all the difference in how much money you make, how satisfied your clients are with the end result, and how much time and effort you spend on your projects. In this episode, Josh Levy, CEO and co-founder of Document Crunch, teaches how to protect your rights, understand your contract, and get the best out of every deal. He’ll also walk through some of the most common mistakes contractors or project managers make when they sign contracts and how to avoid them. Tune in now so you don’t miss out!

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Understand Your Contract: Safeguard Your Rights And Maximize Your Profits

Do your project managers understand their contracts? Do they know how they’re supposed to respond when there’s a change or a delay, how that affects their responsibility to your clients and what it’s going to cost your organization? The problem for a lot of construction companies is they sign contracts and perhaps 1 or 2 people in the organization understand the implications of that contract but they’re not on the projects every single day. Therefore, the people who are executing the projects and are bound by the contract that you’ve signed are making mistakes as far as fulfilling the duties of the contract. As a result of that, you are losing money.

My guest is Josh Levy. Josh is the Cofounder and CEO at Document Crunch. Document Crunch is all about empowering everyone in the construction industry to know what is in their contracts. The nice thing about Josh is that he has experience in the construction industry. He has a CM degree. He’s worked for some of the largest contractors in the country. He started Document Crunch to solve the problems that every construction company has around understanding their contracts.

You’re going to enjoy this conversation. It’s straightforward and practical. You are going to walk away with specific things that you can do immediately to make sure that your people understand their contracts so that you get paid for what you are doing. You’re able to mitigate and manage the risks associated with every single project that you build. Enjoy my conversation with Josh here. Feel free to share it with other people. As always, thank you for reading the show.

Josh, welcome to the show.

Thanks so much for having me.

It’s my pleasure. You have a very interesting background. Before I tell it, why don’t you tell it? Tell us your background and how you got into the tech industry.

I’ll tell a little part of my story that not many people know. I grew up in the South Florida area. I’m a Miami guy. I went to the University of Florida. I was a confused freshman when the university made us declare what our major would be. I went to this little orientation and the Rinker School of Construction Management made a pretty solid pitch around it. At that time, it was 2001. During the then boom in the Florida area, they had a 100% job placement and were a highly touted program. I made that random eighteen-year-old decision to go be a construction management major. I could tell you that many years later, it was the greatest decision I ever made. I’m not sure that I should take any credit for it other than maybe being a bit hungover and making a pick of what my major should be.

I went to the Rinker School of Construction. It’s the top construction management program. It’s one of the top ones in the country. I did internships for a lot of large general contractors. What I quickly realized was I did not want to go be a project manager. I enjoyed the big picture of the industry and the business. Day-to-day, I had a professor that used to say, “To be in this industry, you have to love the smell of sawdust and concrete.” I didn’t but I grew quite fond of the business.

I did what a lot of confused kids do. I applied to law school. I ended up getting a scholarship to my hometown school, the University of Miami School of Law. This is the part of the story that not many people know about me. In my last semester on campus, a startup emerged at the University of Florida. It was a predecessor to Groupon.

Text messages were becoming a thing in the US. They were using text messages for mass communication with universities, like emergency alerts for classes being rescheduled. The way they monetize themselves was by creating viral advertising responses in and around college campuses so it was slow. In Eric’s pizza shop, you could set out a text message, which was this novel thing. It could be an SMS message to 100 students that say, “Come by the next twenty minutes and get a free slice.” That drove that viral mobile marketing that’s become a part of our fabric.

COGE 217 | Understand Your Contract
Understand Your Contract: The way text messages were monetized was by creating viral advertising responses in and around college campuses.

 

That startup was a few years early but I had an incredible early experience there. I ended up rising through the ranks. I was running a large sales team. After a couple of years though, I saw some flaws in the product and decided that it was time to get back on my main course. I ended up going to law school. I tell you that story because it’s a bit of a bookend when I think about what big dreams I had back then and how cool it was doing everything. I was a twenty-something-year-old kid with way too much responsibility. I was drinking from a fire hose and watching a business.

When I started, it started at the University of Florida. When I left, we were at 18 campuses and we had 75,000 users of the product. I saw something go from nothing to something. It was a pretty neat experience. I went to the University of Miami Law School. I graduated around 2010. At that time, I don’t know if you recall but the entire world was on fire. The economy was in the tank. Nobody graduating from law school could get a job.

In the South Florida area, all of the big buildings that had been built were on litigation. There was a demand for one type of student. It was the type of student who had a background in construction that could go into one of these big firms and do construction litigation. That Rinker School of Construction degree ended up being a lottery ticket for me at a time when nobody could get a job. I had a good early part of my career, practicing construction law.

This a long connected story. I ended up clerking while in law school for the pre-eminent construction law firm in the United States. I was working for a then young partner of this law firm by the name of Adam Handfinger who, fast forward many years later, is the Managing Partner of that law firm and is my Cofounder at Document Crunch.

Adam and I had a great early start to my career. He taught me much of what I know about construction and law. A couple of years ago, I left Adam. I moved from South Florida to Georgia where I am, in Atlanta, to go in-house with an E&R top contractor. I ended up having a great five-year run there. I rose through the ranks there. I ended up running the legal department of a $1 billion-plus business unit of this large contractor. I ended up being overwhelmed with construction contracts, various workflows and the day-to-day issues that were arising on projects.

I hired my old buddy, Adam, to start helping me with some of that overflow work. I was a Millennial. Part of why I left private practice was I hated that billable hour. I didn’t see much value in it. I started challenging Adam to provide me with fixed-fee work in representing me. He started saying, “Millennials like you are not running legal departments. This is bad news for me.” We started thinking, “There’s got to be a better way.” We stumbled upon this idea of starting to leverage technology to amplify the types of things that we were engaged in on a day-to-day basis. That’s a long tale of my story, which then ends with me founding Document Crunch.

It’s interesting. There are a couple of things to note. I don’t know if serendipity is the right word. As we go through life, if we have the right mindset, a forward-thinking and energized mindset, then our career steps can very much blend even though we may not be intentionally trying to do that. We don’t have a grand plan or something like that but this connection can be made simply because of the type of people that we are.

We’ve got a couple of executive-level hires coming into Document Crunch imminently. I was having a discussion with someone on our team as we were putting some people on different seats on the bus. The backstory to that, I don’t know that I’ve ever told this publicly. When I came to Adam a couple of years ago, I said, “I love you. You’re like a brother to me but I’m leaving.” He looked at me and said, “What are you talking about? You’re one of the most disruptive young lawyers we’ve ever seen. You can sell to anybody.” I was developing a nice book of business with him. He’s a bit of a rainmaker. I was a part of that early story. He said, “What do you mean?”

I was wrong but at the time, as a young 32-year-old guy, I said, “It’s going to be much more interesting to be on the business side of things.” That was the motivation for going in-house. It turned out that once I got in-house, I enjoyed what I was doing. I loved the craft of being a construction practitioner. It turned out that none of that entrepreneurial spirit is in that in-house side because you’re a service provider for a business.

Adam was right. I was wrong. The pretext for making the decision was wrong. However, to your point, being the type of person that I am, I would’ve never gotten into Document Crunch. I had a hunch. I was biased toward action. I took a chance. I was wrong but without that, I’d be sitting down practicing law in South Florida. There would be nothing wrong with that. I am glad that I ended up on this twisted adventure that I’m on.

I’ll carry it a step forward. We’re bringing our whole company together for the first time in person in Austin. The keynote speaker of our first Crunch Fest that we’re ever having is the Austin office leader of my old general contractor. It’s the same thing. Here’s a guy. I formed a relationship with him. I haven’t been to that company. I left right before the pandemic. Yet, the relationships matter. You never know when paths cross. I was on the phone with this guy. I haven’t seen him in several years. He was so thrilled to be giving the keynote to my company about what it was like to build his office up and what a day in the life of a construction executive is. It’s cool.

You spend a lot of time thinking about the contracts that contractors get into. I’d like to ask. What are the biggest mistakes construction companies make when it comes to the whole realm of contracts?

I’m a sports fan. For crying out loud, we’re called contractors. There is so much stuff happening in construction. It’s a dynamic industry. I don’t know what rating we get for this show. I’m going to assume it’s not Rated R but stuff happens on construction projects. Who bears the cost or the consequences of that stuff is tied up in the underlying contract that governs the relationship between the parties. Going back to that sports analogy, those are the rules of the game. Like in sports, a fundamental grasp of those rules allows you not to stay within the bounds but take advantage and optimize your performance.

The biggest mistake that our industry has is generally, there is a fundamental disconnect between the few people in the industry who understand the rules of the game and the vast majority of our industry which lacks knowledge around what the rules of the game are. Every project is like another game. That’s a pretty big problem when you think that projects are the lifeblood of our industry. That’s how the industry makes money. Yet, there’s a fundamental lack of knowledge about the rules of engagement on every one of these projects.

Let me ask you that. What are the 2 or 3 repetitive areas that you see where contractors who are skilled at building a project lack the knowledge of the rules of the game?

Construction’s such a hard industry. If anyone’s been in business for a while, they are pretty skilled in building projects, in my opinion. There’s a fundamental lack of understanding at a project level that forget even catastrophic outcomes. They’re like, “You can sign a contract that will put you out of business,” which is true. I’ve seen it in my professions then pretty well, leveraging that element of the construction industry.

Much more insidious, to me, is at the project level, there is the dink and dunk little things that happen day-to-day. It’s where you’re giving away money because you don’t have a good grasp of the contract or you lack the confidence to leverage that contract. Do you know how many projects and millions of dollars were lost because the teams didn’t give notice per the terms of the contract the right way?

Fast forward months down the road and the retention is going to be outstanding. They’re going to go to the owner or the GC and say, “We were delayed by eight days. Do you remember that rainy week in Atlanta when we couldn’t do work?” The owner of the contractor’s going to say, “I get it but per the terms of the contract, you had five days to give written notice. You never gave a written notice. I know we talked about it but I don’t have a notice. I know I’m holding $50,000. Why don’t we settle on $20,000?” It’s that little dink and dunk.

Another example is the infamous contingency provision in the contract. You’re like, “Mr. and Mrs. owner, this is a change. We have a contingency for this.” The owner is saying, “You can’t use contingency for this. Save the contingency for something else. You’re under budget.” You’re like, “It’s fine. Let’s do that.” You get to the end of the job. You think the owner is being generous or judicious with the fact that you gave up that right earlier in the project. They’re not. It’s the $10,000 dinks and dunks. It’s the $40,000 dinks and dunks. That is the money that goes out. The friction that also creates between parties is antithetical to a great, smooth business relationship, which I believe is lacking in our industry at large as well.

Let me pursue that idea of friction a little bit. Sometimes, one of the reasons why these dinks and dunks occur is because a project manager may not want the friction at the moment. You pick your pain in life. You either get a little pain now or a lot of pain later. How does understanding the contract then help a project manager to go after those pain points and not avoid those difficult conversations?

First of all, there is this concept, which is outside the lack of contract understanding. It is to say our industry is one. It’s relational. Oftentimes, you have people that want to avoid confrontation. That makes sense. There’s a fundamental misassumption in taking a confident, substantively right position. This is the way I’ve trained project managers my whole career. If you understand this stuff and you can communicate it clearly, calmly and confidently, you’re going to gain the respect of the party that you’re working with.

To your point, it’s that lack of confidence and the desire not to create friction that then leads to not wanting to push too much. That’s the problem, though. If I was in the room and the owner said, “You can’t use the contingency for that,” I would plainly say, “Section 4 says that we can use the contingency for this. This is plain as day. Let’s not make a lot out of this. Here’s your change order. Sign it.” It’s that lack of wherewithal, I believe, that is missing. That’s the missing link that project managers or project-level folks generally don’t have. It’s a lack of confidence. It’s that underlying wanting to stay relational.

Knowledge is power. Knowledge is confidence. Like your leadership principles, it’s winning the small interactions day-to-day that adds to a compounding result and success over time. When you come off as prepared and confident and the party that you’re working with understands that you’re prepared and confident, you gain capital for future interactions.

Knowledge is power. Knowledge is confidence. Like your leadership principles, it's winning the small interactions day-to-day that adds to a compounding result over time and success over time. Click To Tweet

I hope you are enjoying my conversation with Josh. I want to give you a quick reminder that I have a book. It’s called Construction Genius: Effective, Hands-On, Practical, Simple, No BS Leadership, Strategy, Sales and Marketing Advice for Construction Companies. Go out to Amazon. Pick yourself up a copy. If you do, you’ll get tons of practical things that you can do to improve as a leader and get your team to improve as a leader.

One suggestion I would make is that u purchase multiple copies for yourself and your leadership team. Read one chapter a month, meet for 30 minutes, discuss how you can use and apply each chapter to be a better leader and see what kind of an impact that has on your business in the next twelve months. Let’s get back to our discussion here with Josh.

Let me ask you. You have experience working in-house for a large GC. Let’s say you landed a project. You landed a $500,000 TI or something. These are multimillion-dollar projects. You are sitting down with the project executives and the project managers who are about to kick it off. You are the in-house counsel, legal expert and contract expert. What are the 3 to 5 areas that you are making sure that that project manager knows exactly what’s going on in the contract every single time?

I love that you asked that because I’m going to start this discussion that while I was being paid to be that contract expert in an organization, I couldn’t get to most of the projects at the level that you’re talking about. That is part of the disconnect and why even the companies that are investing in these resources are still falling short. For the big ones, I would go and do exactly what you said. I would go and sit down, go through and talk about the issues.

Putting aside the nuanced issues because some projects have nuanced issues, how do you give notice? What is the change entitlement framework? What do the delay provisions say? Those would be the main three. It’s all about the change entitlement and the delay entitlement. The notice becomes the vehicle by which you have to deliver that. You have to deliver the rules of the road in the right form with the right timing and a clear understanding of what’s going on to create a competent picture and entitlement. I would say that those are the main ones but there are a bunch of other big ones. That contingency provision I mentioned can be a big one.

If there are audit rights, that’s one that’s come to bite teams on that butt. Those are even basic things like confidentiality provisions. You’re like, “Make sure that your trade partners aren’t tweeting pictures of the job site because we’re going to get fired from this job if that happens.” I’ve seen it happen. There are a lot of gotchas in there but the big ones relate to change order, change entitlement, delay entitlement and notice provisions. Secondarily, there are audit rights, contingency rights and things like that.

Let’s say a contractor’s aware that they’re not quite hitting it out of the park in terms of knowing what’s in their contracts and using that effectively. What are the biggest mistakes they make when they’re trying to fix the mistakes they’re making with their contracts?

That goes back to what I was getting at. Our industry is very binary. The biggest mistake that the industry makes is you have, in my opinion, around contracts two classes in the industry. You have the over-investors and the under-investors. The over-investors are these big construction companies where profits are shrinking. The industry’s not getting any less risky but we’re taking sledgehammers to this problem having big overhead functions, risk management or legal. The problem with that is exactly what I said. You still have this failure to democratize that subject matter expertise. Those are the people that need it to call the right plays in the field every day.

With the over-investors, you’re probably getting great assurance around, “We’re not signing contracts that are too risky where one bad thing’s going to put our company out of business.” I’m talking in general terms here. In my experience, it is that the over-investors have these experts that are good at protecting the company from catastrophic outcomes but are not great at democratizing that subject matter expertise. They may do training once a year where all the project managers come in and they’re half asleep while the training’s going on. They’re not properly empowering folks to understand what’s going on. Those are the over-investors.

Let me interrupt you. By democratizing, do you mean making it easy to understand what’s in the contracts?

Go find me the large contractor, whether it is a trade contractor or general contractor, where that contract expert is going to every single project team. They’re having project-level training in real-time as the project’s kicking off to ensure that folks are leveraging the contract right. Even if they are, you have this dynamic where you still have a bunch of construction professionals in the field that do yeoman’s work every day. Do you think that they want to run back to the back office every single day and tell them about all their problems? No. They got the rose-colored glasses on. They’re executors. They want to get it done. If they lack that fundamental understanding that we talked about, they may be making a bunch of silent mistakes that nobody even knows about.

You have this disconnect between the back office and the field. The mistake is you’re spending a lot of money. Yet, you’re not amplifying this knowledge well enough. On the other side, this is less of an affirmative mistake. This is the status quo, which, unfortunately, is the vast majority of our industry under-investors. These are people that are using underqualified personnel to protect the company from catastrophic outcomes. They’re playing Russian roulette. They’re one bad term away from some lawyer like me making an argument, which is a bankruptcy event for them. They’ve got a problem in the back office. If they don’t have anyone in the back office that understands this stuff, they still don’t have anybody in the field who understands this stuff.

I would say the biggest mistake that people make when they try and rectify it is swinging too far to that over-investor side. That is the sweet spot that I was trying to fill when Document Crunch was founded. That’s to say I truly believe that if you can build a skyscraper or do some of the unbelievable work that our industry does, you can understand your contract. You don’t need to be scared of that contract. That contract is not a black box that is too sophisticated for you.

The ability to empower our industry to understand this without having to overinvest in it and certainly without underinvesting in it will make us a better industry. It will make our industry less risky. It will make our teams more empowered to make good decisions. It will allow for more aggressive scheduling and better pricing because we’re not putting unknown facts on unknown risk profiles. Ultimately, it will lead to a more collaborative industry that can communicate calmly and confidently around issues and have mature discussions and better relationships. That is exactly what we’re striving for at Document Crunch.

Let me go back to this risk aspect. When you come to contract negotiation, even the most experienced person can miss details at times. They’re like, “I’m six months into the contract. All of a sudden, I get hit in the head with a mistake I’ve made.” What are the non-negotiable aspects of the contract that you would recommend every contractor look at prior to signing any contract? What are those areas you must hit and be clear on?

Ensuring that you have an equitable or fair framework for delay entitlement is probably the biggest thing. I’ll give you an example. I didn’t work for a major airline. It was for a project. It was an airplane cleaning facility on airport grounds in a very rainy area. The airline was non-negotiable so we could not get rain entitlement. It made no sense. I raised it with a project executive during the negotiation. She said, “This is non-negotiable.” What did we do? We went to the almanac. We understood what we thought the likelihood of rain would be. We put a 20% to 30% buffer on that.

We went back to the airline. We said, “Your schedule got three months longer.” They said, “Why would that ever happen?” We said, “Pick one. You want no rain or a shorter schedule?” The ability to understand and plan is important. I would say the delay framework is the stuff that relates to potentially catastrophic outcomes. You’re talking about things like consequential damages, subrogation rights and the insurance framework. All of those are important as well.

COGE 217 | Understand Your Contract
Understand Your Contract: The ability to understand and plan is important. Delaying framework is the stuff that relates to potentially catastrophic outcomes.

 

It is making sure candidly that the team is aware of how to leverage entitlements. It’s construction. Things happen. Who bears the cost of that? Whose pot that money comes out of is dependent upon what levers you pull when stuff happens. I would say that there are a few catastrophic types of things like consequential losses, waivers of subrogation, indemnity and insurance requirements. That’s how you keep your company in business. There are the execution issues like entitlements for the delay and then how you leverage those levers when stuff happens.

What are some human elements that would cause you in a negotiation to think, “Even though the language of this contract is something that I’m comfortable with, because of the type of people I’m negotiating with, I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to move forward with it.”

A lot of this tends to swing with the state of the industry. I’ve been fortunate, especially on the in-house side. I came from a very value-driven organization. Whether I’m dealing with new investors, customers at Document Crunch or strategic partners, it’s the same thing as we would talk about in construction.

First and foremost, as somebody who is ethical and transparent, if somebody’s going to take a position and be arbitrary about it, that’s a red flag. If somebody’s going to take a position and be willing to explain their position on that position, it’s a much bigger tell as to the type of partner they would be. It sounds a lot like what I was talking about project managers needing to be like when they’re talking through issues at those OAC meetings or with trade partners.

Having a substantive basis to support positions is important. Being ethical and consistent is important. Generally being communicative is important. When I say being ethical, it is the idea of being in a negotiation. If you’re taking a position, you need to stay consistent with that position and not switch it around at the last minute or try and leverage something else. That’s a big red flag to me. I had to deal with something like that. We decided to not deal with someone who was doing that even though it was a potentially nice deal for my company. I would say that those are the types of things.

Being ethical is the idea of being in a negotiation. If you're taking a position, you need to stay consistent and not switch it around at the last minute or try and leverage something else. Click To Tweet

The great news and this is also where project managers maybe lack a little bit of perspective, is once you’re in a negotiation, it’s usually because both sides want something to happen. You should not be scared to be true to what it is that you’re looking for. Generally, if you can communicate that with substance, you can figure out a way around it. I’ve had maybe 1 or 2 contracts maximum on the construction side that blew up over an impasse on terms once we were seriously negotiating. That’s out of billions of dollars of projects.

It’s interesting how you mentioned the idea of the economy changing and then that changes even the feeling behind in negotiation. It’s interesting for many contractors to reflect upon how sometimes, they get into bad contracts because they have to get a project. The economy changes. They want to keep their guys busy. They turn a blind eye and hope for the best because they need to be able to feed the overhead and keep their guys on board. That’s when contractors need to be most careful. It’s in those tough economic times when you are feeling a little desperate. It’s so easy to sign when you haven’t done your due diligence.

That’s exactly right. This goes to the fundamental premise of what I’m trying to solve. If you don’t have leverage for whatever reason, it doesn’t mean that you’re going to get some great new terms negotiating. You better be aware of what it is that you’re signing for and have a basis to manage that risk. That’s what most people, especially in smaller mid-cap companies, miss out on. Even in the back office, they’re not necessarily doing the appropriate diligence that they need to do by understanding what they’re setting up for.

Let’s use the scenario that I gave, the airline that wouldn’t give delays for rain. No one necessarily paid attention to that. They’ve signed the contract and the project’s 2 or 3 weeks late. That’s a bad spot to find yourself in. You’ve got to plan. There are going to be situations where there are gotchas in contracts. It’s not preferable but our industry also is sometimes unnecessarily adversarial too. You have to understand and plan for these things. There is no longer an excuse to bury your head in the sand and be willfully ignorant, especially when I hope that we’re providing ways to provide more transparency into what’s otherwise traditionally been considered to be a confusing process.

In your mind, if you don’t have an answer, this is fine. Let’s say you’re engaging for what your company would be a significant project. There is significant risk involved. You’re willing to embrace that because that’s part of the gig of being in construction. How much time should a company take in reviewing the documents and the contracts before making any commitments?

That was the precise workflow that got me to have to need help from my old buddy, Adam, at my firm. You’re going 1 for 3, 1 for 4 or 1 for 5 on bids to one contract. You’ve got to put that high-level set of eyes on it because of things like the schedule and the price that may need to change to accommodate for the risks that I’m talking about. You can’t take out your bloody red pen at the bid stage and bleed all over a contract but it’s a fair point to say, “This price considers the assumption that we should be reasonably entitled to weather events in one of the rainiest cities in the entire country. If not, we’ll talk about how the pricing schedule may need to change.”

Let’s say I’ve signed the contract. I’m in the middle of the project and I notice some provisions that I hadn’t noticed. In your experience there, what can I do to address that so that I’m not damaged in a significant way?

One of the beauties of America is that we tend to honor the agreements that parties enter into. You’re not going to get any sympathy from the world in this environment or society around, “I signed up for something.” You don’t get to back out of it. The question and point are how quickly can you wrap your head around it and make plans to mitigate it.

That goes back to before you’ve committed to price and schedule, you’d rather do that at the bid phase than after the contract’s been signed and you’ve already set up your deal. I know a lot of owners or construction leaders that have probably P&L responsibilities that read this show. Nobody likes the bust in their budget. Getting your arms around what it takes to deal with that risk as early as possible is important.

Tell us a little bit more about Document Crunch and how you are helping the construction industry address some of these challenges that we’ve been talking about here.

Thanks for that. The core mission that we’re on is to empower everybody in the industry to understand what’s in their contracts. When I say everybody, I mean everybody. That is the back office and the folks in the field. We make construction contracts that are much easier to understand for everyone and present them to you in a way that is easy to navigate and has some context around it. My hope and belief are the byproducts of what we are doing are allowing this industry to be better, smarter, better at managing risk and ultimately more profitable. That’s what we’re going for. That’s what Document Crunch is waking up doing every single day.

COGE 217 | Understand Your Contract
Understand Your Contract: The byproduct of what Document Crunch is doing is allowing this industry to be better, smarter, and ultimately be more profitable. That’s what Document Crunch is waking up doing every single day.

 

There’s a lot of nuance to where we are going to be able to use data, drive better decisions and help automate some of these project management workflows so that we’re not relying on humans to get this right every time. The core value of what we are doing is to take what has otherwise been perceived to be this painful, long and hard-to-understand process that is only reserved for the suits in the back office and crack it open and make it easy, digestible and manageable for everyone in the industry.

How can people get in touch with you?

You can connect with me on LinkedIn. I’m pretty active there. Document Crunch is available at www.DocumentCrunch.com. It’s been a wonderful journey so far. I’d like to think that the leaders in these organizations are seeing how when their folks are a little bit more empowered and educated, good things are happening. Let’s go on offense and be a better industry and not always be so defensive about everything.

Last question here. You’re in the Atlanta area. If I’m visiting Atlanta, what’s the one restaurant I should hit? This is a tough one.

Atlanta is a wonderful town with wonderful restaurants. I’m going to take my favorite neighborhood place, which is in the burbs and say that Thaicoon & Sushi Bar is outstanding. There are going to be a lot of people out there that are Atlanta people that are like, “What is this guy talking about?” There are a bunch of other great restaurants as well in town. It’s a good food town, although I miss my hometown of Miami’s food.

I appreciate you joining the show. I wish you all the best.

Thanks so much.

Thank you for reading this episode. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Josh. Make sure you check out his website at DocumentCrunch.com. Before you bounce for the day, I’d like to make a request. Please give the show a rating or a review wherever you get your shows. That helps the show to be seen across the interwebs. We’re looking to make sure that we impact as many construction professionals in a positive way as possible. That comes through reviews, you sharing the show and all of that awesome stuff. Thanks again for reading. I’ll catch you on the next episode.

 

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About Josh Levy

COGE 217 | Understand Your ContractJosh Levy is the co-founder and CEO if Document Crunch. Document Crunch simplifies construction contracts by quickly identifying critical risk provisions and provides teams with guidance to make great decisions throughout the entire project lifecycle. Josh co-founded Document Crunch having spent much of his career building upon extensive leadership and expertise counseling the construction industry. He has worked for ENR Top 50 firms and has led departments earning $1 billion annually. Josh graduated with honors from the University of Florida with a Bachelor of Science in Construction Management and earned his Juris Doctorate from the University of Miami, graduating magna cum laude. Document Crunch is the culmination of all of these experiences. His vision is to raise the bar of the entire construction industry.