Good morning, welcome to taking your PCI design awards project submissions to the next level education session. My name is Tom Bagsarian, I will be your moderator for this session. A few final points before we begin the credit portion of the course. As a courtesy to our presenters, please ensure your cell phones are on silent pulse or vibrate. To maintain our ability to offer continuing education credits, PCI is required to evaluate its sessions. Please help us maintain our ability to offer continuing education credit and tell us what you think of this session. The course code for this session is MS4. There are no paper evaluation sheets this year. You must use the precast show app to evaluate the course and please use code MS4. This course is registered with the registered continuing education program of the National Council for examiners for engineers and surveyors. Your participation will earn you 1.5 hours per session at convention. You should have had your badge scanned when you entered and that will allow you to receive your credit. And now to begin our program. Now in its 58th year, the PCI design awards program recognizes design excellence and construction quality using precast concrete. But even an excellent project may not sell itself to a panel of expert judges. We have with us this morning three people with different perspectives on how you can create the ideal award entry so your high quality project can receive the recognition it deserves. Our first speaker this morning is Becky King. She is the managing editor of marketing and education at PCI. She works directly with the PCI marketing council and marketing committees, PCI education activities council, leads the PCI marketing and education staff, and the regional executives toward the strategic goal of increasing the relative market share and awareness of precast concrete. She holds a bachelor's degree in business management at Elmhurst College in Illinois. And I give you Becky King. Thank you for coming today. So as Tom mentioned, we're going to go over the design awards from all different perspectives. So I'm going to give the internal perspective of the design awards. So now in its 59th year of the design awards program, the PCI design awards program recognizes design excellence and construction quality using precast concrete. The programs has helped design and construction community innovate and advance by showcasing ideas that push the envelope, overcome challenges, and improve upon existing concepts. The 2021 design awards winners, if you have a chance to look at them, really showcase the diverse range of projects, proving that precast concrete can solve most of the complex design challenges, construction, and the construction industry. From cutting costs to accelerating the schedules to addressing complicated job sites and withstanding harsh weather conditions. All winning projects are showcased at the PCI convention, which will be this evening as well. So if you have a chance, by all means, please go see them. There will be some of these nice awards along with the videos. And the submission site for the 2022 PCI design awards is already open and will be closing August 10th. So some rules of submitting your projects. So the precast concrete must have been produced by a PCI certified or see PCI certified precast concrete producer. If it's located in the United States or Canada. Projects that are located outside of the United States and Canada must select either international buildings or international transportation. Projects must have been completed within the last three years. So for this year, for the 22 PCI design awards, it's no earlier than 2018. Projects must be substantially construction and a plant manufactured precast pre-stressed concrete. Of course, all measurements must be spitted in U.S. units. And then they must have not won a PCI design award previously. Honorable mentions, however, if they did win an honorable mention and they fall in that three-year timeframe, you can resubmit for this year and following years as long as it's not pre-2018. So making the submission. All entries are made electronically on our submission site. The submission site has not changed year over year. So we do have that capability of if you did submit and it did not win, we can always pull those over for you. The easiest solution that way you don't have to re-enter everything. Projects are entered in two primary categories, building and transportations. Incomplete submissions will not be accepted. So within the submission site, there are asterisks on those and those are required fields. You must enter something for them to be able to save. So my recommendation is always to add an A or some sort of field, remember, to come back to this. So that way you can save and go back. You can go back and forth as much as you want as long as it's done before August 10th, the deadline date. So like I said, incomplete submissions will not be accepted. But of course, if we see that it's incomplete, we will ping you and make sure that you know that there's some missing information that we must have if you want us to pull the submission or if you want us to keep it, whichever is the open. A submission fee of $500 per project. So it's not per company, it's per submission project. So if you submit one, it's $500. But if you submit up to 20, you have to pay that $500 20 different times. So I mentioned that there's two primary categories, the buildings and transportations. As you can see, there are subcategories and there's over 30 different areas that you can submit within the design awards program. So besides the primary areas, you also have the special awards categories. And these must be located in the United States. International cannot submit to the specials category. So these are not mandatory whatsoever. And of course, you can select all of these awards, or you can select one, whichever one you prefer. I highly recommend at least submitting to one. And you might have the opportunity that if you do not, you can always select that you don't want any of your projects to be submitted into the specials category. But the jurors do have the opportunity to move and push your submission over to a special categories if they believe it is well deserving. And that same applies to those primary categories as well. If you do submit your project into an office building and the jurors are having the discussion and they want to move it to maybe it is a parking or a mixed use, they do have that option and opportunity to move it over there if they do believe that it one deserves an award in that category. So you might submit it into one, but the jurors do have that option to move it around. So diving a little bit deeper into exactly which of the special awards are is the Sustainable Design Award. It's very self-explanatory, but this is the purpose of this award is to encourage the construction of innovative designs that are sensitive to the environment. So however, buildings do not need to be LEED certified to qualify, but it's when you are writing your summary, make sure you emphasize the sustainable attributes of this project. So the jurors are aware exactly what made it go above and beyond for the sustainable design. The All Precast Concrete Solution Award. This is another one that is very self-explanatory, but this is a structure and all of the specials, I just want to note really quick, all of the specials are available for buildings and transportation in both categories. So this is best achieved by an All Precast Concrete Solution system. And the Harry H. Edwards Industry Advancement Award. This award is given to those that really push the envelope. They're ones that are really thinking outside of the box and being innovated with technology for the industry, materials, products, processes, and applications. This is one of the most prestigious awards in the Design Awards program because it's going above and beyond of what precast concrete typically does. And these are the most interesting projects. Of course, our newest award is the BIM Award. So the BIM is our, it's about three to four years old, I would say. So we're still growing this area, but it's in regards to BIM and the correlation of using 3D CAD data for manufacturing and scheduling. So now I'm going to dive a little bit into judging the submissions. So our judging is made up of three different jurors. So it's broken down to building, transportation, and specials. And each of these jurors contain about producers, architects, engineers, and DOTs. And as you can see on this screen, they go through this process about one to two days, if not more, of going through each and every single submission. And last year we had 85 submissions. So they dive into each of these submissions that are broken up into each of these categories. And then once they come to a conclusion of which project deserves either the winning or the honorable mention, there is no one, two, three. It's the best and the honorable mention. And there can be co-winners for both of those areas. So there can be co-winners for the winners, and then there can be co-winners for the honorable mentions. So there's a total of four for each category that the jurors can give. So once they decide their final, who they choose to be the best, they go through a whole video process. And that's what you will see tonight at the reception. And then we post this on our website for those to be able to be viewed at a later date. And then those inputs from the architects, engineers, owners, and DOTs that really chose your project to be above and beyond. So as I mentioned, kind of at a high level, this is really what the judges look for. So this is under our how precast builds and what really describes precast. They look for the versatility, the efficient, and the resilient aspects of precast concrete. And they're weighted on a scale. Each juror does a little bit different, and Monty will go through that, exactly what they look through. But they're really looking at the different aspects and attributes of precast concrete. So what I always emphasize for you submitting your projects is the summary. The summary is the only thing that the judges really see besides the images. So the more that information you put in then about cutting costs, schedules, and those impacts, that really paints the picture for the jurors. Because yes, it might be a great project, yes. But if that's not included in the summary portion, then they won't know that because that's all they're looking at, and they're not talking to you face to face. So I do know some producers do hire a writer to actually write their summary for them. I'm not saying that's for everyone, but I do recommend having all the key people, maybe the architect that was involved, the engineer, you as a producer, really take a look at that summary and make sure that all of the areas are covered. I recommend that you should do it around three to five paragraphs, no more than that, because it could get a little lengthy. But really, really emphasizing the importance of the summary, because that is what the jurors are really basing off how they're judging each project. So as I mentioned, the summary portion of it is very important, but another aspect of it is the images. This is another area, besides of the summary, that paints the picture for the jurors. So images that involve the plant, they want to see what's going on at the plant, what makes it a little bit different, overarching. Construction photos. We always emphasize that we lack in construction photos, but they want to see these images while they are judging, along with phases of the project. This really gives that big picture of how long it took. You can see the different attributes. And sometimes if you do miss something in your summary, they do have the capability, and they do do this often, is looking at the images that you submit and pulling out things that you might have missed within your summary. Also, the finished product. Of course, everyone wants to see what exactly they're submitting and how they're submitting it. What are they judging on? So from the ending of your transportation to your building submission, we always recommend that some people do hire photographers, which that's not for everyone. You can take a great image off your iPhone. We do have people that submit on a side, which we do recommend too, is if you do choose to be a winning, or if you do get that winning project, we'll ask for drone footage, time lapse, or anything like that. So by all means, submit it. But if you do have these finished projects, images, I recommend night and day photos. So there's a little bit of mixture where they can see how it fits in the environment, how it fits within the community, because that's another thing too that the jurors look at as well. So the last thing I want to highlight is the design awards and the media. So as I mentioned at the beginning, the design awards cost 500 per submission. So the coverage that you get submitting the design awards to us in a national scale is we push it out there to the media. We have those relationships. We have those connections with the earned media, and earned media is free. So some of these you see on the screen is something that we pitched with a press release from a national scale. And then you get that publicity, and we're growing the awareness of precast concrete. So not only do you get that $500, it gets you a spot. And sometimes these range, if you do choose to do a print article in one of these publications, between $5,000 all the way up to $30,000. So you're getting this at a $500 cost, and we're doing all the work for you. So we write the submission, we write the publications, and we do all that. And then of course, we push it out on social media. Last year, or I should say for the 2021, it was just released in January, and we already have about 40 earned media and heavily on the design awards media side. And this morning in our earned media, we learned a little bit more about what exactly the media and the reporters and the press look for. And they're watching our social media. They see 60% of the stories that they get from producers or anyone out in the media is they're tracking the company's social media, and that's where they're pulling a story and getting their content. So we always push these out on social media. We put these on our website, we're pitching them to the press. So we're doing all of that for you as your national scale. So then we do take it to a local scale. So after we pitch to the national, we do go locally for each of these projects. So that's another exposure as well. So we do have those relationships. And I do want to emphasize that we do these for winners, of course, upfront, but we also do it for non-winners. So all of these that are submitted, it might not be a winning project, but we do use these for future ascent stories, for social media, for different publications that are created within PCI, our manuals, our designers notebooks. So it might not be a winner one year, but we do use all of these submissions in the future. And at this time, I'll turn it over to Jane and we'll go ahead and dive into the producer's input. I think Tom's going to introduce you really quick. Thank you, Becky. I shorted us a year, we're in the 59th year, not 58th, have to be accurate. Our next speaker is Jane Martin. Jane Martin is the MIS Director, Corporate Marketing Associate for Gate Precast Company, where she assists in various facets of sales and marketing, including Gate's sales team in the Northern and Southern Divisions, proposal preparation, presentations, and managing content for the website and social media. Martin, who has a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism from Auburn University, serves as Gate's Awards Administrator, collaborating with design teams, contractors, and each gate production facility to prepare the PCI Design Awards competition. Over the past 20 years, this effort has helped Gate achieve over 90 PCI Design and Craftsmanship Awards. I give you Jane Martin. Thank you, Tom. And thank you for coming. So today, I'm just going to get through a few little bullet points, the introduction and the history of what my role has been with the design awards, marketing strategy, planning it, how you get there, and then executing it. And then if we have any questions. So as Tom said, I've been with Gate for about 20 years. And so when we first started doing awards, it was just we might enter one thing a year, because we really didn't have a team, we really didn't even have a marketing department. So it was just kind of we were throwing darts. But back then, you had to use slides, the judges would actually put them in a carousel and shoot them up on the wall. There were binders and there were big glossy prints. So what you see there is an example of what we would put together. I had the opportunity to be in another association, Precast Association, help with the jurors. And it was amazing to me what I first noticed was with all these binders stuck up there, the first thing they did was they'd go to the page with the eight by 10 glossy and they would start eliminating just by the photographs. I didn't even read it because it takes a long time to read all of these things. So that kind of stuck in my mind that for a design award competition, the photographs are really important. As far as the marketing strategy, we have found that the awards program is part of our marketing. By the time you go through picking projects and things that you want to do, you've pretty much got a marketing campaign for that project. You can do so much with that one project. Even if you don't win, you've done the deep dive, you've gotten the information and you can really do a lot with it. Awards speak volumes about your company's products and services. The more that you win, it just kind of secures just a little bit of trust in your company and the quality of the products and services. Because obviously if you take the time to do an award, you're proud of what you do. You're proud of the people that help you produce it. And it does well and is well received from others. So it's all about branding, expertise, the industry, positioning, reputation, and strategy. There's just a few hashtags. And when I think award programs, this is what it does for you. So there are a lot of different award programs that you can enter, but the PCI Design Awards is just the one that's just right up our alley. There's no reason not to do it. I mean, we've got the national campaign that Becky spoke of that they do so much for us. And $500 seems very inexpensive when you look at what you get out of it. You're guaranteed that news coverage and they're reaching the target audience that we want. And sometimes when you do other ones, it may just, you enter the award, but it may not go as far. So you really get a lot of bang for your buck doing the PCI Design Awards. This is an example of one of the showcases that was in the Ascent Magazine that just came out this spring. Again, the writers take what we submit, although we are pre-casters and we may speak our lingo, the writers kind of put a twist on it and make it sound really good. And those are great pull quotes that you can use. You know, you can link it back to the Ascent Magazine. They do all the work for you. So it's really a good thing to invest in. When you win projects and you announce them on social media or through PCI, it makes the people, the stakeholders, the people that you work with really realize that, you know, we made the great choice to go with pre-cast because they love to talk about their projects. And the fact that you want to help them, you know, collaborate with them to enter it, they really get on board with it. And it's exciting when they do that. In the research and the activity that we all do to go through this, you find little nuggets of things that you can use down the way. So it's ultimately a treasure trove of content. So it's a good path to go down. Some may think it's time consuming, but you really get a lot out of it. And as the coordinator for the Design Awards, you realize that it really opens my eyes every time I go through it. The achievements that these guys and gals make in producing our product, project managers, all of them, you know, they're busy too. They're probably working on a job, you know, they worked on the job that I'm asking them about and they were finished with it three years ago. So for them, for you to have to go back and say, do you remember this project? It really, they really, they do remember it. And it's good when you see the achievements that they made. Now, it's kind of like Becky said, not every project's going to win, but the fact that you take the time, that you thought that office building or that medical facility is a great job, you took the time to go through and get it. So it may not win it the first year, but you got to know that you took pride in that project. So that's not, you should still enter the projects, even though they don't win, you've done the work and you still have the content. And it's the reputation of the awards once you get an award. It's an internal appreciation too. We had a kiosk in our plant that we put up and we win the awards and it kind of circles through. They may have worked on that project and a piece coming out of the mold illustrates this. They don't really know what the structure looks like. All they know is day to day, set the mold up, pour it. And then when they actually see, gosh, I produced that. And they will go on social media and they will note that. And they want their friends to know that they had something to do with that project. So it's good internally, but it's also good externally. Because they do give you a little bit of competitive advantage because you can use it in proposals. If you're doing a pre-qual or something like that, you can say, we actually won 15 healthcare design award winners. So the more you can put in those pre-qualification packets, awards should be part of that. The project team, as I said, they are very engaged once you start getting with them. And although the architects and sometimes the specialty engineers are very busy, you may start with them early, but you may get the information four or five days before. But they always come through and they always give you what you need, but they're busy too. So you need to remember to reach out to these people early. And if you are the design award coordinator, you will get kind of a relationship with the architects that you work with. Most of them have a marketing person that you will work with. Sometimes you actually get to work with the architect directly, which is very nice as well. One thing that COVID did this year for my design awards medals, everyone had gotten used to Teams. So we actually would do Teams meetings with architects. Would be several people in the room. They would show the things that they had. And they'd say, do you think this will be good? What about this? We've never had that aspect of it before. So that was kind of cool to see. And we would talk it through. I've got this photo, you've got that photo, and we just zip it all up. So that was a neat thing that COVID did do. And those architects and contractors, usually architects that you deal with on a year-to-year basis, like some of the bigger ones, you build a bond with those firms. And that's always good. So I'll go into a little bit of the planning. This is the way we plan ahead. We plan years in advance. You can't just, when the email comes out, when TCI sends it out and say, hey, design awards are open. That's a little too late to get started. You know, from Monday, next Monday, it'll be 53 workdays before design awards are due. And that's pretty scary. So you cannot wait to the last minute. Sometimes it's right when the contract is signed. So 247 working days would be a year. And then sometimes it might be three years, which is 790 workdays. So that sounds a lot better. So when a project is awarded, whether if you're a multi-plant pre-caster, you need to be aware of what everyone's doing. So you kind of have to stay on tap with what's being awarded. And the way you do that is you educate your team, your estimating, your sales, your project managers, even ops. And they know that if they've got something that comes through there that's innovative or challenging, they say, Jane, this is going to be one. So you kind of tuck it away. And when it comes time for it to be completed, then you kind of have a little bit of a backlog and some sort of an idea of what you have ahead of you. So you're not just sending out an email blindly. Okay, what do y'all want to enter? So it does help to plan those projects. You train your team to let you know if this is a Harry Edwards or if this is the one that's going to win this year. Also, you look at different subcategories that you can enter into and see if there's maybe one that you haven't won an award in. Like this year we did data centers. Data centers are very complicated. It's hard to get photographs. So you just look for those sectors that you never had anything on and try to get those. So that helps as well. And once you figure out which project you think might be an award winner, go ahead and email the estimators and everything. Tell them early, say, take good notes, get lots of good photos and keep them filed so that when I start, I can actually find the information. So again, be familiar with the subcategories, know what you want to enter into. And then you need to look at the last, the past winners that our judges selected. Like, why didn't my office building win? Well, go look at why that office building won. You can listen to the videos. The judges agree that there was really no other material out there that they achieved the needs that this project had over the resiliency of Miami-Dade County. The resiliency of Miami-Dade, projectile requirements, but also the common workers that this project had. The one thing that the judges really agreed upon is what Pre-Pass could do and how it changed the expectations of what could be done with the material. There really was no other building material option out there other than Pre-Pass concrete that could both provide the design and the complex form that the designs had chosen for the project. The judges really appreciated the facade of this building, which had no straight lines. This building is designed with almost entirely compound curves, which created a three-dimensional shape of the facade. The curve shape of this building was very complex, but it was made possible by the use of grid technology. The panels had a very unique feature where they had a high wall panel in the tower that was projected much further out towards the middle of the building and it kind of smoothed out as an exterior. With this project, Pre-Pass concrete is the only solution to get a uniform white color throughout the entire facade. Due to the inherent fluidity and versatility of Pre-Pass, it was the perfect material choice for the planning of this structure. It also had storm and ballistic requirements that the order required where Pre-Pass made the obvious choice. The design of this building does not have been learned by any other product other than Pre-Pass concrete. So there you go. That's how you sell Pre-Pass. Post those videos. I believe they're going to show them tonight, the design awards. But these videos, to me, I will go back and look, like whoever the company that won the Harry Edwards Award this year. I went back and listened to it and I said, yeah, I get it. So it's important to look back and see what the judges found to be that ideal project. When you're planning, before you get too deep in it, you've got to ask your people, do we have photographs? Because like I said, if the photographs aren't great, it may be a great project, but you just didn't have the images that illustrated that. So on the left, you'll see a photograph that we entered for a dorm and it was taken with an iPhone. It was probably taken three days before I had to turn it in. So I waited too late. But then we have new photography now, that same design element, crisp. You can see how the precast just really accents that entryway. It's also a larger image. So the one on the left, iPhone is obviously not going to have the resolution. It would never be put on a cover of a magazine because there's just not enough there to do that. So the better quality of photographs you can get, the better your chances are of being, even if your project doesn't win, that your photograph will be used in other marketing efforts of PCI. And of course, the fee is another thing to look at. Before, I would just enter things, but now there's a fee. You do have to kind of make sure that everybody has buy-in and this, okay, did we think this one's the $500? So you do have to look at that, but if you have a lot, you just enter them and you pay for the investment that you get. Uh-oh. Once again, I forgot. This is just another thing to say of the marketing strategies you get. You just get that bang for your buck with everything they do. So executing real quickly. Once you find that you are going to enter a project, you need to get your project members to collaborate early with you. Let them know, send them that email. Let them know that you want them to join in with you. The minute they say, okay, that you put that on your list and you just start tracking it. Then you give your team members at your pre-class plant. Okay, the architects are in. Start getting your information together. Give everybody deadlines, but stagger them so they're not all coming to you at the same time. So maybe you can kind of start finishing some as you go along. And then staying organized is very key because you will email people. Like Monday, I'll start emailing people. Well, two or three weeks later, I may be getting emails and I forget who I've emailed or something like that. So you have to have a good structure in your email box. So you know where you're sent emails are to the architect. So you can kind of remind yourself because we do have other jobs other than PCI design. And that's what keeping that information kind of separated from your daily hot items that people want you to do. So that's very important. What I emailed architects is just a basic outline of what the submission is. It's a lot easier to get the information in a Word document than it is to try to email the architect and say, here's the link, go in and put your information in. Because it's just better if you have all your information from each role, whether it's an architect, contractor, one of our plant personnel. You keep that together, then you mesh it all together and make one big Word document that has all that information in it so you can read it and get those four to five paragraphs that Becky was talking about in an order that makes sense to the judges. And as far as the online submission site, what my tip is, get your Word document, get all your information in first and then submit it. But in order to get it to go through the site, you do have to fill in those asterisk fields. And so I usually just do to be determined or NA or whatever through the entire thing. And then that way get to the end and save it and then take your time once you get the email back that says we've taken your submission, then go back in and take the time to fill in the addresses for the different companies and that kind of stuff. And you're not worried about something awful happen, which does, if you wait to the last minute, the dog trips over the internet cord or your blue screen, it does happen. And it's happened to me many times and then you just have to start all over again. So get you a placeholders for everything and then work on it leisurely as you go. And then the last thing that you need to do, as Becky was saying, if you don't have all the criteria, it will be eliminated. So you need to come up with a way to kind of have a checklist system so that you can know that you have all the parts in. And as you do them, just kind of check them off. There are tons of collaboration tools out there that you can use. And you just, from your year, you just keep in those awards and you just, you might not finish one, but you can go back to it because it's all in a cloud-based system. You can go back to it and say, okay, we're going to start on this one again. So it's just a good way to keep up with what you're doing. So I highly recommend that. And then the last thing that I do, which Becky is right, if you have a project that you want to resubmit, you can email Nicole or Becky and say, hey, I want to pick this one back up, but don't just pick it up. Go back in it and look at it. It might need new photographs. It might need more content. Why did it not win? Go back in and edit it. But if you want to save the final submission for yourself, which I usually do, you can save the HTML file to a certain section wherever in your computer so you can get to it. And I go back and forth to this all the time just to get contacts who I worked with or something like that. So it's a quick way to get that. And then my last thing is a wishlist for PCI because when you do finish it, it is all still HTML. So it'd be great if you could just push a button and make a PDF. And then you get all that information. You would have the photographs that were entered and everything, and they would kind of come in a nice little template type thing to where you could send that out to as a proposal or something like that. But it's easier for you to look at it and say, I put a placeholder here. I didn't put that information. I have to go back and finish that. So it's hard when you're going through to realize if you have everything. So that's kind of my little wishlist. That would be the end of my presentation. And if anyone has questions. I will turn it back over. Thank you, Jane. Our third speaker this morning is Monty over street over street is vice president and co owner of FDG Incorporated, which specializes in the planning and conceptual design of precast structures, as well as providing design detailing and project management services for owners developers architects and precast producers over street has 30 years of experience in precast pre stress construction, and has been a major contributor to some of the largest precast construction projects throughout the country over street earned a Bachelor of Science degree in architectural engineering technology in 1990 from the University of Southern Mississippi. He is also a member of PCI, and the University of Southern Mississippi Alumni Association, and has served on several nonprofit boards in the Denver area. Welcome to the Board of Trustees for the PCI foundation, starting in 2021. Here's Monty over street. Good morning everyone. Hope everyone's enjoying the big easy. I grew up not too far from here and I love the culture and the food in this part of the town is Tom said I went to school Southern Miss so I spent quite a bit of time down here probably getting a little bit more trouble than I should have. I want to talk to you today, more about a specific award the BIM award is Becky said earlier, it's one that the industry is trying to promote. And we've had years it's that we've, we've not even given the word out. And being a prior judge. There's a couple guys on the committee or on the judging group with me that year and they, they kept using the same term there, you're not telling the story. I heard that over and over. And I was really excited about the entries that year. And the improvements we had made over the years. And they just kept saying, you're not telling the story so I'm gonna try to give you a couple things here to look at that may help tell the story. But first of all, I want to be clear I am not a marketing expert. I'm just getting to play one for for a day. My presentation is based on the comments that I heard, and I'll share some of those of those co judges. This is an application. And it's small for a reason. I don't want anyone to understand who the entry was for or figure out which company, what design. As you can see, there are three pages to this printout. How many times do you think the application mentions BIM or buzzwords associated with BIM. How many times does it mentioned software that is typically associated with BAM. There are three in the entire application. Two of these are filled in the application as we talked about earlier. So it's just a question in a pre app that says BAM, yes. And then the BAM award, yes. And coordination is mentioned once in the three pages. So key keywords that we searched for in the application just through the PDF search is BAM model. The different types of software's coordination clash. And then the BAM entry. That is the only three times this application had those words, and it is a BAM entry. So what do you see in the picture? You see a hamburger, maybe? Maybe a cheeseburger? You see a hamburger, maybe? Maybe a cheeseburger? You see a hamburger, maybe? Maybe a cheeseburger? This was from a first grade teacher for one of my daughters that used this to get them to use words to explain what they mean. So this is what we need to do in these applications is we need to explain more about the hamburger, right? So I'm going to use an example today. It's called Fortinet Office Building. We've recently completed this project in California. We provided the project management engineering BAM services for Clark Pacific, and the general contractor was DPR. The summary of this project, this is a project, precast office building in high seismic zone. The project included structural and architectural precast members. Structural members included precast plank that served as the finished floor, meaning there is no topping slab. So the precast floor was the finished floor for the ceiling and the floor. There was no, the floor plank included radiate tubing cast into the plank. Therefore, we have tubing running all over the building to connect the system. A few other precast components of interest on this project are balcony slabs integrated into the exterior beams, hybrid moment frames. Noted on this slide, there were 20 different models that had to be coordinated between the sub trades, the design team, and the precast models. This is just a few of the snapshots from the Navisworks coordination model of different things that were coordinated. This is a plank showing the reinforcing drill zones, radiate tubing, and piping that needed to run through the plank. You'll see some of the comments later how accurate the process ended up on this project. And the reason I'm showing some of these pictures is Jane showed some really nice exterior pictures. But when you're running BIM, you want to see how this was coordinated through the process. You want to see how complicated the process is to see how it was integrated into the BIM. Just another of the balcony slabs, all the different reinforcing, the post-tensioning, the different tags they use to get data out of the system. One of the issues with BIM is we have the building, we have the model. A lot of people miss the I, which is the information. So what are you getting out of the process for your data, your information? How are you getting it? How are you using it? In the main model here, let's see a sample of information from the project. It should be included in the award application that will help. I'm not saying you have to use all of these. I'm not going to go through each one of these, but this is information that we had in the model. It was data transferred out to help the pre-castering and design team. I think I went too far. So here's a few more. As you can see, each one of these had different models. If that first application would have hit on a few of these, it would have caught someone's attention of this is a BIM model. It's not just a pretty picture. We went so far as to model in the drill zones for coordination so people could drill in after the fact in the future. So here are some comments from DPR and their project manager at the time. And again, he's listing all the different things, how it went. And the comment that caught my attention is the one highlighted. It says, we make it a priority to evaluate and select our trade partners based on the experience and capability with BIM and our clients and design partners placing an increased value on them as well. As Jane said earlier, if you get this type of information from your customer, that's going to help you in your marketing. It's going to help you in your proposal. And if you win this award and you're putting this type of information in there, it's just going to have more effect on that down the road. That comment of all the comments I got back was probably one of the most important comments I got was from the GC on this particular project. A few more comments from the GC that any of these type of comments can be included into your application, your summary, to tell that story, how it was used and integrated into the application. Again, the precaster involved in this also will give you good information to which, and I'm a little confused as the architect, we had this before, the architect submits this, right? So, and the producer now. I think in the years past or many years back, only the architect could submit the awards and you're going to see some comments at the end. They are the wrong person to put the BIM information in. They're not using BIM. A couple more items that they use that they get out of the model that would be in the application, just to draw attention to. They're using this software, how they're using it, where the information is coming from, because one of the key components in the award is the information data transfer. So, we did a random test or survey, not test, survey from architects, engineer records, MEPF engineers, mechanical, electrical, plumbing, fire. Very few of that design team is going to use BIM in the way the precast industry uses it with a GC. They just want it to be coordinated. They don't care about clash. They don't care if it works. They want the end result for it to work, but they don't know how you get there. So, to tell the story, the design team, the architects and primary submitter is not the person that should be trying to tell your story for this particular award. You need to engage the general contractor and the precaster, which the precaster will be part of it, but the GC can also give you a lot of good information to get into this application. So, that's the end of my presentation. Thank you. Thank you, Monty, and that was great information from all of our speakers this morning. Jane, I'm going to start off things with a question for you. Becky showed what the PCI's national staff does in issuing the press release and trying to get earned media mentions. What does GATE do in that regard on your own marketing side? And do you think winning PCI Design Awards helps you get more work? We obviously piggyback on what you do, and then when we see the earned media that you get, we will follow that as well. But as far as what we do, when we get awards, we usually run a press release just because that's standard to let everybody know. We list the architect who was involved in it, and then we put that on our website as well. And then we also do social media. So, for this year, we had a total of 14 awards, so it was easy to have social media planned for this year. And so, that was good, and we used that. And it also makes you, if you have a winning project and you haven't had time to put that on your website, it also gives you a reason to update your website. So, it kind of forces you to do what you know you should have been doing all along, but you do get busy. And so, that was good. Do you think winning awards helps you get more work? Absolutely. I mean, it's just, I think they see it out there. That's just the way it is. And they, we all work with the same architects and GCs, basically, if you will. And so, you know, I mean, it's just, I think they see it out there. I mean, it's just, I think they see it out there. I mean, it's just, I think they see it out there. Absolutely. I mean, it's just, I think they see it out there. That's just more exposure for you. And they, we all work with the same architects and GCs, basically. If there's some of the biggies, they're located everywhere. So they do see that and they look at it. And you'll even have some of them that you worked with on some medals. They'll email you back and say, wow, y'all really killed it this year. Or something like that. So they are looking at it. And that's important. So yes, absolutely. Okay. A question for you, Monty. When you're judging an entry and you look at the photos, are you more interested in the more professional, pretty final project photos? Or do you want to see a lot of the dirty, gritty construction photos? Or both? And why? I'd like to see both, but I like the dirty, gritty, how it goes together as an engineer. Tells me more of the story. It tells me how complicated the project is, how much work went into the project and the process that got to that final state. Okay. Any questions from the audience? Yes. Yeah. So, Monty, you've done a couple of great things. Like, what do you think is one thing that stands out about your judging process? I would say the story. I always start with the application first. I take each application. I read it. I highlight key words, components, coordination, transportation, erection issues, something that makes the project special. And I start with it first. And then I look at the pictures last to help finish to tell me the story. And normally the judges all have different perspectives. We come from different backgrounds, which makes it really cool because I learn different things from architects and other people in the industry. But I start with that application first. So telling the story is where it should start. Anyone else? Is there a video component to the entry? Is someone allowed to enter videos? And is that a good idea? And do you have any advice for that? Anyone? Yes, you can. Also, what we ask kind of, too, if you are a winning project, we do ask for additional video as well. So if you have that time lapse or drone footage, we really recommend submitting that as well. Just because, one, it helps the video when we put together, as Gene showed, some of those award-winning videos. And, two, it also gives the judges that other opportunity in really seeing that time lapse or drone footage of the project itself. So, yes. Okay. Anyone else? Yes. Okay. Start early. It doesn't matter how early I start. I'm still up to the wee hours in the morning at the deadline. Because the more projects you enter, the more you have to finish. So, yes, definitely start early. And get help from the plant. Get help from your people. You can't do it by yourself. So you've got to have a good working relationship with those key people. And that would be my advice. And Jane makes it really hard on judges because she gives more awards and we have to read them and go through and read all those highlighted words. Thank you. Anything else? Okay. Well, thank you, everyone, for coming. Hope you learned a lot. It was great advice and information. Final reminder, the deadline for the current program is August 10th. Thank you, everyone.

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