Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast.
Speaker 3: I'm Joe Wisenthal and I'm Tracy all the way.
Speaker 2: So Tracy, everyone just like very into affordability these days
Speaker 2: in the cost of living and all that stuff. But
Speaker 2: I think, you know, there's all kinds of things you
Speaker 2: can do and whatever, but it seems like one fundamental thing,
Speaker 2: which is probably true, is whatever we're talking about, whether
Speaker 2: it's building infrastructure for public transportation, whether it's building offices,
Speaker 2: whether it's building houses, Like, there's various costs involved, but
Speaker 2: one is like just the cost of construction. And if
Speaker 2: the cost of construction is very high, it's hard to
Speaker 2: imagine affordability improving much on anything, right.
Speaker 3: So, yes, absolutely, I can't really that point, But it
Speaker 3: does seem like construction is this like one area where
Speaker 3: so many different things come into play. So you have
Speaker 3: the cost of basic materials, which have gone up, especially
Speaker 3: since the pandemic. You have the cost of labor, which
Speaker 3: has also gone up since the pandemic. You have the
Speaker 3: cost of insurance, which has also gone up since the pandemic.
Speaker 3: You have regulations which we've done many many episodes about
Speaker 3: the added costs from the permitting process for various things.
Speaker 3: It just seems like it's this bucket where you can
Speaker 3: throw all these different factors in and then get this
Speaker 3: kind of like reinforces itself and just makes it even
Speaker 3: more expensive.
Speaker 4: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2: And then you know you sort of hit it with
Speaker 2: the insurance, but also just like cost of financing, right
Speaker 2: because like as interest rates go high.
Speaker 3: The yeah, I forgot financing that too. It's a big bucket.
Speaker 4: It's a big bucket.
Speaker 2: And like we know that construction is an area across
Speaker 2: the economy, not just in New York City where we
Speaker 2: talked about it. With residential housing, there's been a lot
Speaker 2: of productivity growth, right, Yeah, like there's.
Speaker 3: Been like no productivity growth according to at least one
Speaker 3: paper I read. I think it was a Richmond fed
Speaker 3: I will have to go back and check. But it's
Speaker 3: a really unusual industry in the sense that you haven't
Speaker 3: actually seen you know, we don't have robots building houses yet.
Speaker 2: We don't have robots building houses yet, So I don't know,
Speaker 2: you know, I think we need to learn more. You know,
Speaker 2: sometimes you see these viral statistics like oh, the MTA
Speaker 2: spent sixty million dollars on building an elevator, or cost
Speaker 2: three million.
Speaker 3: Dollars to build seven million installing those plastic fins on
Speaker 3: the subway turnstiles. I'm not even sure that qualifies as construction,
Speaker 3: but seven million.
Speaker 2: Millions to build a bathroom, which is not fun if
Speaker 2: like you have little kids, all kinds of things. Anyway,
Speaker 2: we should do more about wide costs a lot to
Speaker 2: build and maybe whether there's something that can be done
Speaker 2: about it.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, let's do it. Well.
Speaker 2: I'm very excited to say we really do have two
Speaker 2: perfect guests.
Speaker 4: Today.
Speaker 2: We're going to be talking about the high cost of construction,
Speaker 2: more infrastructure and stuff like that. In New York City.
Speaker 2: We're going to be speaking with Elizabeth Crowley. She's the
Speaker 2: president and CEO of the Building Trades Employers Association, also
Speaker 2: known as BTA, as well as Michael Capasso. He is
Speaker 2: a president and CEO of CAC Industries, Inc. So Elizabeth
Speaker 2: and Michael, thank you so much for coming on od lots,
Speaker 2: thank you for having us.
Speaker 5: Yeah, thank you, Joan Tracy. We are grateful for the
Speaker 5: opportunity to talk today. I represent over twelve hundred contractors
Speaker 5: in the BTA who are building our skyscrapers, our subways,
Speaker 5: building commercial buildings, hospitals, schools, about sixty five billion dollars
Speaker 5: worth of work annually.
Speaker 2: And wants to tell us about sac industries. What's your background?
Speaker 6: Michaelac's Public Works heavy highway contractor based in New York
Speaker 6: City and Queens. We work for the public agencies, Port
Speaker 6: Authority of New York, Department of Design and Construction, Department
Speaker 6: of Environmental Protection, MTA mays Battery Park City.
Speaker 3: Did you see the highline as well? Yes, that's amazing, amazing.
Speaker 3: Do you know that I do some research before I
Speaker 3: come on this podcast. I know a lot of people
Speaker 3: don't think so, but you know a little bit. Okay,
Speaker 3: let me ask the first question. Let's just get it
Speaker 3: out of the way. But your organization represents unionized workers,
Speaker 3: and I think your company is also unionized workers. A
Speaker 3: lot of people are going to hear a high cost
Speaker 3: of construction and NYC and immediately go to the union factor.
Speaker 3: What is your response to that.
Speaker 5: Well, our members are employers, so they're really businesses. We're
Speaker 5: a business association and our members are employing over one
Speaker 5: hundred thousand workers and we're proud that we're union contractors.
Speaker 5: You know, we're the good guys, and there are a
Speaker 5: lot of non union contractors out there that are racing
Speaker 5: to the bottom. We're paying for benefits and wages, and
Speaker 5: that's just part of the cost of construction. And really
Speaker 5: what we're looking at doing is reforming costs that are
Speaker 5: more controllable, you know, the costs, the hidden costs that
Speaker 5: go into construction, such as construction insurance.
Speaker 2: Definitely want to talk about construction insurance and all this stuff,
Speaker 2: But again just on this point of like how much
Speaker 2: is quote hidden costs versus how much is just labor.
Speaker 2: Maybe Michael, you could like sort of break down or
Speaker 2: either one of you breakdown how we should think about, like,
Speaker 2: in a given project, when people see these big numbers,
Speaker 2: how much should people think about the labor components specifically
Speaker 2: versus measuring these these other costs.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, I would say typically labor ranges thirty
Speaker 6: to thirty five percent of the total construction cost. But
Speaker 6: getting back to your original statements about union and sometimes
Speaker 6: people think that raises the cost of construction, I would
Speaker 6: actually take the counter argument to that. All the public
Speaker 6: works contracts in New York and the utility contracts are
Speaker 6: subject to the city or the state prevailing wage laws,
Speaker 6: which the union's rates are in line with Labor Law
Speaker 6: two twenty, which are in the city contracts. Those the
Speaker 6: wages and benefits you have to pay the employee. So
Speaker 6: it's not the union wages that are costing too much money.
Speaker 6: They're in line with all the rules and regulations of
Speaker 6: the city and state. When we think about union wages
Speaker 6: and why maybe there's this misconception. Yes, compared to people
Speaker 6: that are not paying union wages, these people are paying good,
Speaker 6: honest wages and benefits for the work they put in
Speaker 6: during the day. There are people cut corners who don't
Speaker 6: pay that fair market rate, which is where that kind
Speaker 6: of concept comes from.
Speaker 5: And look, there's a lot of cost to the delays.
Speaker 5: And when we look at yeah, when we look at
Speaker 5: our government leaders. Now we have a new mayor in
Speaker 5: the City of New York who believes that we should
Speaker 5: pay baristas forty dollars an Now, so when Mike talks
Speaker 5: about the cost of union labor, it's not much more
Speaker 5: an hourly rate. And these are inherently dangerous jobs. But
Speaker 5: we have a mayor that wants to build more abundantly,
Speaker 5: wants to cut the time it takes to build. So
Speaker 5: the land use process from two years down to under
Speaker 5: six months, and we support that, and the stars are
Speaker 5: aligning also with the governor. You know, she has an
Speaker 5: ambitious plan to build a new subway or railway from
Speaker 5: Brooklyn to Queens. We haven't built like that in like
Speaker 5: over one hundred years. She's in her budget going after
Speaker 5: our environmental review. I mean environmental review should only take
Speaker 5: a few months. You can see that process sometimes take
Speaker 5: well over a few years, some bad cases five years.
Speaker 5: And so what we're doing here as an industry leader,
Speaker 5: the BTA, we're looking to reform insurance costs so that
Speaker 5: we can not only build more abundantly, build faster, but
Speaker 5: bring down the cost. And this is a substantial cost.
Speaker 5: We found out from a recent report that nearly ten
Speaker 5: percent of construction costs are wasted in New York as
Speaker 5: opposed to any other state, even expensive states like California,
Speaker 5: the cost of insurance is only about two percent for
Speaker 5: the total project costs, where we're spending upwards of ten
Speaker 5: twelve percent.
Speaker 3: Definitely want to talk about insurance. But you said something
Speaker 3: interesting there that just reminded me. You said, delays add
Speaker 3: to the cost pressure This might be a dumb question,
Speaker 3: But why is that? Because I think back to like
Speaker 3: my own home construction project. If I have a contractor
Speaker 3: and he says it's going to take six weeks, but
Speaker 3: then he gets caught up on another project, it ends
Speaker 3: up taking eight weeks. The cost usually doesn't go up.
Speaker 3: It's just frustrating for me because I have to live
Speaker 3: in a construction site. Also, I want to say, my
Speaker 3: contractor knows I have a podcast. He's a very good contractor.
Speaker 3: Delays rarely happen, so thank you very much. But why
Speaker 3: would that cause additional expenses?
Speaker 5: Well, just sheer time. I mean what can be controllable,
Speaker 5: certainly the land news process. Before representing the BTA, I
Speaker 5: was a New York City Council member, so I served
Speaker 5: for nine years, and a quick case by the time
Speaker 5: it goes through the local community board, the borough President's
Speaker 5: office and then comes to the council with the best lobbyists,
Speaker 5: happens within two years. And so if the mayor could
Speaker 5: get that narrowed down, and the council speaker is also
Speaker 5: pledging to reduce the time to a window of less
Speaker 5: than six months, that's twenty five percent of the average,
Speaker 5: and so that's significant time saved. That's something that we
Speaker 5: should be able to control, and if our government leaders
Speaker 5: want to control it, that's real reform.
Speaker 2: I'm not surprised at all to hear about like delays
Speaker 2: a particularly environmental review. People like talk about this. Let's
Speaker 2: actually talk about it a little bit more grainuarly. Like, so,
Speaker 2: like you get like some projects that you want to
Speaker 2: do I don't know, maybe something with a highway or
Speaker 2: something like that, and you have some time frame or
Speaker 2: some window that you think like you could get this done,
Speaker 2: and then we always hear, oh, delays, Right, what drives
Speaker 2: the delays, who intervenes, and what are the processes by which,
Speaker 2: like these calendars get very extended.
Speaker 6: There could be design errors or omissions in the bid documents. Okay,
Speaker 6: so when you actually go out to commence construction and
Speaker 6: do your preliminary work, the drawings don't match up with
Speaker 6: actual field conditions, which then result in changes to the
Speaker 6: contract and that process can be very lengthy. So now
Speaker 6: you have to document the changes. Then as a contractor
Speaker 6: with one of the public agencies, need to negotiate those
Speaker 6: changes then get it approved. Depending on what the agency is,
Speaker 6: it could be with the Controller's office in the City
Speaker 6: of New York, or if it's at the MTA with
Speaker 6: the board or whoever approves it at the MTA, and
Speaker 6: all those steps take time. While those delays are being incurred,
Speaker 6: contractors are then experiencing indirect overhead costs that are assigned
Speaker 6: to the project. Well, no productive work explain it.
Speaker 4: What are these indirect overhead cost?
Speaker 6: Project managers, projects, supervision, safety directors, quality assurance personnel.
Speaker 2: So their salaries and their fees continue to run.
Speaker 3: You can't reassign them to another project while they're waiting.
Speaker 6: Correct, they're assigned to a project. You don't know when
Speaker 6: those processes will come to an end, so it could
Speaker 6: go very expeditiously, it could be delayed longer, depending on
Speaker 6: how complex the changes are. So that project staff sits
Speaker 6: there in theory underutilized, and then, as is our contractual right,
Speaker 6: we will file a claim with that contracting agency for
Speaker 6: those additional costs coupled with that and I don't know
Speaker 6: how these costs are calculated. The agent see internally also
Speaker 6: has those same costs for the people on those projects,
Speaker 6: whether in house staff or through third party consultants, accombination
Speaker 6: of the two. So those costs all get compounded while
Speaker 6: these changes happened.
Speaker 5: And what are the last projects I've funded as a
Speaker 5: council member was to pay for turf in a park
Speaker 5: like just like a running athletic field replacement, simple replacement.
Speaker 5: It was funded fully in the budget. I left the
Speaker 5: council in twenty seventeen. They only cut the ribbon on
Speaker 5: that project being fully completed just in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 3: So what happened to those sing like, what are these
Speaker 3: studying by the turf? You stick it on?
Speaker 4: What happened?
Speaker 5: The Parks Department said it was going to be a
Speaker 5: four million dollar field replacement. Then the contractor came out
Speaker 5: to the site. There was a lot of surface repair
Speaker 5: underneath that needed to happen underlying, you know, just you know,
Speaker 5: uneven surface or something like that. They sent it back.
Speaker 5: I had to go back before Design Review Council. I mean,
Speaker 5: it really is something so small and so simple that
Speaker 5: shouldn't even cost as much as it does. Gets the
Speaker 5: lave a far too long, and we need real reform
Speaker 5: in city government. I believe government leaders are finally addressing
Speaker 5: this as an impediment to building abundantly.
Speaker 3: Really, yeah, so this just reminded me. This is something
Speaker 3: else I want to ask, But when you mentioned site reviews,
Speaker 3: is there something unique or sort of inherent about the
Speaker 3: way New York City is laid out and built and
Speaker 3: its geography that also makes it more expensive. I'm thinking
Speaker 3: like in Manhattan, obviously we have crowded buildings. Is some
Speaker 3: of Manhattan on reclaimed land? I can't remember now.
Speaker 6: Well, Battery Park cities all reclaim land there.
Speaker 3: We go reclaim land and it's mostly an island with
Speaker 3: few ins and outs, right, So I imagine there are some
Speaker 3: restrictions on how much material you can actually get into
Speaker 3: the city. Does just the physicality of the city make
Speaker 3: it more expensive?
Speaker 6: Yeah, all that's built into the contract costs. So when
Speaker 6: we're getting vendor quotes for different types of materials that
Speaker 6: will go into a construction project, most of the manufacturing
Speaker 6: base is not within the Five boroughs, right, So it's
Speaker 6: coming either from upstate out on Long Island, New Jersey,
Speaker 6: maybe Pennsylvania, Southern New Jersey. You have the cost of
Speaker 6: that transportation into the Five boroughs, right. So this if
Speaker 6: you're a vendor who's manufacturing somewhere in Central Jersey, well
Speaker 6: you probably can make multiple deliveries within the state of
Speaker 6: New Jersey, where maybe that same freight carrier can only
Speaker 6: make one delivery a day into the five boroughs.
Speaker 2: By the way, Ken Burns's brother, he made a great
Speaker 2: documentary about New York. It's like a ten hour eleven
Speaker 2: hour documentary. And there's a whole section on the speed
Speaker 2: with which steel got from the Bethlehem steel Mill to
Speaker 2: build the Chrysler building or something like that. Is just
Speaker 2: an unbelievable logistics I imagine it would be a little
Speaker 2: bit slower today. Let's get to insurance and all of
Speaker 2: that stuff. You even brought us a nice report material
Speaker 2: scaffold Law Economic Impact, which evidently, even though on the
Speaker 2: cover of the report has a picture of a scaffold,
Speaker 2: is not about scaffold.
Speaker 3: Not just about skefla, not about.
Speaker 2: Scaffold per se per se. But what is the scaffold
Speaker 2: law and why is this like an important priority of yours?
Speaker 5: Well, look, if a worker was to fall off the scaffold,
Speaker 5: then the scaffold law would apply, and it's to any
Speaker 5: height related injury. A New York contractor, New York City
Speaker 5: contractor is held one hundred percent liable and in forty
Speaker 5: nine other states, it's comparable negligence. So what we found
Speaker 5: through that economic impact study was that every hundred million
Speaker 5: dollars that is wasted on frivolous claims, when you look
Speaker 5: at reinvesting that into the economy, that's one hundred and
Speaker 5: forty million dollar output, and that amounts to about fifty
Speaker 5: five million dollars in wages and over six hundred jobs.
Speaker 5: And we look at big projects like the President wants
Speaker 5: to build Penn Station that's estimated to be seven billion
Speaker 5: dollars in cost. If we were to put comparative negligence
Speaker 5: on that project, we could save over five hundred million dollars.
Speaker 5: That's half a billion dollars.
Speaker 3: So just so we understand the difference between comparative negligence
Speaker 3: and absolute liability. So if I'm a construction worker working
Speaker 3: on a skyrise or something and I am not wearing
Speaker 3: my helmet and I fall off a sixty story building,
Speaker 3: I would be dead. But let's assume that I get injured.
Speaker 3: I would probably be dead, all right, three story building, yeah, okay,
Speaker 3: one story okay, But I'm not wearing my helmet, even
Speaker 3: though my employer says I should be wearing a helmet.
Speaker 3: And then I, you know, file acclaim. The absolute liability
Speaker 3: rule basically says that you can't divide blood between the
Speaker 3: company and the worker. Is that right? So instead of
Speaker 3: being ninety percent at fault for my own injury because
Speaker 3: I wasn't wearing a helmet and I got a head injury,
Speaker 3: the company is now one hundred percent at fault.
Speaker 5: That's absolutely right. And in other states they do comparative
Speaker 5: netligence and it's really driving up the cost of insurance
Speaker 5: so much so that insurance don't even want to write
Speaker 5: insurance in New York anymore.
Speaker 6: The market's limited.
Speaker 2: It tell us about the insurance market for you, because
Speaker 2: this is a good thing for us.
Speaker 6: So I mean, there's zero purchasing power. Contractors make a
Speaker 6: significant investment in safety. I promise you there's nothing more
Speaker 6: important to the contracting community than for every employee to
Speaker 6: go home safe to their family, loved ones, or whoever
Speaker 6: that may be. At the end of the day. I
Speaker 6: know everybody cares about that. But when we go to
Speaker 6: renew our insurance every year, and the large insurance carriers
Speaker 6: look at what this market for them is considered or
Speaker 6: the least favorable market to write insurance. So much so
Speaker 6: that carriers don't even want to write insurance in this
Speaker 6: market anymore, and if they do, deductibles are really high.
Speaker 6: Rates are really high, So on a percentage base of revenue,
Speaker 6: we're talking about five, six, ten x other states with
Speaker 6: much higher deductibles. So now contractors carry the cost of
Speaker 6: those deductible payouts in their bids, which goes into these
Speaker 6: public work bid numbers. So that's where you exponentially see
Speaker 6: the higher cost of construction. But it actually take it
Speaker 6: a step further. All the subcontractors and vendors that are
Speaker 6: going to be working on our jobs also have the
Speaker 6: same problem. And typically the subcontractors are smaller contractors by
Speaker 6: either volume or revenue or employees, so they're typically paying
Speaker 6: a higher premium on a percentage basis. So those numbers
Speaker 6: are also baked into our contract pricing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, our report really when we say contractors in New
Speaker 5: York are paying ten percent of total construction costs to insurance,
Speaker 5: that's five hundred percent more than other states, when in
Speaker 5: other states it's only about two percent. And then Michael
Speaker 5: mentioned the subcontractor. They get hit the worst on average,
Speaker 5: if you were a concrete subcontractor or a steel painting
Speaker 5: contractor you're paying fifteen to twenty percent your total volume
Speaker 5: of work, and it's unsustainable.
Speaker 3: So New York is the only city or only state city,
Speaker 3: state that still has this long place. Is that right?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 3: What happened in other states when we saw it go away.
Speaker 5: So the last state to reform the so called scaffol
Speaker 5: law absolute liability standard was Illinois in nineteen ninety five.
Speaker 5: So this is one hundred and forty year old law.
Speaker 5: It's antiquated, it's broken policy. Even both the Democrats and
Speaker 5: the Republicans when you speak to them one on one,
Speaker 5: they know this is bail policy. An interesting thing Illinois,
Speaker 5: the number of fatalities declined after they put a comparative
Speaker 5: negligence model in. So those that say it's you know,
Speaker 5: you have some trial lawyers, then there really it is
Speaker 5: a cash count for the trial. Why I mean that was.
Speaker 3: Gonna be my next question. So if everyone agrees that
Speaker 3: this is an antiquated law, who's actually standing in the way.
Speaker 2: You're definitely going to get any email after this episode
Speaker 2: and they're like, your guests are totally biased. There's gonna
Speaker 2: be from some lawyer and they're like, come on and
Speaker 2: do a follow up, But this raised the question, Okay,
Speaker 2: the law has been around for over one hundred years,
Speaker 2: so why not. I mean, like I can understand that
Speaker 2: that might raise Yes, Okay, New York is going to
Speaker 2: be a higher cost state. That doesn't explain the surge
Speaker 2: per se. Has something changed in the last five, ten,
Speaker 2: twenty eight years. I mean New York used to do
Speaker 2: a lot more building, or used to build a lot.
Speaker 2: Has something changed such that the law has more teeth
Speaker 2: or bites more.
Speaker 4: Than it did?
Speaker 2: I mean, and you talk about the disappearance of certain
Speaker 2: insurance carriers.
Speaker 4: The law existed fifty years ago.
Speaker 6: Right right when I was first started my business. Yeah,
Speaker 6: a little over thirty years ago. You know, insurance was
Speaker 6: an add on the bid where you didn't really focus
Speaker 6: about it. We're talking about one two percent of the
Speaker 6: contract price, and that held true maybe up until even
Speaker 6: ten years ago. And in the last ten years we've
Speaker 6: seen a significant rise in the cost of insurance. And
Speaker 6: I think it directly correlates with frequency of claims, third
Speaker 6: party claims, payouts of those claims, and how either a
Speaker 6: judge or jury awards damages in those cases. There's been
Speaker 6: well documented cases of staged construction accidents on sites.
Speaker 5: What Michael said is absolutely true. In New York for
Speaker 5: scaffold laws, the bodily injury claimed settlements for scaffolows six
Speaker 5: and a half times the average of other claim settlements.
Speaker 5: The sheer volume has been increased by tenfolds. We're talking
Speaker 5: about in fifteen years. And that's why these insurers are leaving.
Speaker 5: You know why, Now, why do we think we have
Speaker 5: a real opportunity, Not just because we have this economic
Speaker 5: impact report that shows is exactly how much we're spending.
Speaker 5: Because government leaders are finally talking about the fraud and
Speaker 5: abuse that's happening. Our governor and her state of the
Speaker 5: state a last month called on insurance reform for the
Speaker 5: automobile industry. Now half of the consumers in the state
Speaker 5: are car owners. Right, they're driving. They could relate to
Speaker 5: us paying so much more. But we're paying fifty percent
Speaker 5: more in car insurance compared to every other state, but
Speaker 5: our contractors are paying five hundred percent more. And the
Speaker 5: governor touched upon fraud and abuse, just like Mike said.
Speaker 5: The governor says we need to address that, we need
Speaker 5: to lower litigation costs and minds you and that these
Speaker 5: are order insurance claims out much much less than the
Speaker 5: scaffold law claims, and we need to fix this. We
Speaker 5: need reform. So this is a step in the right direction,
Speaker 5: and we're really focused on reform in Washington right now
Speaker 5: that there's movements there. There's a lot of support on
Speaker 5: this big federal infrastructure package that's a part of a
Speaker 5: surface Reauthorization transit bill that gets reauthorized every five years.
Speaker 5: It pays for big projects like a second avenue subway
Speaker 5: or major roads and highways bridges, and it's a must
Speaker 5: pass bill, and we think that we'll see reform there first,
Speaker 5: and we're very hopeful that reform will come soon.
Speaker 3: In Albany, how would you actually go about reducing litigation costs?
Speaker 3: Because my assumption is as long as you're doing like
Speaker 3: a jury process, it's going to be pretty expensive unless
Speaker 3: you go to something like arbitration.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, the litigated costs, one would say it goes
Speaker 5: to jury, but all of these insurance companies right now
Speaker 5: are just afraid to get that far.
Speaker 3: In New York State, so they settle pretty quickly.
Speaker 5: One insurance company, Tradesman Insurance, they filed five different reco
Speaker 5: cases in recent years. Probably i've heard them say that
Speaker 5: they invested over sixteen million dollars to do personal investigations
Speaker 5: to stop fraud and abuse. And they say that because
Speaker 5: they were able to get so many claims dropped by
Speaker 5: showing the Ford that there were bad actors, they saved
Speaker 5: over two billion dollars. And the numbers keep growing. And
Speaker 5: one law firm, Super and Assault shit that had like
Speaker 5: three hundred different cases dropped, apparently closed their doors last month.
Speaker 5: So it shouldn't get to that where insurance companies have
Speaker 5: to do the reform. This is bad public policy and
Speaker 5: we need our leaders in Washington and Albany to do reform. Now.
Speaker 6: It's I mean, I think it's well documented. It's all
Speaker 6: public information of just one building or a couple of buildings,
Speaker 6: where multiple claimants from the same building, with the same
Speaker 6: law firm utilizing the same medical practices filing these lawsuits.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and some of the doctors are losing their licenses
Speaker 5: and they're barred from workers' comp cases, and so that
Speaker 5: is reassuring to see action happen. And we've reaching a
Speaker 5: critical mass at this point. So I think that's why
Speaker 5: now we're hopeful for reform.
Speaker 2: Michael, can you talk a little bit more about today
Speaker 2: versus mid nineties. You win a bid with the city
Speaker 2: or whatever, you have a project. You mentioned Back then,
Speaker 2: insurance was an add on. Okay, there was one or
Speaker 2: two percent. I was ten percent. But setting aside the
Speaker 2: price going out and finding which carrier will take that,
Speaker 2: can you just talk about what life was like I
Speaker 2: don't know again thirty years ago verus today in terms
Speaker 2: of going out into the market for finding that insurance available, options,
Speaker 2: negotiations and so forth.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean it was much easier and much more
Speaker 6: simple twenty thirty years ago than it is today.
Speaker 4: All Right, what did you do?
Speaker 6: You talked to your insurance broker. They would come back
Speaker 6: with three or four quotes, all roughly the same. What
Speaker 6: did you feel comfortable with? You would do your annual renewals.
Speaker 6: There would be incremental cost of living in fla shenary
Speaker 6: adjustments to your annual rate. You signed on again for
Speaker 6: another year. Now it's a much more detailed, thorough process,
Speaker 6: thorough review, how much you're going to raise your deductibles.
Speaker 6: Where back then deductibles might have been twenty five thousand dollars,
Speaker 6: I mean, I think we're at seven hundred and fifty
Speaker 6: five hundred and seven hundred and fifty thousand now per occurrence.
Speaker 6: I mean significant significant changes where now the insurance company
Speaker 6: will dictate when you're going through your quotes, if you
Speaker 6: don't raise your deductible, we won't even write your insurance
Speaker 6: where that didn't happen back then. So there was much
Speaker 6: more purchasing power in the contracting community twenty thirty years
Speaker 6: ago in the marketplace than there is today.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is what I wanted to ask. So if
Speaker 3: the scaffolding law goes away, are you confident that new
Speaker 3: insurance actors would actually come into the market, because it
Speaker 3: feels like part of the problem here is a lot
Speaker 3: of people have exited, so you have limited insurers to
Speaker 3: actually choose from, which means they now have all the
Speaker 3: pricing power.
Speaker 5: I think the free market will work itself. It's a
Speaker 5: competitive market right now for the limited that do do
Speaker 5: business in New York. I was just on the phone
Speaker 5: earlier today with Zorich, which is a worldwide inshore, and
Speaker 5: they stopped ensuring small contractors and they'll only do big
Speaker 5: wrap up projects. In New York State, our Department of
Speaker 5: Financial Services regulates the companies to make sure that they
Speaker 5: can't charge too much or too little. And again it's
Speaker 5: the market. As long as they can prove they can
Speaker 5: make money here in New York, they'll come back.
Speaker 6: It just dawned on me. One other thing to consider,
Speaker 6: which sometimes is good for the local contracting community, but
Speaker 6: also not necessarily good for the overall city of New York.
Speaker 6: There are contractors based in other states that won't work
Speaker 6: here because their insurance companies will exclude their policy from
Speaker 6: working in New York, and then they would have to
Speaker 6: buy jobs specific or site specific policies, which are also
Speaker 6: very uncompetitive rates. So it's easier for them just to
Speaker 6: stay out of the marketplace that then, in theory, may
Speaker 6: drive down competition right from a low cause bid analysis,
Speaker 6: I think.
Speaker 5: And interesting, you know, to bring it back to what
Speaker 5: the governor has taken on in her state of the
Speaker 5: state or her and her budget auto insurance. You know,
Speaker 5: we mentioned the trial lawyers and how this is really
Speaker 5: a cash cow for them, but you know, they like
Speaker 5: to paint the insurance companies as the bad actors.
Speaker 6: But we look in.
Speaker 5: Places like Florida, for example, they had a similar no
Speaker 5: fault auto insurance policy like New York currently has, and
Speaker 5: they changed the policies there and they've given rate payers
Speaker 5: double digit refunds. So there is a situation, a scenario
Speaker 5: where we could see the same for our contractors if
Speaker 5: real reform happens here in New York.
Speaker 3: Just to be clear, does the high cost of insurance
Speaker 3: also apply to projects where heights presumably don't come into
Speaker 3: it very much? So you know, if you're build a
Speaker 3: new subway tunnel or something like that, I assume there's
Speaker 3: probably some scaffolding involved, but like maybe you're not falling
Speaker 3: too much.
Speaker 6: You could be standing on a ladder in a sewer trench,
Speaker 6: six inches up on the ladder, with the ladder secured
Speaker 6: on the bottom of the hole, tied up, all in
Speaker 6: conformance with ocean regulations, and if the employee falls six
Speaker 6: inches to the ground, which typically we all think we
Speaker 6: would be okay falling six inches, but then some injury
Speaker 6: arises months later and ends up in a lawyer's desk
Speaker 6: and the contractors ensued there'll be some sort of payout
Speaker 6: and that would fall under the scaffold loss. So even
Speaker 6: though you're not up on the heights of a building,
Speaker 6: not building a superstructure, that law still applies.
Speaker 2: I find this argument to be very compelling, and the
Speaker 2: high cost of insurance on a per project basis in
Speaker 2: New York City versus every other state, that seems like
Speaker 2: an issue.
Speaker 4: Unquestionably. All that Big.
Speaker 2: Said, some of the numbers you read about construction processes, Okay,
Speaker 2: let's say we take only thirty percent for labor or
Speaker 2: labor is thirty percent of the job, and then let's
Speaker 2: say insurance is ten percent of the job.
Speaker 4: So this other part.
Speaker 2: And when you read about the cost of an elevator
Speaker 2: in a subway, it seems like even if we like
Speaker 2: knocked off a lot of it for insurance and labor, whatever,
Speaker 2: it still seems crazy expensive in New York.
Speaker 4: So can we just talk about, like are these numbers real?
Speaker 2: Like when we see like, oh, it cost sixty million
Speaker 2: dollars to build an elevator somewhere, is that real or
Speaker 2: is that clickbait?
Speaker 4: What's going on there?
Speaker 6: I mean, I don't know where it costs sixty million
Speaker 6: to build an elevator. But look, remember there are subsurface
Speaker 6: conditions in New York that you have to deal with,
Speaker 6: like relocating utilities and gas manes and steam mains and
Speaker 6: a lot that all may go into the cost of
Speaker 6: that elevator, but it's really not the direct cost of
Speaker 6: the elevator. So like when the MTA goes and puts
Speaker 6: a new elevator in on a corner. Yeah, yes, maybe
Speaker 6: the cost of that elevator project sounds enormous, and it
Speaker 6: is for the elevator project, but not all of it
Speaker 6: is directly tied to the elevator. It's clearing away.
Speaker 2: But other cities have this too, right, Like I mean, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 2: it's not all There's going to be real estate acquisition
Speaker 2: costs and all the issues and materials and everything. But
Speaker 2: I get the impression that like building an elevator in
Speaker 2: New York City, like, should taxpayers.
Speaker 4: Be happy with?
Speaker 2: Like the numbers and they seem very high, and they
Speaker 2: seem out of proportion with what we see in other city.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I don't know the comparative data.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we are most expensive to build in comparison to
Speaker 5: other cities like San Francisco. Yeah, but it's still very
Speaker 5: expensive to build there too.
Speaker 4: Sure, so what are we paying for?
Speaker 6: Like?
Speaker 2: What what are these number? I mean again, let's go
Speaker 2: back to the turf example. Yeah, turf on let's and.
Speaker 5: You did and I laughed before when you mentioned the Skyscraper,
Speaker 5: the Chrysler Building, and the Bethlehem Steel and how that
Speaker 5: was probably put together in less than a year, the
Speaker 5: Empire State Building, and today we're building mega towers that
Speaker 5: were taken three four years. And while they're important projects
Speaker 5: and the very expensive projects, we were able to do
Speaker 5: it in such a shorter time frame back then. Of course,
Speaker 5: you save money when you reduce the time. Back to
Speaker 5: that track, it was in Juniper Park, and it's funny
Speaker 5: that you mentioned that, but actually I realized after you
Speaker 5: spoke about Battery Park and how you know that was
Speaker 5: water before we expanded, that was a swampland once in
Speaker 5: Queens that particular park. And so those are the constraints
Speaker 5: that we don't think about when we're building In New York.
Speaker 5: It's so hard to find schools, you know, places to
Speaker 5: build schools. I remember as a council member just having
Speaker 5: the most overcrowded school district and so many sites were
Speaker 5: contaminated and we couldn't find a good site. It's just
Speaker 5: these difficult things that happen in such dense city and
Speaker 5: part of the reason it's so expensive to build here.
Speaker 3: Does anyone have any good examples of building like efficiently
Speaker 3: at not so much cost relatively in New York City
Speaker 3: or New York State speak, but still to a high standard,
Speaker 3: like an example of a project that was done really well. Michael,
Speaker 3: surely you should be naming some of your own Yeah, No.
Speaker 6: We don't have, unless they're a major design flaws or errors.
Speaker 6: I feel like almost all of our projects do go
Speaker 6: extremely well. Right. It's a competitive marketplace. We're the low
Speaker 6: bitter right typically when you get the job, which means
Speaker 6: we're the cheapest price, the lowest responsible bidder, and more
Speaker 6: often than not, we don't have these major overruns or changes.
Speaker 6: They seem to go fairly well.
Speaker 5: And Michael introduced himself as the president of the company
Speaker 5: is But me and Michael worked together on the Mayor's
Speaker 5: Task Force for Capital Reform, and we went up to
Speaker 5: Albany as part of the reforms two years ago and
Speaker 5: push for progressive design bills or different ways of building
Speaker 5: projects that New York didn't use, in other states used
Speaker 5: and that actually decreased the timeline and you were able
Speaker 5: to build for less by using these delivery methods. And
Speaker 5: I think that at Shirley Chisholm Park they just may
Speaker 5: Or Mom Dommy cut the ribbon. But DDC is pointing
Speaker 5: to that project that's coming in under budget and in
Speaker 5: a short amount of time that was estimated that it
Speaker 5: would take to build. So there are ways we could
Speaker 5: work together, putting our minds together to bring about real reform.
Speaker 6: I think one area that we didn't touch on, which
Speaker 6: I think is important. I know you probably know the
Speaker 6: statistics right if you look at the counter argument, like
Speaker 6: if you said the trial lawyers to what's driving these
Speaker 6: insurance costs? You would think if these stricter rules and
Speaker 6: laws are in place, it would make everything much safer
Speaker 6: or safer for the worker, less injuries. And do you
Speaker 6: want to touch timulous.
Speaker 5: There's nothing more important than safety. That's a cornerstone of
Speaker 5: the work that our contractors do. You know, they want
Speaker 5: their workers to go home as safe as they were
Speaker 5: when they came to work that day. We're you know,
Speaker 5: even focusing on culture on the job site and total wellness.
Speaker 5: That's important. So we need to continue to be forward thinking.
Speaker 6: But the data set, the results in New York are
Speaker 6: equal to other states, oh, in.
Speaker 5: Terms of our rate of fatalities. In fact, New York
Speaker 5: has a higher rate of fatalities. Despite this law in
Speaker 5: comparison to state like New Jersey or the average in
Speaker 5: the country. You know, when we have nearly twelve fatalities
Speaker 5: per one hundred thousand workers, whereas the national average is
Speaker 5: under ten, and so we're twenty percent higher in New
Speaker 5: York despite having such a strict liability on contractors.
Speaker 4: Can we talk a little bit about current conditions.
Speaker 2: So one of the things that we hurt a lot
Speaker 2: in like twenty twenty one, twenty three, this like intense
Speaker 2: scarcity of skilled tradesmen and various things electrical, et cetera.
Speaker 2: How is that Is that still a big Is that
Speaker 2: a big issue? Still a major constraint right now finding
Speaker 2: available labor?
Speaker 6: I think an aging workforce at least I mean without
Speaker 6: me having any demographic data, just like visual context, and
Speaker 6: we do have an aging workforce. I don't think the
Speaker 6: younger generations are so inclined to either go to a
Speaker 6: vocational school or some type of trade school. I would
Speaker 6: sit here and I would tell anyone I think it
Speaker 6: would be a great industry with the disruption going on
Speaker 6: in the world right now, with you know, the advent
Speaker 6: of AI and on all these jobs.
Speaker 2: Like for you, like right now, is this like when
Speaker 2: you think of the various headaches that you have in
Speaker 2: your life, is keeping a sort of steady the available
Speaker 2: flow of labor that knows how to build things like
Speaker 2: one of the things that keeps you up at night.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean available flow of labor is one of
Speaker 6: the things that's kept up at night since I started
Speaker 6: my business. Okay, we converted to a one hundred percent
Speaker 6: employee owned company a couple of years ago, so much
Speaker 6: so that I included the trades people, So the collectively
Speaker 6: bargained employees or the different unions in the city are
Speaker 6: part of that ESOP.
Speaker 5: That's very unusual, and I applaud Michael and his team
Speaker 5: for doing that. But when we think about workforce needs,
Speaker 5: many of our contractors that are doing the infrastructure work,
Speaker 5: like Michael, are experiencing difficulties and often take talent from
Speaker 5: one another. So ESOP is going to stop that for sure.
Speaker 5: But when you look at the commercial buildings that are
Speaker 5: going up, which is more of a private market or residential,
Speaker 5: that is not happening. We really didn't have a chance
Speaker 5: to talk much about affordable housing, but that any of
Speaker 5: that building is much more likely to be non union today,
Speaker 5: which is a real shame because a lot of times
Speaker 5: those workers are not getting paid on the books. More likely,
Speaker 5: eighty percent of the injuries that happen on job sites
Speaker 5: are happening on non union job sites. So we really
Speaker 5: want to prevent that and help promote union employment as
Speaker 5: much as possible.
Speaker 3: Michael, you mentioned AI, So now I have to ask,
Speaker 3: you know, we dug in a little bit into construction
Speaker 3: productivity at the beginning of this conversation, and you know,
Speaker 3: I think construction is largely done now as it was
Speaker 3: probably like twenty or thirty years ago, and there happened
Speaker 3: some technological advances like the nail gun, but beyond that,
Speaker 3: we don't have actual robots that are like putting shingles
Speaker 3: on our houses and things like that. But how confident
Speaker 3: are you that it's gonna actually stay that way forever?
Speaker 3: Because I mean ms chat GPT kind.
Speaker 2: Of like how you're looking at me, like I've got
Speaker 2: like vibe code. I'm going to vibe code the Running show.
Speaker 3: It's all Joe's fault. But it came out of nowhere
Speaker 3: for white collar workers. Could it come out of nowhere
Speaker 3: for blue collar I think so.
Speaker 6: Look, I don't think it's going to replace the Workforce.
Speaker 6: Actually was at a construction conference a couple of weeks ago,
Speaker 6: and my biggest takeaway is AI isn't replacing employees, but
Speaker 6: employees who use AI will replace the employees who aren't.
Speaker 2: Do you see that, Like are there in your firm
Speaker 2: or are you getting value from it? Is anyone doing
Speaker 2: anything with like tech or anything? So is anyone using it.
Speaker 6: For We had our off site strategy session last week
Speaker 6: and one of our quarterly priorities is all around implementing
Speaker 6: artificial intelligence in our processes and workflows. So really, how
Speaker 6: can we get information sooner? So instead of relying on
Speaker 6: maybe these incumbent software models, taking the data we have
Speaker 6: and using AI to give us analysis of that data
Speaker 6: much quicker.
Speaker 3: So not so much the physical process of putting up drywall,
Speaker 3: but the planning and.
Speaker 6: Look that's coming. I mean I have friends who have
Speaker 6: robots that can tie rebars now with wire right. They've
Speaker 6: invested in these companies and I'm not utilizing those robots yet,
Speaker 6: but they're out there. Caterpillar has technology the having equipment
Speaker 6: manufacturer where someone can sit let's call it like what
Speaker 6: we grew up with a video game, Like it looks
Speaker 6: like a pole position, I don't I if I'm dating myself,
Speaker 6: and you can operate four different machines, not at the
Speaker 6: same time, but from one TV screen for actual caterpillar
Speaker 6: machines at four different locations, just sitting in like what
Speaker 6: I would call an arcade machine WOW, with no operator
Speaker 6: in the seat.
Speaker 5: Interestingly enough, you know I mentioned Zorich earlier. Zoric Insurance
Speaker 5: will only ensure a project in New York if their
Speaker 5: cameras watching. Now, they use AI after a day's work
Speaker 5: to study any movement that was dangerous. So it's not
Speaker 5: just like people, you know, believe it's for surveillance to
Speaker 5: stop fraud and abuse from happening, but it's really to
Speaker 5: correct workers to and reduce risk. And they've seen that
Speaker 5: their incidents have gone down significantly and their job sites
Speaker 5: are much more safer.
Speaker 6: I'm part of a tri venture group doing the East
Speaker 6: Coast Resiliency project on the Lower East Side. It is
Speaker 6: one point three billion dollar project and we're utilizing that
Speaker 6: exact system. The cameras are located on machines on poles
Speaker 6: and the data gets downloaded every night analyzed by AI.
Speaker 6: So not only do we get like near misses or data,
Speaker 6: but we also use it for training the workforce, so
Speaker 6: the videos that it captures to make the job site safer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what about again, just talk about current conditions. What
Speaker 2: about materials cost? So we know that the cost of
Speaker 2: everything surged a lot immediately in the wake of the pandemic,
Speaker 2: you get to any relief. Have the pacent price increases
Speaker 2: gone slowed at all? Are there any parts we've talked about,
Speaker 2: like transformers, like various key electrical parts that you can't
Speaker 2: get easily at any price. What are you saying right
Speaker 2: now on just acquisition of materials?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I have not seen prices come down. Okay, you
Speaker 6: know it's no different when there was like a fuel
Speaker 6: search charge, right that the oil market spiked and every
Speaker 6: vendor would put a fuel searcharge on deliveries. Somehow those
Speaker 6: fuel search charges never go away.
Speaker 2: What about other like just other raw materials, like other
Speaker 2: things that are in like scarcity that you like have
Speaker 2: a difficult time finding at all at any price right now?
Speaker 6: No, I think we're pretty much getting everything we need.
Speaker 6: I know COVID and coming out of COVID, there was
Speaker 6: big issues.
Speaker 3: When you walk into a building like the Bloomberg offices,
Speaker 3: do you look around and you think, like, what a
Speaker 3: marvel of structural engineering or do you think I wonder
Speaker 3: what the insurance costs are?
Speaker 6: No, I think I should have done something different in
Speaker 6: my career.
Speaker 2: One last thing that you mentioned, and I've read people
Speaker 2: who like talk about like you know, abundance, et cetera.
Speaker 2: They talk about how a lot of like public projects,
Speaker 2: there's a big consultant element that many aspects of it
Speaker 2: have been outsourced from the public sector, that these third parties,
Speaker 2: and that that drives up you mentioned consultants. Does that
Speaker 2: Does that resonate with you in terms of where you
Speaker 2: see potent cost bloat and so forth.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean I don't know the value of the
Speaker 6: consultant contracts, but I can tell you based on my experience.
Speaker 6: We used to work on a lot more contracts that
Speaker 6: were run in house by the agencies, and now you
Speaker 6: see a lot of third party like resident engineer and
Speaker 6: inspection services and other tests that used to be performed
Speaker 6: in ou so that are now performed by third party consultants.
Speaker 5: And often they're called owners reps. And we'll get complaints
Speaker 5: from our contractors that owners reps are delaying the project,
Speaker 5: so they continue to get paid for the project, and
Speaker 5: that's something where we're interested in seeing some reform too.
Speaker 5: I've heard of that on more than one type of
Speaker 5: project that could you know, it could be a school
Speaker 5: being built or a bridge being painted.
Speaker 2: Michael and Elizabeth, thank you so much for coming on
Speaker 2: Odd Loves.
Speaker 4: That's a lot of fun.
Speaker 5: Thank thanks for having us.
Speaker 3: That was great us.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's very nice.
Speaker 2: Tracy, that was a fun conversation. I like it felt
Speaker 2: like we learned about the city in some way, you
Speaker 2: know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: I learned a lot about absolute liability.
Speaker 4: Ye, absolute liability.
Speaker 3: That is interesting. Look, I also think the point about
Speaker 3: delays is very striking to me because again, that would
Speaker 3: seem to be an issue where you're still paying people
Speaker 3: to build something, but building it is taking ten years
Speaker 3: instead of five years.
Speaker 2: Or especially at a time when interest rates are high,
Speaker 2: can they compound extra right?
Speaker 3: And also it seems like there's a potential problem of
Speaker 3: incentives here, right, Like if I am a consultant working
Speaker 3: on a project and I am still getting paid, the
Speaker 3: project's not actually going and I can spend a lot
Speaker 3: of time I don't know, pointing out like individual issues
Speaker 3: and potentially delaying stuff like that's an incentive problem.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I guess I would say I find the point
Speaker 2: about insurance to be compelling, and the point about like
Speaker 2: forty nine other states have gotten rid of these laws
Speaker 2: and they're not actually even making New York a safer workplace.
Speaker 2: I mean, it would be one thing, I guess if
Speaker 2: like New York had like half the accent right as
Speaker 2: the rest of the country, and then you say, okay, well,
Speaker 2: look like you could point to a law like this
Speaker 2: and say this is clearly making causing everyone to take
Speaker 2: safety board. Seriously, if you can't point to that, if
Speaker 2: every other state has gotten rid of it, I mean,
Speaker 2: I don't have any opinion. But and again I'm sure
Speaker 2: we're going to hear from lawyer.
Speaker 3: About to get make an enemy out of the child bar.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, we're gonna get emails from lawyers saying we
Speaker 2: want to do a rebuttal episode. But my gut is
Speaker 2: that there's probably so definitely something to that.
Speaker 3: Well, the other thing I was thinking about on the
Speaker 3: insurance point is, you know, I have this pet theory
Speaker 3: that like insurers basically run the world. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 3: they control a lot of money. They set like not
Speaker 3: just safety standards, but social standards for a lot of things.
Speaker 3: Is really interesting here about using AI to monitor yeah,
Speaker 3: oh yeah, security camerage, footage, like for health and safety,
Speaker 3: because I can imagine, you know, if that helps the insurers.
Speaker 3: I can imagine them asking that to become standard practice everywhere.
Speaker 2: It's super interesting to think, like, Okay, yeah, you want
Speaker 2: to have cameras because if there's an accident, then you could.
Speaker 4: Go back and review the footage.
Speaker 2: But this idea that like, oh you could like see
Speaker 2: if there was a near miss or something like that,
Speaker 2: the AI can detect it directly potentially.
Speaker 4: That's interesting.
Speaker 2: And then of course there's gonna be all these questions
Speaker 2: about surveillance and whether people like that. But this is
Speaker 2: going to be it's gonna be a big topic. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's only it's gonna come on very fast.
Speaker 3: I know I keep saying this, but we really should
Speaker 3: do more on insurance. We'll figure out.
Speaker 2: We're sureing to do more, you know, like if we
Speaker 2: keep saying it like we are, you know, no, yes,
Speaker 2: but even more even more I agree.
Speaker 3: Shall we leave it there?
Speaker 4: Yeah, let's leave it there.
Speaker 6: Okay.
Speaker 3: This has been another episode of the ad Thoughts podcast.
Speaker 3: I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 4: And I'm Jill Wisenthal.
Speaker 2: You can follow me at the Stalwart hellow our producers
Speaker 2: Kerman Rodriguez at Kerman armand dash Ol Bennett at dashbod
Speaker 2: and Keil Brooks at Kelbrooks. More odd Laws content, go
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