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Hello and welcome to the Digging Deeper podcast hosted by ForConstructionPros covering various aspects of the construction industry, including the equipment, people, companies and associations making it all happen. 

Hi. I'm Jonathan, and this episode, sponsored by CMC, features my interview with Cam Arnold and Robert McClean, key figures within CMC's, precast and steel bar fabrication divisions. Join us as we talk about the impact of a good producer and supplier can have on the job, how their divisions support concrete contractors, as well as reinforcing that value of having a real good conversation in today's world of construction. Thank you for tuning in. Here's my interview. 

Concrete Contractor: Thank you for joining us on Digging Deeper, welcome to the show. I like to get a little bit of background information and get to know our guests a little bit before we really get going. Can you tell me a bit about yourselves and what you do for the construction industry? How do you find yourselves here?

Cam Arnold: Sure, I'll kick us off. My name is Cam Arnold. I work for the newly founded CMC precast division. I have been in the industry for just about 15 years. Currently the general manager for our 95 corridor region, which is like the eastern side of North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. 

I found myself in the precast industry, following in my dad's footsteps. He actually has been in it for probably 35 years. So, I grew up going to the precast plants during the summer, snow days in the Midwest when we had school off, learned how to drive a truck in a precast yard — this has been in my blood. I found myself into it about 15 years ago.

Concrete Contractor: Those are some good hazards to avoid. You don't want to run into those things. Rob, how about you? 

Robert McClean: This will be my 25th year with CMC. So, I've been with the company a long time. To say that I got into construction growing up, unlike Cam, it'd be the least thing that I expected to do. I grew up, born and raised in Australia, surfing, rugby, all that stuff. Got out of college, didn't really know what I wanted to do, and I had family that had moved to the States. At the time, CMC, on the fabrication side, was offering traineeships through rebar estimators, and they had an H1 visa application process. 

We're not a very sexy industry, so it was tough to get kids out of school to get in the rebar fab game. I got on with that program. CMC taught me how to estimate rebar out of Seguin, Texas. From there, the rest is history. 

I'm currently the VP of our fabrication group, that's 50 fabrication plants across the US. We do up to one point about 1.2 million tons of fabricated rebar a year. We like to say we're probably number one in the space right now. It's a huge responsibility, huge honor for me to lead that. That's it in a nutshell, Jonathan. I would never think to be in the business, but now I am. I absolutely love it. 

We like to think the businesses is like the mafia — once you're in, you can't get out, and if you do leave, you go to another family. So fed. Some people leave CMC, but they typically go to other fabricators. To Cam's point, once it's in your blood, it's in your blood. You think about it all day long. It's a contractor community. It's an everyday grind, but there's never a dull moment. That's what's so exciting about it. 

Concrete Contractor: A few years ago, the trend online was, what's your "Roman concrete" because it's something all guys think about. I'm all like, "Yeah, I think about concrete, like, every day, what's the problem?" As I started in this job, I learned more and more and more, and some of my favorite things was learning about the science of what's going on as that concrete cures — that interaction between the rebar, that chemical interaction and the strength that's happening. What's something that makes you excited about construction? What's your favorite part of the job?

Arnold: It's the direct impact we have on our local communities: new residential neighborhoods, DOT projects, highway expansion, commercial sites. We're the underground infrastructure that makes those developments happen. It's pretty rewarding to be able to see the impact that we have on our local communities.

Concrete Contractor: And keeping that family business, that family feel is really important. It's a common story in construction, but it's so important to just reinforce, to use a pun. 

McClean: I think to Cam's point, it's very tangible, right? You see it every day. We believe CMC, we are the backbone of America and everything we do. And with precast, you can see the precast elements on most, most buildings, obviously pipe and that can get buried and in rebar, it's typically buried in the concrete. You don't see what we do, but it's there, and it's reinforcing these structures. 

I've got two daughters, they don't really care, but I'm very proud to say, "We're providing the steel for that job". I think we cited the Cowboy Stadium, to say "We're doing the steel on this job," when you take customers to football games and the like. 

I think you make a point, Jonathan, about family and community. We feel very much that, but then in the contractor space too, you're dealing with these contractors day in day out, the relationships are very strong because we're so reliant on each other to get the job done. For a lot of it, it's very localized too, right? I've been honored to move around with CMC. It is almost tribal as you go to different markets and how people do business. There is that bond, no doubt about it. You have to trust the fact that you can do the job and that's the long term sustainability in construction. That's what gets me excited. If you can't do what you say you're going to do, you're not going to last very long. 

Concrete Contractor: There is a meme from too long ago. A lot of my pop culture information is from memes and everything like that. So I apologize, I'm old. But there is that meme where Leonardo DiCaprio is pointing at something off the screen. And I like to say, "See, I built that." I like writing the stories of those buildings, because, "I learned about that thing." 

Arnold: I think my wife probably gets tired of me. It'll pull it off the side of the road to see whose product that is, or to show our product on a new job site. That's kind of part of driving the truck with me, we're going to make some stops along the way.

Concrete Contractor: I bet your dad did the same thing.

Arnold: Correct. It's normal to me.

Concrete Contractor: You two represent two different areas of CMC. Can you talk a little bit about your divisions and how they help contractors past supplying the precast and rebar for the construction jobs?

Arnold: The precast industry has played a huge role in the modern construction that shifted majority of the work from a jobsite to a controlled manufacturing environment. That change alone has improved the speed, quality and consistency, across all projects and all of our product lines as well. 

On the contractor side, the improved safety comes to mind to me right off the bat. Instead of products being formed and poured sometimes at heights or near large holes in the ground, our product is delivered to the site ready to put in the hole with the crane or mobile equipment in faster construction timelines and better quality products, delivered, ready to install. Since it is in a controlled environment, got consistent temperatures, materials curing time, you have a much higher quality product. It also limits the weather delays that you can have with on-site pouring. A little bit of rain is not going to stop us, but if you're trying to pour concrete outside in the rain, you are going to have some delays.

McClean: On the reinforcing steel side of things, obviously, we provide reinforcing steel to mainly GCs and concrete subcontractors. We're willing to do any job, whether it's a 7/11 on the corner, or some of these massive data center chip plants — the broad range of things. 

In some markets we also offer installation services where we actually install the rebar. We also have included a post-tension into our portfolio too. We feel as though those that post tension cable and rebar typically come together. That's been a huge success. We started in the West Coast because that was a big in place market for us, where our placing companies needed cable. We started doing that in the East, and it's got some really great traction — huge benefit to the contractor. 

To Cam's point, a lot of convenience [with] only doing with one supplier, coordination is crucial. But ultimately, for us, it's our network of fab shops. We're able to drive the schedule at times in some of these high demanding jobs, we meet or even exceed some of these schedules. 

If you don't have the rebar, you can't pour the slab or anything on the job, so the job shuts down. Being able to drive that schedule with our network of fab shops is huge. [We have] a big internal base of estimating and detailing and pre-construction services. We're very, very helpful at pre bid budgeting and the like. and then even design. When we see congestion issues, we can offer suggestions there and help the contractor avoid that. 

A big piece of CMC is our project management, where we typically put project management on some of my or more high profile jobs, where we're able to assist the contractor with issues on the jobsite. That's a big selling point for CMC.

We're very proud of the steel we make and the quality of our fabrication, but ironically, it comes back to service. We typically get jobs because they want this project manager on the job — if you can guarantee that, CMC, the project's [ours]. It's really where the service really shines through in what we do, and that's something we focus day in day out. 

We're really proud of what we make, but if you don't have the service, you're kidding yourself. In this business, you know, you absolutely have to bring it to the forefront. 

Concrete Contractor: It's that relationship between supplier and contractor, you have to be able to talk to each other. There's a trust that they have to build that stuff is going to show up on schedule, and you're going to help them keep on schedule, because if you don't, that's going to ripple and get worse and worse and worse over time.

Arnold: To piggyback on that, I'm down in Savannah, Georgia right now doing some customer visits. Like Rob said, we're proud of the product we make, the quality we make, but what I like to hear — makes me the most proud — is sitting in these offices talking about our project managers and how detail oriented they are, how much information they relay in real time, good or bad, Sometimes they have to deliver the hard news, but you have to deliver that news. Hearing how our teams interact with our contractors in real time is very rewarding.

Concrete Contractor: And you're in person too. You guys are willing to actually get out there and be face to face, not a Teams call or something like that.

McClean: We operate like that too. We were doing some things within CMC internally, and one of my guys said, "Can someone just call me instead of sending me a Teams chat?" We're trying to get stuff done right now, just pick up the phone and call. That's how we do things in fabrication. So, it's funny, you touched on that, Jonathan. We want to see you and we want to talk to you. We don't want to be typing away or scheduling remote meetings.

Concrete Contractor: The last thing I want to do is take this podcast to a live construction site and start asking questions — they got work to do. 

So much of construction has changed in the last few years, really. So now we have more integrated technology on the jobsite, technology helping quality control in the building materials, probably especially on the precast and the fabrication side. We even have automated machines that help in place and tie rebar. In your opinion, how have these industries been changing? What's the major difference between today's fabrication and precast industries to yesteryear?

Arnold: The machine technology has really come a long way in the last 15 years that I've been involved in it both on the precast product side, but also the reinforcing side. We have cage machines where we throw in small longitudinal wires and hit go, and it welds a full cage for a piece of concrete pipe. In the past, that had to be done on a manual wire roller with somebody with a welding stick tacking all the way around. We have the ability to make a piece of pipe in less than 60 seconds on some of our machines now. 

On top of that, I've touched on the safety aspect as well. There's been a lot of advancements and how those machines operate in the safety protocols and procedures that they implemented into these machines. It's been really great to see.

McClean: We've seen a lot of the things Cam talked about. On the backroom side of things, a lot of processes and a lot of automation. I think our contractors estimate, deal with project management has been huge. And then in the rebar fabrication industry, automation has certainly taken off. It's been fascinating to see. 

Our Houston West shop was one of the first fully automated fab shops in the country. To Cam's point, the safety of that facility where before we were having four or five recordables a year, now this shop is going several years without a recordable injury is a phenomenal, phenomenal story. 

The frustrating thing for me with construction, is when it gets to the field, we're still doing things like we were 50 years ago. You touched on about installation, there's automation there, but still, a lot of the things we're doing construction, the industry itself has lagged a lot of major industries. That's a frustrating thing for a lot of us. I think we want to move a lot faster, but because of code standards [and] so much fragmentation in the industry, it's tough to do that. I'd love to see more progress, actually, on the jobsite, where jobsites are able to progress more with technology than we're seeing. 

A great example is BIM modeling. BIM modeling came out about 10 years ago, and we said that was going to revolutionize the industry — save so much time and effort, but at the end of the day, that guy's placing still with 2D drawings on a sheet of paper. We're putting these BIM models together [but] when it hits the jobsite, it's still being done like it was 40 years ago. So those things, if we could see more progress there, that would be phenomenal because through technologies there is huge gains. Trying to scale that in construction has been a challenge. There's several papers, articles written about just how construction still lags other major industries and progress, so still a lot of work to be done. 

Concrete Contractor: I think it's important to admit that we're not looking for robots to place rebar. We're just looking for technologies to help that worker, one, keep their job and then two, just do it more efficiently. Do that more productively and safely.

I see that fabrication side participates in a number of trade associations, such as, there's a long list here, the American Concrete Pavement Association, the American Cement Association, the American Concrete Institute and the Concrete Reinforcing Steel Institute. There are some others. How does CMC fabrication work with these organizations?

McClean: We want to promote concrete reinforcing, so obviously, cast in place reinforcing, we believe, is a way to go. They're out there promoting that in the industry to the engineering community and contractors really targeting wood and structural steel buildings 

That's a big promotional arm for us, promoting that we think that is the most budget efficient way to go about building. And then obviously they're involved in several of those associations as well, when it comes to ACI and some others. We want to tell our story, but we want to be involved. 

If you talk about technology, we're seeing a lot more high-grade strength still come into play. We're seeing that every day: high strength material being specified on projects or engineers wanting to give a go at it. We want to make sure we're involved in those codes, so that we don't go too far off — to be able to do what the design is saying and have a say in that matter. If you're not at the table, you're typically on the table. We want to be make sure we're at the table in those discussions. 

Back to building relationships with the engineering community, promoting CMC and promoting what we can do. That's the major focus there. ACI just had a big convention up in Chicago, we had several folks from CMC there. [Thee's] some really exciting stuff coming with some of this higher strength steel that we're seeing in the marketplace more and more.

Concrete Contractor: I should start asking you guys, why is cast in place better? Why is precast better? And really put you guys in a debate.

McClean: I love [that] we've got precast as part of CMC, I think it's going to be a phenomenal story. It's still very early days, as Cam knows. But the fact now that we can hear about a job that may be over budget, and we can say, "You got a parking garage there. Could we maybe look at going precast on this" and bring our precast group in…get the job under budget. We're able to bring our partners in precast in it, and maybe vice versa. 

It's about diversifying the portfolio. To Cam's point, precast has certainly come a long way to the benefits that the Cam cited, so it's something you can't ignore. And I just think it's going to be a phenomenal story as we both go in partnership in a lot of these projects. 

Cam, I don't know your thoughts on the matter as well, but I think it's going to be a great story. 

Concrete Contractor: Cam, how does the precast division work with organizations?

Arnold: It's been good, so far. We've had a lot of interaction already down in the southeast with some of our rebar teammates on cross information on budget jobs that are coming out. We've got some leads from them on projects that we hadn't seen. We just actually sent some leads for a large DOT project that was looking for a rebar manufacturer. There's been a lot of good from it already. It's only been three months, but really looking forward to how this evolves.

Concrete Contractor: As insiders of your industries, what's the most significant development from the precast side?

McClean: A few things. Our Durant (Oklahoma) steel mill came online about five years ago. It was the first steel mill near us to produce spool rebar. Now, we're doing that in Mesa (Arizona), we've got a re-spool now in Florida, and up in the new West Virginia steel mill we have spool. With that process, Jonathan, we're able to use a lot more spool-fed equipment, lot more automation. That's taken off like wildfire to the fact that we can't keep up because we're using spooled equipment, lot less labor involved, huge savings with yield. 

I did touch on the strength piece that has become a big component in this big infrastructure play. Bridge life and the like are coming into play. We're really proud of our corrosion resistance portfolio that we're brought to the marketplace. We acquired Galva bar around the pandemic — about five, six years ago. That is a completely different process of galvanizing, reinforcing steel that wasn't there before. We also have our Chrome X products as well, which is high strength, corrosion resistance steel. We feel as through the lifespan of a bridge, as these DOTs are coming to play, is going to be much more important than they have been the past, because you've seen the deterioration of infrastructure over the coming years, and be able to come to play with this portfolio of corrosion resistance products with the strength involved, and extend the life cycle of some of these future infrastructure projects, is going to be a big deal. It's certainly something we're excited about, but it's a big calling card in the industry. I think CMC is positioned better than most everyone else in that in that manner.

Concrete Contractor: There's just a few infrastructure projects going on. We had Christina Edgerton on Digging Deeper not too long ago. She mentioned that precast can help solve a lot of labor challenges in construction, or at least address them. I'd like to get your thoughts on this too. Could you elaborate a little more? Can you walk me through how the precast industry as a whole and the precast solutions is addressing this pain point?

Arnold: I touched on a little bit of it earlier. Precast products allowed the contractor to not have a need for large forming crews, finishers and reworkers on jobsites, which, in return helps them dealing with the shortage in skilled labor. It also reduces their total on-site labor needs on projects. Faster construction, or what we call it parallel work, so precast components are being built while the early site prep is ongoing. I think it simplifies the construction coordination [with] products delivered, ready to install, and it eliminates delays by on-site workers maybe working on or waiting on another crew to finish up. 

Our product is coming while they're site prepped and ready. And I touched on the safety aspect earlier, but it eliminates workers having to form and pour concrete in a harsh environment. Sometimes that's being done at heights and around large holes in the ground that have potential for injury.

Concrete Contractor: So contractors get to connect with you guys and really get a couple of projects going. While that material is being sent to that one job, they can start prepping and getting ready for another one. And then move schedules along.

Arnold: They can get all the site prep cleared, stabilized, holes ready. There's some jobs [such as] a long run of a concrete pipe, they'll have hundreds of feet of that trench already dug. Our trucks are pulled up next to the hole, they're picking it off the truck and into the hole. It really speeds up the process out there.

Concrete Contractor: I bet the stories of those truck drivers has got to be pretty good.

I understand CMC has been involved in some very well-known projects around the country. We've mentioned a few just before. Buildings like AT&T Stadium (Arlington, Texas), the four seasons of Miami, and I think CMCs products is involved in the new Las Vegas Athletics stadium. Thank you for that, I did not know they were moving to Las Vegas. That's awesome. Is there a project that kind of stands out for you both?

McClean: The 1,000's of projects that we've been involved in, and I have in my career, I think the biggest one, and it's still [on going] — there's another phase coming out … but the Samsung project in Austin. I remember the salesman in Austin called me out and started telling me the tonnage involved. It was mind blowing. I'd never seen or heard of anything like this. You can't be that big. He said, "We're going through the numbers. And this is the size of this project." It continued to grow and grow. It was a massive project and highly successful for us and hopefully for everyone else involved. But that, for me, I saw this onshoring play and bringing manufacturing back to the US, just how big these projects are going to have to be to operate at scale globally. 

Since then, we're doing TSMC (a semiconductor manufacturing company) right now, out here in Arizona. We've been involved in other chip plants and several other big manufacturing. Data center is the big word right now. 

For me, Samsung was the call out because of the size and the scope and the schedule. These projects are just monsters. You mentioned that we've just got a few infrastructure projects out there right now, but we're living in a time of these just monster projects out there that I've never seen before — it's an exciting time for the industry, no doubt about it. 

But I think Samsung is just a huge standout for me, how we kind of made that turn and started going down that direction. 

Arnold: Our Mid Atlantic group did a massive Lego manufacturing facility, which was kind of cool. I live in the Charleston area, so I'm going to touch on the Boeing expansion. That's about a million dollar expansion at the Boeing manufacturing facility. 

It's connected to the Charleston airport. This project is going to expand Boeing's capacity of their 787, Dreamliners. It's doubling the size of the factory. It's going to bring in over 1,000 new workers. For me, it's fun to think about all of our product is being used underneath these runways and these facilities to build new airplanes. That's going to improve the travel experience for people all around the world. They've already had over 200 new orders from Qatar Airways, British Airways, Gulf Air, and a few other international companies where our products are underneath these new facilities are making these airplanes. 

Concrete Contractor: There's a story that I heard not too long ago called, the pizza principle, the pizza delivery rule. What some analysts found that a lot of pizza started being delivered to the Pentagon. And as soon as that happened, that's when, some sort of activity is going to happen elsewhere. I wonder if we can take the supply chain and the transportation of construction materials like CMC's precast and fabrication and go, here's how employment is going to work in this country, because now we're building all these manufacturing facilities and bringing jobs to the country. Now we're going to see, like five year 10 years down the line, more jobs here, just because we saw this ripple, this splash in the bucket few years before.

Arnold: I think so. There's massive manufacturing facilities going up from Scout motors in Blythewood, South Carolina. You got Rivian in Augusta, this Boeing project, Hyundai, right outside of Savannah. I think there's definitely a trend that's bringing all these jobs into the U.S., for sure. 1,000s of jobs.

McClean: You see these trends, and you're able to talk to it, and then you hear things about inflation and things like that. [What] I struggle with is how we are going to control inflation and things like that. Where we're bringing more high paying jobs, which is great for the US economy and the US worker, but that brings on wage pressure. So, bridging what we're seeing and then what the real world saying, is a fascinating perspective. As Cam said, we see it all right now. We're seeing the trends where things are being built. We certainly have, I say, the K shaped economy is a big buzzword going around, but we're feeling it in construction. You still have these monster projects going, which is great, taking a lot of steel. But then the residential, the multifamily, things like that are dormant and not where they need to be from a health standpoint. We can get a little bit spun up and say, "Oh, things are great," but then across the board, it's not so good here and here. 

Having that awareness and be able to speak to it is crucial as we continue to tell our story

Concrete Contractor: Now is a great time to talk about the future and getting jobs involved. We talked a little bit earlier about how our two industries were different from years ago, and now we're coming closer to the end of this interview. What are your thoughts on the future as we take the trends of precast and how automation is happening in both of these industries? Where do you think these trends are taking construction?

Arnold: When I think about the future, I don't know if you guys have seen the show Billions or not, but in an episode a scientist created a fully autonomous healing concrete product — so, something gets damaged or cracked and will actually heal and seal itself. When I think about the future, I get excited about the material side. 

We're doing a lot of R&D on the precast side right now. We've gotten a handful of jobs already with a non-cementitious geopolymer concrete for sanitary sewers, pump stations, with the AI side. How can we introduce, maybe AI into the batching process to have a more lean, cost effective, stronger mix design. 

When I think about the future, I'm more excited on the material side, rather than more automation. I kind of want to see where the future of the material side goes, quicker stripping times and stuff like that.

McClean: We're going to evolve as a company. It's clearly apparent, and we need to into as more of a solution provider to the construction industry. With Cam, we've got our precast portfolio now we have other products in the mix, but definitely being able to come onto a use technology and to come to the jobsite, start providing solutions for contractors, or even getting ahead of it. 

There's some things I can't go into it, we've got some NDAs in play. But some of the smarter contractors out there are getting ahead of this and really building out a solid playbook and who they want, and where they want, where, defining that, and making sure the resources are going to be allocated to that. 

I'm seeing that involved, and being part of those talks is phenomenal. Being able to bring the solution and a service. We're really good at bringing a whole portfolio of products through into the future, and I think that's where CMC is going to be taking it going forward. As Cam said, there's going to be new material coming online in the business that we're going to be aware of and continue to evolve with. But I think saying you're a solution provider with a portfolio of service and products is what we've got to be thinking of going forward, not just being a one trick pony.

Concrete Contractor: If you run into something that's groundbreaking. You said the world needs to know about this. Email me, tell me. I'll help you tell the world. Do you guys have any final thoughts for the contractors listening?

Arnold: For me, it's kind of exciting times for CMC getting into the precast space. I think we truly can be a one stop shop for a lot of a lot of projects, from your underground infrastructure to your reinforcing for slabs, walls, whatever. I think that's exciting to see what the future holds for this new addition to CMC. 

McClean: Relationships is key. Be honest. Believe me, we know who they are, and we take care of those customers well and put partnership and those benefits before the dollar, because over long term, that's going to pay off. 

Being in the industry for the amount of time I have, I've seen that overall, but definitely push with your suppliers and vendors to be that strategic partner, because you don't want to be left behind. 

We're seeing a lot more consolidation in the business. If you want to take yourself to the next level, you're going to have to have those partnerships. Contractors are thinking about that all today. I know major contractor leaderships call it out, but just walk the talk, so to speak and show up when we're doing things — it'd be crucial.

Concrete Contractor: Well, thank you guys for joining us on Digging Deeper. It's been great to meet you guys. 

That about does it for this episode. I'd like to thank Cam and Rob once again for taking the time to talk with us. Thank you to this episode's sponsor CMC. And I'd also like to thank you for listening. 

This has been the Digging Deeper podcast by ForConstructionPros. You can find this episode and more on Stitcher, Apple, podcast megaphone, or your favorite podcast app. 

Until next time, if you keep listening, we'll keep digging.