[HN Gopher] Ex-Waymo engineers launch Bedrock Robotics to automa...
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Ex-Waymo engineers launch Bedrock Robotics to automate construction
Company announcement: https://bedrockrobotics.com/news/introducing-
bedrock-robotic...
Author : boulos
Score : 490 points
Date : 2025-07-16 16:48 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (techcrunch.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (techcrunch.com)
| fidotron wrote:
| This will prove to be a strange business.
|
| Civil engineering is already a field where the very largest
| projects are done by humans planning and building the roads and
| bridges for the robots to move in (such as things rented from
| Mammoet [1] with extra control systems), but it does require
| significant human oversight (typically a metaphorical red
| button).
|
| It's all very one off and specific, and given how big those
| projects are that seems unlikely to change. The manufacturing of
| suburbs though would be a whole different ballgame.
|
| [1] Specifically https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-
| propelled_modular_transpo...
| ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 wrote:
| Do you know anything about the current state of this? I think
| large construction equipment providers are already doing this?
| fidotron wrote:
| Apparently the providers recognize that there is significant
| growth in the complexity of control systems, and so there is
| a lot of fishing around for R&D funding on that side,
| however, being classic physical hardware people they severely
| undervalue the contribution software at that level makes.
|
| Most of the actual planning and execution work is done by the
| usual big civeng consultant companies in a very globalized
| manner.
| padjo wrote:
| "executes work around the clock" of limited value given quite a
| bit of construction is subject to restrictions on operating
| hours.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Think of any construction that's remote though. Especially
| infrastructure. Wouldn't it be cool if a bunch of excavators
| could just work all day and night to dig that trench, move that
| huge amount of dirt from one place to another? I feel like
| there are lots of situations where automation could be done.
| brudgers wrote:
| At the scale where automated earth moving equipment makes
| economic sense, those restrictions often won't apply. Highway
| construction and other vertically integrated projects are where
| this potentially makes sense.
|
| Operating hours are the least of logistical hurdles for most
| projects. Schedule coordination dominates and the critical path
| can only move as fast as the slowest element on it.
| xnx wrote:
| Is this a scenario where offshore operators doing remote
| equipment control would be 90% as good as a US union worker for
| 15% of the price and could work in shifts 24/7 (e.g. for mining
| operations)? Sensor + control data would be great training for
| future AI.
|
| Jumping straight to autonomous operations seems expensive/hard.
| menzoic wrote:
| Genius transition plan
| beau_g wrote:
| I was thinking the same thing but the cost of an equipment
| operator isn't that significant compared to the expense of
| running and especially maintaining these machines, and if
| teleop incurs more maintenance cost or efficiency loss due to
| clumsier operation, it's definitely a step in the wrong
| direction financially.
| gdbsjjdn wrote:
| I'm assuming for stuff like mining and oil fields most of the
| cost is having people on site to service the equipment, not
| just operating the equipment. You need the robot that can
| service the other robots, and then the robot that can service
| itself.
| bluGill wrote:
| The hard part with remote and automation is you often are in
| mud. Local humans are still much better able to run the edge of
| getting stuck. and if you do get stuck local help is needed to
| get unstuck.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| There's a startup not far from me working on remotely operated
| construction machines. They explicitly are targeting
| terrestrial as well as space operations, but I would be curious
| if the communication latency to any reasonably close celestial
| object would require autonomous operation.
| Teever wrote:
| This is interesting, I've been thinking about similar stuff.
| Can you share the name of the startup?
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Carbon Origins.
| AI_beffr wrote:
| when its construction: jobs will be completely automated away.
| when its white collar: AI is simply a tool!
| adamredwoods wrote:
| Only the jobs that get to decide where AI will be used (and pay
| for the service) are safe from AI.
| AI_beffr wrote:
| i think the obvious cognitive dissonance is mostly fueled by
| denial. it's acceptable for them to believe that the dirty
| blue collar people will fall on hard times. also they don't
| want to believe that white collar jobs will be lost because
| you can't use the "teach the coal miners to code" meme-think
| on it. turns out reality can be a little counter-intuitive
| sometimes. sometimes it can even be different from what you
| see on TV! wow!
| jschveibinz wrote:
| In general, the construction industry doesn't like change. This
| would be a CHANGE.
| paxys wrote:
| No industry likes change until it is forced to change.
| bluGill wrote:
| Most 'changes' are worse than what they are doing already -
| until they miss the exception. Outsiders are far more likely
| to propose bad changes.
| moontoast wrote:
| Automating construction vehicles is not so much about safety
| (like passenger vehicles) but perhaps about labor cost and
| efficiency.
| bluGill wrote:
| It is about safety but you can put up a fence and then only
| allowed trained people inside. Which means you can say if you
| get killed it is your fault and the courts will back it (ask a
| lawyer for the books of fine print)
| taeric wrote:
| I didn't think open field construction was hampered by the humans
| in the loop? Quite the contrary, I was under the naive impression
| that the heavy machinery was already largely doing the vast
| majority of the work. Even when operated by a human.
|
| Will be neat to see where this goes. But I'm reminded of some
| Amazon guys that were supposed to revitalize the supply chains.
| My memory is that that didn't work out so well.
| winrid wrote:
| It's interesting because the heavy machinery already replaced
| 20-50 humans. Now somehow that one person that has a job is an
| issue.
| echelon wrote:
| Do you know how much California High Speed Rail is over
| budget?
|
| What if we could bring massive infrastructure projects down
| from the billions to the millions? Wouldn't that be a great
| thing for all of society?
|
| What if we could build new power plants, connect all cities
| with HSR, rebuild all our old bridges, add thousands of new
| skyscrapers, and do it all under budget?
|
| Think about what steel did for society. Automated
| construction is the next highest order step function change.
| It'll be insanely good for society.
| taeric wrote:
| It is not lack of knowing how to build rail that is keeping
| HSR over budget and never finished. It is lack of will.
| Largely driven from lack of direct need.
| bluGill wrote:
| There is direct need but it isn't obvious until 5 years
| after it is done.
| taeric wrote:
| That is indirect, pretty much by definition.
|
| Directly, there are few if any jobs that are not getting
| done due to lack of HSR today.
|
| Indirectly, people project a ton of benefits to having
| HSR.
| bluGill wrote:
| The direct need is all the people dieing on the highways.
| winrid wrote:
| What a joke. HSR is not over budget because of construction
| equipment. It's over budget because of bureaucracy and
| useless middlemen.
| daedrdev wrote:
| CEQA has added a stupendous amount of cost to California's
| HSR.
| namibj wrote:
| If you can automate efficiently enough, you can build far
| finer structures.
|
| For example look at how detailed the structure and weld
| arrangement is for modern cars, vs. back when robots only
| just started to take care of the frame welding on the
| assembly line.
|
| Or how optical HDMI cables are affordable because they use
| fully automated UV-cure-resin-glued fiber alignment straight
| from the cable end into the optoelectronic chips, without
| needing optical connectors or any other human-labor to get
| the light path connected up. That's how they manage to do it
| the conceptually easiest way:
| amplifier->laser->fiber->photodiode->amplifier, and repeat
| for the 4 high-speed pairs. Also handing the low speed
| communication channel separately with just normal wires as
| signal degradation isn't an issue for that.
|
| Or for example 3d printer infill: that's something no one
| would do manually in such a way, but if it's just automated
| it's quite desirable/efficient.
|
| App rental e-scooters: they rely on automation to organize
| even when parked "pretty much anywhere they're not gonna
| block traffic", and as such become relevant for even short
| trips.
|
| If you have an unsupervised robot that lays bricks for you to
| build up a house, you can get away with smaller bricks (and
| thus a lighter/cheaper machine needing a smaller crane to
| lift up/out of higher floors), than if you need a human to
| supervise it.
|
| Smaller machine if slower means more machines, meaning
| cheaper production of the machines due to scale.
|
| Auto-feeders for nail guns in construction means more smaller
| nails as placing 3 in a row takes barely longer than just 2.
| Especially if the nail gun could, say, run like an optical
| mouse and automatically trigger at a configured spacing while
| dragged along a surface with the trigger held down.
| ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 wrote:
| CAT and others (hyundai, hitachi, john deere, kubota, komatsu,
| etc) are already exploring this sort of automation (and have
| been for at least a decade).
|
| This isn't somehow a new industry because some Waymo engineers
| decided to make a company.
| echelon wrote:
| Venture dollars won't back those legacy efforts.
|
| This may be an instance of companies not having enough
| capital or talent to fend off new entrants.
|
| Talent will flock to the new and exciting. The place where
| they can get the bigger exit and work with the coolest
| people.
| taeric wrote:
| The odds that these companies don't have moats to protect
| their tech is... very unlikely?
| ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 wrote:
| How much of a moat can you have guarding input into
| controls used by humans?
| taeric wrote:
| The material sciences involved in building a lot of this
| machinery is nothing to scoff at.
| someothherguyy wrote:
| ...steel? You don't need to build machines to implement
| this technology.
| taeric wrote:
| Are you serious? Building a good excavator is almost
| certainly more than just having the material. Similarly,
| knowing how to deal with the earth will have more than a
| few curves based on the composition.
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| I think it's similar to Tesla entering the automotive
| world. The existing automakers had some moats, but they
| also had a lot of legacy responsibilities and liabilities
| that Tesla did not have (existing warranties, lawsuits,
| recalls, parts stock, maintaining support for old
| vehicles in various internal software systems, updating
| software on old vehicles when age related problems arise,
| retiree pensions/healthcare, etc).
|
| A newcomer in the heavy equipment space will have similar
| challenges and advantages. Funny enough, a lot of heavy
| equipment works very similar to cars with their CAN (and
| other) Buses for control and feedback.
| taeric wrote:
| I mean... Tesla still makes up a minority of vehicles out
| there. And without government investment, they almost
| certainly would not have made it to where they are, now?
|
| Yes, Tesla was valued more for potential growth. But it
| was also the kind of potential growth that I'm not sure
| is viable outside of consumer spaces.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| They are outselling BMW and Mercedes but that doesn't put
| them in top10.
| taeric wrote:
| In total car sells, or just in EVs? Because a quick
| search online shows each of those still sold considerably
| more than Tesla. :(
| ikr678 wrote:
| There have been a handful of residential venture backed
| bricklaying and extrusion concreting robotics startups that
| I am aware of but they've had trouble with outputs not
| meeting builsing standards, interupting other tradespeople
| workflows on construction sites, being difficult to adapt
| to new site conditions and ultimately a hard sell to
| customers - no one wants to be a guinea pig test site for
| what is likely the biggest purchase of their life.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Exploring. If these guys bring something to the table, it
| will become part of one of theirs' exploration.
| whatever1 wrote:
| It is not easy to find on demand trained operators that are
| willing to relocate in an instant to whatever forgotten by god
| construction site you set up for months.
| taeric wrote:
| I find this hard to believe, to be honest. The capital costs
| of the machinery is already such that paying a premium to
| relocate someone for the duration of the construction is
| almost certainly not the bottle neck for most construction
| jobs?
|
| If you have numbers on this, I'm game to see them. Just
| because I find it hard to believe doesn't mean I think it is
| impossible.
| cycomanic wrote:
| This report identifies skilled labour shortages as the main
| risk and factor behind construction cost inflation.
|
| https://publications.turnerandtownsend.com/international-
| con...
| taeric wrote:
| This report isn't looking at open field construction,
| though? It literally highlights the most expensive cities
| to build in. I'm not surprised that it is expensive to
| keep skilled labor in places where they will be in very
| high demand.
| kevinmpeterson wrote:
| There are companies (like Kiewit) that specifically hire
| and pay (a lot more) to incentivize their employees to
| travel. It's a really really hard job and many people burn
| out. The travel is brutal.
| whatever1 wrote:
| The worst is that it's not even semi-permanent move. You
| go to the site, you work for some months then you need to
| move to the next. If by accident you have a family then
| guaranteed they cannot follow you and you will be seeing
| them only sporadically.
| renewiltord wrote:
| In China they haven't needed that for the better part of a
| decade https://en.xcmg.com/en-ap/news/news-detail-626577.htm
| AngryData wrote:
| It is if you aren't adverse to training people and living
| with lower productivity for a few months as they learn. The
| biggest obstacle to becoming a heavy equipment operator is
| finding someone willing to put you in heavy equipment without
| already being an experienced heavy equipment operator. And
| the machines cost enough money that someone can't afford to
| just go buy their own excavator and practice, even really old
| used equipment that leaks fluids and can't run more than 20
| minutes without overheating can cost 6 figures, especially if
| you also need a truck and large equipment trailer to move it.
| And even if someone likes the job and gets past those
| obstacles there are other restrictions, like drug usage, that
| keeps many people out of the business. You went home and
| smoked a joint last week but this week something broke or
| went wrong? Well you better hope they don't fear any
| liability because they will drug test you, fire you, and
| black list you to shed all liability.
| _zoltan_ wrote:
| I think that's perfectly OK. If you consume drugs don't
| operate heavy equipment.
| AngryData wrote:
| What about caffeine? Tobacco? Refined sugars? Pain
| killers? Are you going to pay for people to do nothing
| for 6 months while they wait for an injury to heal and
| stop taking painkillers? Why are you not regularly drug
| tested for your job and fired and blackballed from the
| industry if it comes up positive?
|
| It is completely idiotic to kick people out for smoking
| weed on their own time. And then you wonder why you have
| trouble filling these positions. People use drugs and
| have since before humans were human, get over it.
| ecshafer wrote:
| I think that more than physics the bottleneck for this is
| political (at least in the US). All of the local large projects
| around me are expensive because of massive amounts of red tape
| (environmental studies, zoning, planning), and political
| patronage systems. After the kick backs, political donations,
| promises to only work 8 hours a day, only use union labor, hire x
| police officers for y hours in overtime security positions a
| month, use xyz contractor etc. a small cost seems to be the
| actual labor and materials. Hell these robots if they work will
| be made illlegal.
| tippytippytango wrote:
| We need a silver tongued LLM agent that can align all these
| forces (and a well provisioned MCP paypal tool for greasing
| palms)
| matthewolfe wrote:
| I believe SchemeFlow [0] is working on solving some of these
| problem, particularly with the insane reporting requirements.
| But of course, that still leaves the unions...
|
| [0] https://www.schemeflow.com/
| esseph wrote:
| If there are no jobs, you don't need unions!
| dmix wrote:
| The unions will use their government connections to force
| the job to exist even if it doesn't need to be. They'll
| figure out a way to get a union driver sitting in an fully
| autonomous truck for some invented safety checkbox
|
| I remember Louis CK said he had a hell of a time trying to
| run his own comedy shows so he could offer lower ticket
| prices for his fans, but because every bit of the theaters
| were unionized it got really expensive fast and failed.
| They couldn't even touch the curtains, they had to pay a
| union guy to stand around all day and his only job was
| pulling a curtain cord at the right time. Which was some
| NYC rule.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _The unions will use their government connections to
| force the job to exist even if it doesn 't need to be._
|
| And that's OK. At the end of the day, labor unions exist
| to help people and not robots.
|
| People were worried robots were going to take their jobs.
| Then people were seeing their jobs get shipped overseas.
| Today, robots are finally taking over what jobs are left.
| dmix wrote:
| > At one of our dinners, Milton recalled traveling to an
| Asian country in the 1960s and visiting a worksite where
| a new canal was being built. He was shocked to see that,
| instead of modern tractors and earth movers, the workers
| had shovels. He asked why there were so few machines. The
| government bureaucrat explained: "You don't understand.
| This is a jobs program." To which Milton replied: "Oh, I
| thought you were trying to build a canal. If it's jobs
| you want, then you should give these workers spoons, not
| shovels."
| darepublic wrote:
| its okay if you belong to the union. It makes the world
| worse for everybody else
| amarcheschi wrote:
| The 5 days work week, the paid holidays (in the country
| where they exist), and rights on the place of work
| wouldn't have been obtained without all the struggles of
| the working class in the past century, by striking and
| unionizing. They literally made the world better for
| everyone (except the people owning companies)
| esseph wrote:
| My FIL spent 30 something years as a union carpenter and
| for about 15 of that was teaching underprivileged kids
| carpentry and finding them job placements while
| rebuilding national parks.
|
| That union did just fine for America, it's better off for
| it having existed.
| pj_mukh wrote:
| I think this is true, but even after a construction company
| works through all the approvals the sheer cost of construction
| is insurmountable. A big part of this is obviously (sometimes
| union) labor. This happened recently in NIMBY-HQ Berkeley as
| interest rates crept up [1]. Pre-approved construction sites
| are sitting empty.
|
| I am off the (not so controversial) opinion that labor should
| be paid fair wages, but I think it's also fair to use tech like
| this to multiply labor productivity.
|
| The last piece is the cost of raw materials, which has also
| ballooned.
|
| [1]: https://www.berkeleyside.org/2025/04/04/berkeley-housing-
| dow...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _A big part of this is obviously (union) labor_
|
| I live in Wyoming. We don't have many unions. The cost
| scourge is still there due to red tape and general fuckery.
| taurath wrote:
| Red or blue, those who own property own the levers of power
| to determine what gets built.
|
| I've yet to meet anyone who thinks utterly stifling
| construction restrictions are a good thing, yet they seem
| to exist everywhere.
| bluGill wrote:
| Unions don't help but in most casese they are a tiny
| problem. The real question is which red tape is really
| there for good reason.
| SequoiaHope wrote:
| In the best case they certainly would help workers be
| able to afford the homes they built though. My friend was
| telling me today that his grandfather came out to
| California to work as a farm hand, and used that income
| to buy a home in the area. Imagine doing so now.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I really wish people would be more specific when they
| complain about "red tape." I think a lot of people just
| use red tape as a generalization that means "every
| government rule and formality that I don't like." Exactly
| which "red tape" is adding how much cost to projects?
| Arguers should enumerate them and explain why each cost
| is unnecessary.
| bluGill wrote:
| That is a lot of work. It is easy to complain about 'red
| tape', but ever single line is there for a reason. So the
| real arguement is what isn't good enough to be worth the
| cost. I don't want a building to fall, but I also don't
| want inspectors to insists on additional bracing where
| the isn't even a stress point (which I have seen)
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| You wrote this in a separate comment: "There is a well-
| documented cost premium to building in America that isn't
| explained by complexity or wages."
|
| I am fairly confident that Europe has a lot more red tape
| than Wyoming. Yet it's considerably cheaper to build large
| projects in Europe.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Correct. My point is this isn't caused by labour unions.
| gottorf wrote:
| > Europe has a lot more red tape than Wyoming
|
| In general that's true, but perhaps not when it comes to
| construction, especially for large public projects. In
| Europe, the goal of such projects appears to be to
| complete the project and have the thing that they're
| building. In the US, at least as of late, it seems like
| the goal is to pay various interest groups in money or
| patronage, and whether the thing gets built or not is
| only of a secondary significance.
| rossjudson wrote:
| How much capability do European governments have to
| perform/construct or closely monitor these projects?
|
| I have a theory that in-house expertise is cheaper in the
| long run.
| HeWhoLurksLate wrote:
| My university has an auto shop for this very reason - at
| a certain size, it makes more sense to care for your own
| fleet than it does to contract it out, even though the
| auto fleet peeps have approximately zero overlap with
| educational goals.
| esseph wrote:
| I found this interesting:
|
| https://www.chicagobooth.edu/review/us-construction-has-
| prod...
| rooppal wrote:
| More than just red-tape there's whitecollar processes in pre-
| construction that take months. Just estimating the cost of
| each subtrade is a process currently done by hand on
| blueprints (what I work on automating).
|
| `white_collar_automation * robotics_automation = building
| more, cheaper`
| rswail wrote:
| > The last piece is the cost of raw materials, which has also
| ballooned.
|
| Which is about to explode as the tariffs hit the US market.
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| Permitting, zoning, etc are all like <3% of a construction
| project's cost. This is a meme with no basis in reality.
|
| All of the cost is labor and materials.
|
| That said, the _time component_ of the zoning, permitting etc
| is very costly due to how real estate projects are funded and
| evaluated.
| pj_mukh wrote:
| I don't think a construction companies bank account cares
| about whether money is going to the time component or the
| _physical_ act of going to city hall to apply.
|
| Also remember there are frivolous lawsuits, CEQA type laws
| (which was recently overhauled atleast in California), NEPA
| on the federal level which most people roll into the cost of
| permitting/zoning. This is no meme, this component is _huge_.
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| The time component isn't draining bank accounts...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _time component isn't draining bank accounts_
|
| Of course it is, why would you think the land and other
| capital can be held for free?
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| The carrying cost of land is very low compared to any
| overall project.
|
| The issue is that extended timelines drive down the IRR
| and add risk which is not the same as being expensive to
| carry.
|
| > All of the local large projects around me are expensive
| because of massive amounts of red tape
|
| This just isn't true. There are projects that could be
| happening _but aren't_ because of red tape, but no, a
| project that's happening is spending a tiny portion of
| its capital on red tape.
| pj_mukh wrote:
| It's not just carrying cost, it could be the full A&D
| cost, so you're paying the loan on the mortgage without
| being able to build anything. That's huge and has sunk
| major projects around me. This happens, literally all the
| time [1][2][3], all around the country.
|
| What's more, the fear of doing this has basically staved
| off all but the most brave companies, or giant
| conglomerates that can buy land cash, which is the most
| predictable byproduct of excessive regulation at a local
| level like this.
|
| [1]: https://jerseydigs.com/american-dream-owners-
| default-on-1-2-...
|
| [2]: https://www.axios.com/local/phoenix/2023/11/08/one-
| camelback...
|
| [3]:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/y2ein5
|
| "The issue is that extended timelines drive down the IRR
| and add risk which is not the same as being expensive to
| carry."
|
| Confusing statement, the IRR is low and the risk is high
| because the carrying cost is unknown (and _unbounded_ ).
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _carrying cost of land is very low compared to any
| overall project_
|
| In New York and San Francisco? And it's not just land,
| it's keeping all the environmental reviews and
| neighbourhood associations on board. It's delays in pre-
| selling, or, if you're pre-sold, customer service to
| impatient buyers. It's constantly redrawing plans because
| a community member wants an offset 3/8ths of an inch
| further so their petunias don't catch shade.
|
| Again, these costs add hundreds of thousands of dollars
| to each and every apartment built in San Francisco.
|
| > _This just isn't true_
|
| What are you responding to? The quoted text isn't mine.
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| Is there a reason you're pointing out San Francisco and
| New York in particular? Is it because we both know
| they're by far the most absurd instances of this problem
| and quite obviously unique in how absurd they are?
| pj_mukh wrote:
| It all started in San Francisco and New York, but now the
| disease has spread everywhere. Frankly the disease was
| always there. Millennials trying to buy houses en-masse
| over COVID is what exposed it.
|
| Nobody notices it because it's nationwide (and to a
| certain extent worldwide) and it's a city-by-city policy
| issue [1][2][3]. But it's the same issue everywhere,
| over-indexing neighborhood preferences to slow down and
| kill construction projects behind a permitting process.
|
| [1]: Denver, https://denverite.com/2025/04/14/denver-
| construction-permitt...
|
| [2]: Toronto/Ontario,
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-housing-
| const...
|
| [3]: Atlanta, https://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/news/20
| 24/06/20/metro-at...
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| I don't know what point you think you're arguing against.
|
| I am not denying permitting exists and it slows things
| down. The original point was that this is a major
| contributor to cost of construction, which it's not. They
| specifically said "a small cost seems to be the actual
| labor and materials [compared to permitting etc]"-- this
| is absolutely not true. It is not even close to reality
| in the US.
|
| Here you're just pointing out two facts:
|
| 1) Permitting exists (and slows things down)
|
| 2) We have a housing shortage
|
| No argument there! But what you are failing to do is
| demonstrate that (1) is the major driver of (2).
|
| The actual drivers are the cost of well-situated land,
| cost of labor, and cost of materials. This is evident in
| ANY actual budget from ANY actual construction project.
|
| Add to that the fact that large scale homebuilders are
| petrified of creating a 2008-style oversupply so they've
| been chronically underbuilding since then -- and will
| continue to do so _regardless_ of permitting reform. This
| is evident in the housing starts compared to population
| growth since the GFC.
| pj_mukh wrote:
| There have been 3-4 different comprehensive reports
| linked in this thread laying out that actually holding
| costs (please search), legal fees are _one of the main
| drivers_ of cost along with the 2 others you mentioned.
|
| But specifically, it's the worst one because it's
| _unbounded_ (labor and materials is really costly now,
| but its a known cost) especially in states with heavy
| environment regulations or other zoning regulations. In
| those states, usually _any one person_ can bring in a
| lawsuit alleging a lack of environment studies or alleged
| personal damage to slow down construction, so how much
| holding costs do you budget for? How much lawyer fees?
| How many people will bring lawsuits? You have no idea!
|
| Most projects just don't start if they have a bracket for
| unbounded costs like that. So now you have fewer and
| fewer parties willing to take on these projects with more
| and more people (neighbors, bureaucrats etc.) having the
| bandwidth to pour over each individual project looking
| for an opening to sue and stop. It's a doom-loop of red-
| tape.
|
| Do you think the California legislature (not the San
| Francisco legislature mind you) is wasting its time
| dealing with this, if it's "not that big of a deal" [1].
| The governor ransomed the whole state budget to get this
| passed. Similar things happened in Minnesota. This is a
| huge deal.
|
| I encourage you to read the various books laying out
| example after example of these issues and the background
| data [2], [3].
|
| [1]: https://calmatters.org/housing/2025/06/ceqa-urban-
| developmen...
|
| [2]: https://www.philipkhoward.com/the-rule-of-nobody
|
| [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_(Klein_and_T
| hompson_...
| toast0 wrote:
| When permitting (etc) delays your project for N years,
| and materials and labor now cost that much more, that
| drains your bank account. Sure, maybe you got some return
| on your money, but many times that won't be enough to
| cover the increase in cost.
|
| That's not to say _some_ amount of review isn 't
| appropriate, but excess review (wherever the line is)
| seems to be just a way to discourage building by process
| nightmare, when there's no other way to do it.
|
| I've also seen a lot of things where variances go to
| those who have the patience to play politics, which often
| ends up being pretty inequitable. And then there's the
| times where permit issuers aren't consistent; request X
| get told to do Y, update your permit to request Y, get
| told to do X, etc. Or my favorite, ask to do A, get told
| to do expensive thing B to prep, do B, then get told A
| will not be permitted anyway. Typically, there's no
| recourse for these things either.
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| You're referring to the delta in material and labor
| between project start and project permission? That's also
| a fraction of overall costs.
| cycomanic wrote:
| So it should be easy to find sources to show this "huge"
| component.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Yes, it is [1][2].
|
| [1] https://libertylensecon.substack.com/p/unlocking-
| americas-in...
|
| [2] https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&typ
| e=pdf&d...
| bongodongobob wrote:
| This is correct.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _the time component of the zoning, permitting etc is very
| costly due to how real estate projects are funded and
| evaluated_
|
| How is this not part of the cost of permitting and zoning! If
| you took those processes out, those financing costs wouldn't
| exist.
|
| Last time I did the math, San Francisco's permitting process
| financed at going rates meant a price _floor_ of over half a
| million dollars for an apartment. That's before we've even
| built anything.
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| I am not saying costly in direct "money being spent" terms.
| I mean costly in "adversely affecting project investment
| profile."
|
| This is not the same as costing a bunch of money.
| nullc wrote:
| No, it's _worse_ because the costs are diffuse and so
| harder to predict and manage.
|
| The delay induced costs are not the only negative impact.
| During permitting the muni will often make varrious cost
| adding demands that they have no basis in law or good
| engineering to make, but unless you're willing and able
| to take on more years of delay (and potential litigation
| costs) you have to go along with them to appease them.
|
| And, of course, every opportunity for a subjective call
| allowing a disruption is a opportunity for corruption.
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| Maybe! But it still does not comport with the original
| post that I replied to which said that permitting etc are
| the major driver of cost of any construction project. It
| is not.
| nullc wrote:
| The point being made is that if you consider permitting
| holistically by attributing to it all costs that wouldn't
| exist if permitting didn't exist-- the cost is much
| greater.
|
| When people complain about the costs of permitting they
| mean the these total costs, not e.g. some 1% of total
| project costs filing fee or whatnot.
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| Okay then, please demonstrate it and/or provide evidence.
|
| Otherwise you're on a thread where someone is pooh-
| poohing an effort to improve costs where we _know_ they
| exist (labor) and suggesting it is meaningless compared
| to costs that you can 't substantiate.
| blks wrote:
| Show us the math, please.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Here you go:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41358952
| 9cb14c1ec0 wrote:
| I don't know where you live, but I'm familiar with multiple
| construction projects in the northeast US where permitting
| was between 10 and 20 percent.
| sidibe wrote:
| Yeah if it was legal instead of technical hoops buildings
| would be flying up in unincorporated parts of Mississippi or
| Alabama. There's a huge difference between states when it
| comes to codes and enforcement
| ZhiqiangWang wrote:
| Actually 70% labor and 30% materials, on average. You will
| never believe that some times contractors propose to do
| curtain wall as alternative to masonry because pre-fab stuff
| actually a lot cheaper.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > massive amounts of red tape (environmental studies, zoning,
| planning)
|
| Well, we've seen what happened _without_ the red tape, when
| people were free to do whatever the fuck they wanted, and the
| results often aren 't pretty. Sometimes, they were deadly, and
| occasionally we are reminded of why it might not be a good idea
| to just let the "free market" do what it wants [1].
|
| Red tape doesn't just appear out of thin air, it appears when
| politicians are so pissed off about the "free market" that they
| actually find it worthwhile to do their goddamn jobs for once.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Palestine,_Ohio,_train_de...
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > Red tape doesn't just appear out of thin air
|
| It mostly appears when politicians force law-enforcement not
| to punish bad actors for so long that society requires them
| to punish everybody so that the bad actors will go away.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Law enforcement can only act when laws are broken, that's
| the point. And building codes, zoning codes, that kind of
| stuff isn't a matter for law enforcement aka police unless
| someone gets seriously hurt or killed anyway - but if what
| happened was legal, it's considered an "act of God".
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Law enforcement isn't the same as police. And laws aren't
| the same as red-tape.
| pj_mukh wrote:
| This is a red-herring. No one is suggesting loosening laws on
| whether a building will stay standing.
|
| The red tape is literally on whether barn owls in Downtown
| Mountain View will be hurt by an apartment building. This is
| not a serious consideration and is blatant NIMBY value
| capture and should be stopped and removed.
|
| What's more, if you don't build that apartment downtown,
| expect real environmental damage when wild flora and fauna is
| paved over to build another exurb and highways to connect it
| all AKA the last 50 years of North American housing policy
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _we 've seen what happened without the red tape, when
| people were free to do whatever the fuck they wanted, and the
| results often aren't pretty_
|
| You mean most of the built environment of New York City?
| khurs wrote:
| That's not directly related to this topic? This guy isn't
| starting a construction company. He is intending to sell tech
| to existing ones.
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| That is all changing.
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| Not around here. Even the rural cities are starting to
| emulate the large city bureaucracy with ever increasing
| regulations and hoops.
|
| Unless you know the loopholes.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| So tired of this lazy take. The large projects are expensive
| because they are large, difficult, and require planning between
| dozens of different companies and contractors. Do you work in
| the construction industry? Or do you build "apps"? Real
| building requires literal blood and sweat and affect ecosystems
| and communities. It's going to be expensive and it should be.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| There is a well-documented cost premium to building in
| America that isn't explained by complexity or wages.
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| Could you link to some analysis on this?
| bluGill wrote:
| https://transitcosts.com/
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| Transit costs are a small fraction of "construction". I
| agree our transit development costs are insane though
| this has a lot more to do with America's very strong
| concept of property rights (and the weaponization of
| other apparatus to defend property rights) than simply
| "red tape." I.e. it's more political than bureaucratic.
| bluGill wrote:
| most of that applies to all construction.
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| No it doesn't. Any publicly funded construction is rife
| with tons of additional regulations designed to limit
| (but sometimes perpetuating) corrupt contracting, and
| transit projects in particular have very unique needs
| around land acquisition.
|
| Even still, the linked website doesn't really seem to say
| permitting is a major driver. And it certainly doesn't
| dwarf labor and materials.
| bluGill wrote:
| Data was asked for not proff that it is permitting.
| realo wrote:
| There you go.
|
| https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/03/03/why-
| american-c...
|
| And if one asks Claude.ai , one gets this:
|
| Bottom Line: US infrastructure costs are dramatically
| higher than Europe - often 10-30 times more expensive for
| transit projects, with subway construction in NYC costing
| $3.2 billion per kilometer compared to just $100 million
| per kilometer in cities like Madrid.
| herval wrote:
| Kinda ironic that Europe is seen as the very definition
| of bureaucracy and red tape by many Americans, when this
| sort of data shows it's actually quite efficient
| throw7 wrote:
| Point 9 is funny (although not funny in reality)...
| Americans have NIH syndrome basically.
|
| I suppose only once the boomers die out will we have a
| chance of course correcting incuriosity. I actually
| remember many years ago some of the justices at the
| supreme court got real uppity when examples were brought
| up from other countries (forgive me i forget the case
| name).
| daedrdev wrote:
| yeah NYC spent a billion a mile on a new subway line.
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| That's not analysis
| cycomanic wrote:
| Do you have any evidence or are you just pulling this out of
| thin air? All sources I can find estimate pre construction
| costs between 3 and 10% depending on type of infrastructure and
| where it is (the US according to [1] is on the lower end with
| 3-5%). To put this in perspective the profit margins on
| construction projects is 7% according to [2], which also does
| attribute skilled labour shortages as the main factor behind
| increasing construction cost.
|
| [1] https://srgexpert.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/The-cost-
| of... [2]
| https://publications.turnerandtownsend.com/international-con...
| nickff wrote:
| Construction costs are not the only costs relating to
| development and redevelopment. Financing and project risk are
| also quite significant. Issues that push back the start of
| construction vastly increase financing costs, and increase
| construction costs. A delay in getting a permit, or a stop
| work order because of an environmental lawsuit runs up the
| interest payments on the loan used to purchase the real
| estate, as well as increasing the impact of inflation,
| delaying the revenue, and impacting trades' schedules, all of
| which reduce the ROI of the project. These are just some of
| the issues caused by delays.
| jaggederest wrote:
| But how often do those things actually happen, and is it a
| substantial enough difference to actually affect the cost
| of building housing at a fundamental level? Remember that
| houses have more than tripled in cost this century in most
| places. A few percent is not going to substantially affect
| something that has increased in price 340%.
| _alternator_ wrote:
| That's only a 5% rate of return over the last 25 years,
| which is pretty lackluster. Won't cover the interest rate
| on a loan today.
| mogwire wrote:
| Honestly do you not think what he is saying isn't true?
|
| Do you think they count the items he mentioned in the total
| costs?
|
| Every major project in America has undocumented costs to go
| along with the miles of red tape. Just look at California's
| High Speed Rail.
|
| Where I live they wanted to extend the expressway and it was
| overwhelmingly supported. So why, 6 years later hasn't it
| happened? The environmentalist sued to get a survey done that
| took 2 years to find.... no impact. The county commissioners
| got voted out and now the new ones want certain promises. The
| company that got the original no bid contract is owned by a
| brother of a former commissioner so that led to law suits.
| People sued because they don't want the new exits to be too
| close to their house. Others sued because they felt the exits
| would targets towards higher end homes and didn't equally
| consider everyone. Then you have the demands that we use ONLY
| AMERICAN LABOUR!!! and ONLY AMERICAN MATERIALS!!! A state
| representative said they would boycott the expansion unless a
| certain percentage of his constitutions were hired to do the
| work regardless of their qualifications. Another said they
| would block it due to road noise and complaints from his
| constitutions unless compensation was made.
|
| It goes on and on and each one costs money they don't count
| in the official budget.
| slt2021 wrote:
| this stuff needs to be made illegal. If state gives
| approval to build stuff according to spec, then nobody
| should be able to block, unless there is major deviation
| from spec
| wongarsu wrote:
| In many countries that's basically how it works. You file
| for permission, hand in all the paper work, maybe have a
| hearing or a period where the public can bring concerns,
| and once the project is approved it can go ahead and is
| very difficult to stop. But doing it that way means the
| approval process now has to capture all the nuances,
| bloating the process. Big projects go a lot smoother, but
| small projects nobody would care to object to become more
| expensive
|
| It's an interesting trade off, and getting the right
| balance is difficult
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| That's not red tape. That's politics. Europe is notorious
| for red tape, yet can do large transit projects for an
| order of magnitude less cost than America can.
|
| America needs more red tape. Red tape is explicit rules and
| procedures. In Europe you can make sure your project
| follows all of the explicit rules and procedures and then
| you can proceed. Nobody can come and try and stop you
| because you just say "I followed the rules", and continue.
|
| OTOH in America the rules and procedures aren't explicit.
| They're embodied in court precedent (like the
| environmentalist who sued) and in gatekeepers like the
| county commissioners.
| mogwire wrote:
| > Every major project in America has undocumented costs
| to go along with the miles of red tape.
|
| Along with would imply that they are not red tape.
| reliabilityguy wrote:
| > That's not red tape. That's politics.
|
| That's literally the definition of red tape! How do
| politicians have this kind of power to stop the projects?
| Because there is a county/city/state law that grants them
| this power. It's literally part of the procedure! In
| other words, some part of the process is not defined
| beyond "the council member has veto power for any
| construction in their district" (hello NYC!).
|
| As a result, the whole process is not deterministic and
| ill defined due to red tape.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > In Europe you can make sure your project follows all of
| the explicit rules and procedures and then you can
| proceed.
|
| You can in America too, if everything you want to do
| falls within the current zoning you can build "by right"
| but the problem is that most projects need a variance
| here or there, even for something like the type of siding
| used and that is when all the political negotiation kicks
| in.
| EliasLittle wrote:
| I'm curious if this is an example of survivorship bias
| though. I don't have any data, but I can easily imagine lots
| of projects not getting built at all due to zoning laws or
| the red tape cost being too high.
| zdragnar wrote:
| I've worked for two companies who would have done business
| with governments but ended up refusing to do so because the
| regulatory burdens exceeded the value of the contract.
|
| The first was intel analysis software (DOD contract), and
| the second was in mental health (medicare and state
| medicaid contracts). In the first case, they even
| considered hiring a company who exists solely to help other
| companies navigate the government procurement process.
| alexjplant wrote:
| > The first was intel analysis software (DOD contract),
| and the second was in mental health (medicare and state
| medicaid contracts). In the first case, they even
| considered hiring a company who exists solely to help
| other companies navigate the government procurement
| process.
|
| Indeed. You can get a FedRAMP AWS account pretty easily
| but I've been told that getting a FedRAMP Moderate
| environment for production use is a year-long, half-
| million-dollar project. On top of this you have to
| continuously deal with the Joint Approval Board (JAB) and
| Third Party Assessment Organization (3PAO) for any non-
| trivial changes to information flow or infrastructure. As
| a kicker the Cost Plus Fixed Fee (CPFF) and Time &
| Materials (T&M) contracts that are so prevalent in the
| space mean that your upside is limited and you have to do
| stuff like get your employees' resumes approved by the
| government before you can bill for their time.
|
| I don't blame anybody for taking a look at this and
| saying "not for me".
| eagleinparadise wrote:
| I work in commercial real estate.
|
| There are massive amounts of monopoly/duopoly interests in
| construction. Want to build affordable housing? Well if you
| are taking public dollars, you have to work with certain
| vendors which are approved and meet certain qualifications.
| Guess what, only 2 electrical vendors are approved! And so
| they work together and act as a racket to hold your project
| hostage unless you meet them on their terms.
|
| Actually had a call today with an exec with one of the
| largest construction general contractors and this topic of
| "we can't do XYZ project [e.g. compete in that type of
| project type... driving costs down through competition]
| because we hire ABC union labor and it would screw us and our
| relations with the unions we work with."
|
| Every developer has a war story of getting burned exactly in
| some way by being beholden to political or labor issues.
|
| This results in higher costs... which ultimately is one of
| the main issues among others.
| andrekandre wrote:
| > we hire ABC union labor and it would screw us and our
| relations with the unions we work with
|
| would maybe an industry-wide union fix that issue?
| Eji1700 wrote:
| Doubtful. People get starry eyed at the idea of unions
| and I get why. Employees need more protection.
|
| But power patterns are the same everywhere and rather
| than having corrupt corporate bullshit you get corrupt
| union bullshit. It just might benefit you if you work in
| the industry and might very much be at the cost of
| everyone else.
|
| Police unions are the infamous example alongside the
| teamsters , but almost everyone who's worked with or for
| one has stories.
|
| I know someone who works for one and what do you know the
| people at the top get preferential treatment and there's
| all sorts of bullshit going on. It's still almost
| certainly better for him but it's probably not ideal for
| the projects.
|
| Ignoring cost overruns and hand waving things that fall
| under "look let's just let people be people not perfect"
| you still get a lot of problematic behavior. For example
| my friend is very good at his job because he was taught
| by someone very good and as a result has high standards
| for his work.
|
| This has gotten him targeted because he sets expectations
| too high which sure feels like a crock of shit.
|
| And that's just the work related bullshit. There's still
| the classics like someone higher up the chain being
| friends with the right people and throwing others under
| the bus when they shit the bed.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Yes, police unions are corrupt because police are
| corrupt. This is not generally the case.
| Eji1700 wrote:
| Meh chicken/egg. Giving people organized power is proven
| over and over again to lead to problems. It's why we have
| political science and centuries of "how do we stop
| everyone from saying fuck it and killing each other"
|
| The police having a state mandated monopoly on violence
| only adds to the problem but the core issue is still
| there, and it's hard to do checks and balances that just
| don't erode to either regulatory capture, rampant
| bureaucracy, over efficient streamlining, or more often
| than not some mix of all three
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| It's worth pointing out that these issues vary by the
| union. As with any type of organization some will be
| better than others. I don't think being anti-union is the
| right answer but rather pushing for systemic changes that
| would curb various problematic behaviors.
|
| When it comes to construction you don't even need to
| involve unions to find corruption. There's all sorts of
| corruption (or borderline corruption) surrounding zoning
| laws in most of the heavily populated places in the US
| and that's in addition to the blatant political
| dysfunction.
| Eji1700 wrote:
| Sure but I think one of the huge issues is size and the
| simple fact that the union is by definition NOT pro
| country/greater good/citizen but pro Union member.
|
| So yea when some CEO golden parachutes out with all the
| money we're all rightfully pissed, but people weren't
| thrilled with jimmy hoffa or state mandated monopolies
| that just don't give a fuck either.
|
| In my city the power company will just tell you to fuck
| right off no matter what your schedule was for opening
| your business, no matter how important you are. Hope you
| can handle your building being built 1+ months behind
| because "nah fuck you" while the government head makes a
| million + a year.
|
| Scaling these things so they don't fall to corruption and
| graft is very very hard.
| torginus wrote:
| That sounds fishy, yes, electricians do need licensing, but
| as long as they (as in individuals or small companies) have
| the correct certs, I don't see why you couldn't substitute
| one with the other.
| hollywood_court wrote:
| I work for a home builder. Our single biggest problem is
| finding and hiring quality contractors that have enough
| skilled tradesmen.
|
| There are dozens of electrical contractors in my area. But
| only two that perform work to our standards.
|
| There is only one HVAC company that can meet our standards.
| Same for all of the other skilled trades.
|
| Our framing crew is the best within a 75 mile radius. Other
| builders are constantly trying to poach them from us. We keep
| throwing money at them to prevent them from going to another
| builder.
|
| Non skilled labor like landscaping and pest control are a
| dime a dozen. I just fired our main pesticide and herbicide
| contractor today because they couldn't get it together.
|
| Of course I had them replaced before I fired them but I had
| almost 20 options to choose from.
|
| Unfortunately I can't say the same about all of the skilled
| contractors.
| msgodel wrote:
| Well yeah you've practically done the same thing that's
| been done with software where juniors need education plus
| three years of experience for their first job so you have
| no juniors.
| HeWhoLurksLate wrote:
| I think the difference is that the pipelines for becoming
| a junior software developer are well-documented online,
| where the pipeline for being a "Junior Developer" in the
| trades is generally accomplished by calling and walking
| into places and asking for a job still.
| Loughla wrote:
| Not accurate, even slightly. You might get hired as a
| gopher and spend 5 years trying to do other work if you
| just blunder in without training or skills.
|
| Now, there are certificates and other training that most
| places expect for blue collar workers starting as
| apprentices.
|
| The days of walking off the street to get an
| apprenticeship in the trades is over. You'll get one
| after proving you're not on drugs, can show up, and are
| willing to do bullshit jobs for minimum wage for a three
| to five years beforehand.
| spaceguillotine wrote:
| nah, i went from apprentice to lead installer in under 3
| years, there is full training programs for the trades,
| but you will most likely get injured out before
| retirement so a lot of people won't even go that route.
| Until the trades are capped at 30 hours a week, you're
| going to injure out most of your workforce.
|
| It is really hard on bodies.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| The HN crowd sure has some well informed opinions about
| people who work for a living.
| nine_k wrote:
| Many of us do the same. I'd say most. Millionaire
| founders past exit are not the majority of the HN crowd
| by a long shot.
| hollywood_court wrote:
| Uh no. Our culture and society have told folks to go to
| college for so long like it's their only chance for
| success.
|
| I put on a tool belt as a kid because I didn't have the
| opportunity to go to school. It was either learn a trade
| or fail into the pit of despair that is the hospitality
| industry.
|
| I'm in the south so we don't have the benefits of union
| training.
|
| A union carpenter with one year of on the job training
| will run circles around a veteran carpenter from the
| south with 15-20 years of experience who never had access
| to such training.
| jaredhansen wrote:
| > A union carpenter with one year of on the job training
| will run circles around a veteran carpenter from the
| south with 15-20 years of experience who never had access
| to such training.
|
| Can you elaborate on this point? What is it about the
| union that makes their on the job training so effective?
| Veteran carpenters with 15-20 yrs of exp have, in
| general, a very strong skill set -- what is the union
| doing that makes people catch up so fast? And if that's
| true, why do more people not defect from the union?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| The contractor is supposed to train their tradesmen.
| There's no hypocrisy in insisting on good contractors.
| vl wrote:
| How in the world general contractor can train tradesmen?
| Contractor organizes and manages, every particular
| tradesman is better in their respective field than
| contractor.
| hollywood_court wrote:
| A good contractor will recognize new employees with
| potential and try to point them in the right direction
| and give them guidance.
|
| My first construction job ever was in the Caribbean. I
| got placed with a group of Haitians, and we were all
| laborers. We never had a tool in our hands. We simply
| carried materials, loaded things onto the roof, set up
| scaffolding, etc.
|
| On my third day on the job, the leader of the Haitians
| became angry at me and kept telling me to slow down. I
| kept pushing and the lead carpenter on the job noticed.
| The next day, the general contractor (my boss) pulled me
| aside and said "when you come in on Monday, make sure you
| have a tool belt, a hammer, a pencil, a speed square, a
| tape measure, and a razor blade."
|
| I showed up that Monday with all of the required tools
| and the GC let me work alongside the lead carpenter. At
| the end of that first week, the lead carpenter lent me a
| book that he used to learned carpentry while he was in a
| union in Wisconsin. I spent all weekend reading that book
| and I had tons of questions for him when I returned to
| work the next week.
|
| I never looked back. I have since worked professionally
| in every single residential construction related trade. I
| am confident that I can perform each trade at a
| professional level with the exception of welding. I can
| weld. I welded everything on my Land Cruiser and I've
| welded scores of hip plates over the years. But I'm not
| confident enough to say that I could perform at the same
| level as a good professional welder.
|
| But HVAC, electrical, plumbing, roofing, siding, millwork
| installation, finish carpentry, landscaping, and
| irrigation are all things that I can perform at a top
| level.
|
| That lead carpenter ended up being my best friend I have
| ever had and he taught me about a lot more than
| carpentry.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| They weren't talking about general contractors, but
| trade-specific contractors with multiple tradesmen
| working together. A crew can supervise and train newer
| members, and the more senior tradesmen can make sure the
| output of the entire crew is high quality even though
| some of them have a lot to learn.
|
| Even for the explicit goal of getting juniors trained,
| the crew that does the better job is probably doing
| _more_ training than the worse crew.
| benreesman wrote:
| I doubt you meant it this way, but that last bit hits a
| little rough. It's good that you are able to hire people
| when you have vacancies, and it's good that you don't have
| to be at the mercy of some insane rent-seeking because one
| crew in town has managed to monopolize one of your inputs.
|
| But saying it's unfortunate that you can't just whack
| anyone at will with 20 people lined up behind them jobless
| is wishing for a pretty bad situation right? If all your
| positions were filled by someone with 20 jobless people
| standing behind them, who would buy the homes you build?
| viraptor wrote:
| I'm not sure what's it like in the GP's area, but here
| I'm happy there are landscapers and other contractors who
| aren't part of the builders teams. There's lack of people
| available for odd jobs and for example it was hard to
| find a painter who wasn't busy with new houses. Unless
| it's a pathological situation on the market, those people
| are not idle/jobless. There needs to be a good mix of
| both.
| vrosas wrote:
| I'm guessing you've never hired a general contractor, or
| any other kind of home contractor for that matter? I've
| hired over a dozen at this point in the 1.5 years of
| owning my home, and I'd say, of those, about 2 have been
| any good. The construction and contracting landscape is a
| trash heap - a straight race to the bottom filled with
| lies, shoddy workmanship, and illegal labor. I'm suing 2
| of mine for bad workmanship/abandoned projects. I do 100%
| of my own home renovations now, regardless of the cost of
| time, tools or materials.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| If 2 have been good why not stick with them?
| vrosas wrote:
| Because my stone mason, as good as he is, doesn't do
| plumbing.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| His recommendations weren't good? Often good tradespeople
| know other good tradespeople.
| leoedin wrote:
| Like the parent, I haven't found that's true at all. Most
| people doing residential work on houses work either on
| their own or in very small teams. They spend their time
| working on houses, not networking with other
| tradespeople. They might have a few people they work with
| regularly, but it's not a deep network.
|
| Much better is local whatsapp groups where people who've
| hired good people can make recommendations. Those are a
| trove of good information.
| duttish wrote:
| You could ask what plumber that stone mason uses. "Good
| people like working with good people" etc.
| lostdog wrote:
| I have tried exactly this, and it does not work. Nobody
| who did direct work ever had recommendations for peer
| workers. They just don't care. Most subs work directly
| with generals and not each other that much.
|
| The general contractors know which subs are (currently)
| good and bad, so their recs are good, but you have to be
| friendly with them for them to share (instead of taking
| the project on themselves).
| duttish wrote:
| Ah, that's a shame :/
|
| Worked for me, bathroom guy recommended a carpenter that
| turned out great. Was hoping it was a general thing one
| could do.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Professionals trade favors for each other. Someone who
| has done good work for a peer won't necessarily do good
| work if hired by some rando.
| dwaltrip wrote:
| The original guy's rep is on the line for making the
| referral, so if there is already a relationship, he will
| want to rec someone who will do good work.
| chasd00 wrote:
| I'll second that finding a good contractor (or even just
| a "handy man") as a home owner is very hard. When i moved
| into my house we had two bathrooms and the kitchen
| renovated. Not a single piece of plumbing the original
| contractors touched has made it past 3 years, it's all
| been replaced. About the only thing that was done
| correctly was bathroom tile. On the other hand, on my
| street my neighbors and I have a good hvac guy. They are
| treated like royalty in my neighborhood because they show
| up, know what they're doing, and fair.
|
| my father in law who has passed away ran a little
| independent hvac shop. Just him and another guy, they had
| more work than they could ever handle and he could have
| grown to at least a 10-15 person shop but chose to work
| by himself. In southern US climates HVAC is def. a career
| option, however it's hard physical work that will slowly
| destroy your body. heh Not unlike how SWE is hard mental
| work that can slowly destroy your mind.
|
| edit: i miss my father-in-law very much, he could do
| anything. he replaced the floor in a pier and beam house
| while living in it. Just think about that for a moment,
| how do you replace a floor? that's what holds up the
| walls and the walls hold up the roof...
| sumtechguy wrote:
| Finding people is easy. Finding good ones is hard. You
| basically have to interview them. Even then you can end
| up with a slick salesman and garbage crew.
|
| Needed a moving company. One guy shows up sits in my
| driveway gives me a quote. The next guy walked thru the
| house and gave me a quote. The third guy shows up opens
| every closet every cabinet and has a fairly spot on
| estimate. The first two were off by nearly 30% on
| weight/cost.
|
| Needed someone to paint the entire interior of a house.
| One guy pulls a no show on the walkthru and then 3 months
| latter says I didnt show on time that day (it was already
| a done job at that point). Second guy goes 'hmm duno
| maybe X price'. Next guy measures everything has a
| itemized estimate. I hired the one with the good
| estimate.
|
| My sister needed some simple electrical work done. 2 guys
| just handed her a number and an open ended contract. The
| 3rd guy had an itemized estimate that was lower than the
| first two because he did the prework.
|
| Had some AC work done. Again with the 3. 1 just random
| didnt even come out, 1 driveway guy, and 1 who actually
| looked around and figured it out correctly. Even then I
| walk out there and the outside unit is installed
| backwards. I tell them, they puff out on me. I grab the
| foreman and walk him over with a 'uh there is a small
| issue here' didnt tell him what. They had to redo 3 hours
| of work once the foreman saw it backwards. All because
| the guys he had were willing to do backwards work. The
| foreman is usually the key. If they give a crap it will
| be done right.
|
| Trying to have a covered porch added to my current house.
| So far 2 no shows and totally ghosted.
|
| I wish this was atypical. But it isn't. I have many more.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| I always go back to our real estate agent to find
| contractors. We've never had any issues with the ones
| she's recommended.
| mhb wrote:
| And how did you get your real estate agent???
| ethbr1 wrote:
| The real answer behind the scenes: commercial pays better
| for the same work.
|
| Any competent tradesperson is doing majority commercial.
|
| Ergo, if you're looking for residential, you get...
| samth wrote:
| The post doesn't mean there are 20 unemployed people, but
| that there are 20 interchangable pest control contractors
| who all do an adequate job, and so the one they fired was
| easy to replace.
| hollywood_court wrote:
| We are at the mercy of one crew. Over 150+ jobs in my
| company are all at the mercy of that one framing crew
| that has ~30 people. If we lose them, we'd have to
| scramble like crazy to find a replacement.
|
| I have guys in Brownsville, TX that I could fly in and
| put up in hotels to get us through a tough spot, but that
| would cost a lot of money. And I'd love to encourage them
| to all move up here to Alabama with their families, but
| the current political climate has them afraid to do so.
|
| Edit: I'm not saying I wish I could fire anyone I want at
| any time. I'm saying that it stinks that I literally have
| no other options for the other trades. So I'm forced to
| stick with the subpar options.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Appreciate you highlighting the need for unions. Hopefully
| the skilled trades shortage persists indefinitely,
| otherwise they'd be treated just as you mentioned:
| disposable and interchangeable. The scarcity is the only
| thing protecting these folks at the moment.
|
| https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/blog/rebuilding-construction-
| tr...
| sobellian wrote:
| There is so much work for skilled tradesmen that they
| would rather see more automation so they can take more
| jobs. Even many unions, e.g. carpenters' unions, think
| this way.
|
| I mean no large group is a monolith so I'm sure one can
| find opinions either way among tradesmen. But IMO the
| problem is so big that it's no longer revenue maximizing
| for anyone, even the workers. By some measures
| productivity has actually been declining for
| construction. If that was good for workers then we should
| just set them to digging a second Panama Canal with
| spoons.
| earnestinger wrote:
| Real men would dig Route 66 canal instead of Panama.
| nine_k wrote:
| Software engineers have recently had a chance to taste
| how does it feel to be plentiful and disposable, after
| decades of shortage.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Scarcity also creates automation and efficiency pressure.
| You either get more of that human resource, or you make
| it so you use less of it, productivity increases also
| allow for the resources used to make more money without
| increasing project costs. This is also a very boom/bust
| industry, so the 2008 bust washed a lot of people out,
| especially juniors who would be experienced seniors
| today. A union is not going to protect labor from a
| building bust, they will stop hiring and the pipeline
| stalls.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| There is a housing shortage of between 3.5M and 12M
| units; there will be no bust for at least the next
| decade, as housing production rate dropped substantially
| after the 2008 global financial crisis and did not
| recover.
|
| (typically, union workers go on unemployment during slow
| periods; this includes electrical linemen/journeymen,
| automotive, pipe fitters, etc based on first hand
| conversations with union tradespeople in my examples)
|
| _Housing Supply and Housing Affordability_ -
| https://www.nber.org/papers/w33694 - April 2025
|
| _The Housing Industry Never Recovered From the Great
| Recession_ - https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/
| 2024-12-11-housi... - December 11, 2024
|
| _APM Marketplace: In an uncertain housing market, home
| builders face a range of challenges_ -
| https://www.marketplace.org/story/2024/11/26/in-an-
| uncertain... - November 26, 2024
|
| _U.S. Housing Shortage: Everything, Everywhere, All at
| Once_ - https://www.fanniemae.com/research-and-
| insights/perspectives... - October 31st, 2022
|
| _Fannie Mae: The U.S. Housing Shortage from a Local
| Perspective_ -
| https://www.fanniemae.com/media/45106/display - October
| 2022
| zer00eyz wrote:
| > There is a housing shortage of between 3.5M and 12M
| units;
|
| The problem with this stat is that the historic data does
| not support it:
|
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RSAHORUSQ156S
|
| The supply is just fine, more so with a declining
| population, how we use housing has changed dramatically.
|
| https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/06/more-than-
| a-q...
|
| U.S. Housing Shortage: Everything, Everywhere, All at
| Once: that you called out states "While the United States
| does indeed have a national shortage of affordable
| housing, every state and city's path to addressing it is
| relatively unique, and the tools and tactics used to
| create badly needed new housing supply will have to be
| tailored."
|
| This is a gross understatement of the issue. The problem
| is voters. No one will vote in more housing, housing
| benefits for others or more affordable housing. Because
| the people who vote own homes and go into the voting
| booth and protect their own interests and assets:
| https://www.route-fifty.com/management/2022/08/problem-
| homeo... . There isnt a law about having to be a
| landholder to vote but there is a very strong correlation
| between the two.
|
| Planing and zoning is hyper local, hyper political and
| very active. This is why mixed use zoning is harder to
| find, you can't run a garage out of your garage. The is
| why the "missing middle" is a thing in America. This is
| why "corporate ownership" of housing wont get fixed (it
| is a hyper local issue and the people who would show up
| to vote against it are the same ones whos property prices
| are being propped up by it).
| kryogen1c wrote:
| >> people are bad at their jobs so I fire them
|
| > need for unions
|
| What in the world? This is the exact opposite use case
| for unions.
|
| Unions help protect workers from single, dominant/
| monopolistic employers where workers have no other
| options and can get taken advantage of. The construction
| industry is nearly the polar opposite, where there is
| almost no barrier for entry and the employment space is
| very competitive, including the ability to start your own
| business.
|
| Construction unions would be an absolute nightmare.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Construction unions do great across European countries.
|
| Any company that can take advantage of workers will do
| it, no need for "dominant/ monopolistic".
|
| There is a reason why security measures that put the
| workers life at risk are almost nonexistent on countries
| where unions hardly have a presence.
|
| No helmets, no eye protection, no masks when dealing with
| chemicals, bending metal bars with bare hands, no
| protection shoes, hopping into a ladder alone,....
|
| Some examples of what I have seen in practice.
| rafaelmn wrote:
| >Construction unions do great across European countries.
|
| Do not know about your country - but over here the
| construction sites are full of people who couldn't even
| write the word union (mostly Asian countries like
| Philippines, Nepal, etc.)
| pjmlp wrote:
| Germany, and yes if I go to southern countries, Portugal
| my home country, alongside the other ones, there is a
| certain flexibility between the law, unions, and what
| actually happens at the construction site, unless someone
| does a complaint to the respective goverment authority
| responsible for checking worker conditions.
|
| I can also add that Scadinavian countries, and UK tend to
| be similar to Germany.
|
| Naturally all of them have black sheeps that ignore good
| work conditions if they can manage to, that is why work
| inspections are also a thing.
|
| Al
| rafaelmn wrote:
| I mean what happens is skilled workers from poorer
| countries (Croatia in my case) move to richer EU
| countries, then we have nobody to perform construction -
| and now we have issued work Visas for 5% of the
| population basically. And you see newspaper stories of
| these people basically being treated like slave labor
| (crammed in small apartments, completely dependent on the
| visa provider, often abused). Just a few days ago there
| was another story about an immigrant worker being raped
| by her employer - also an immigrant that was just done
| serving his previous rape sentence. And plenty of stories
| of these people not being paid for months, documents
| being held, etc.
|
| The unions have no standing because theres nobody left to
| be a part of the union - most people already left for
| Germany/Switzerland/etc. So Germany is just riding on the
| EU migration for now - but considering population
| dynamics - that's a short wave.
| rangestransform wrote:
| I wish NYC could suck out cheaper construction labour
| from the likes of Missisippi, maybe Second Avenue Subway
| could actually be built on time and on budget in that
| case. Right now, expensive local labour has the city by
| the balls
| kryogen1c wrote:
| > Any company that can take advantage of workers will do
| it, no need for "dominant/ monopolistic".
|
| What a nonsense thing to say. This is not an opinion most
| people, and certainly not most economists, would agree
| with. It's a foundational pillar of regulated free
| markets.
|
| Moreover in this instance, construction companies are not
| some sprawling international megacorps, they're locally
| oowned and operated.
| rafram wrote:
| A pillar of free-market _models_ , sure. But economics is
| built on a stack of spherical-cow assumptions that don't
| really hold up in the real world.
|
| Of course an employee theoretically has total freedom to
| leave an abusive employer and go somewhere else. But do
| they have time to search for jobs while working full-
| time? What if their employer makes them work mandatory
| overtime? If they don't have time to search while
| working, can they afford to be unemployed for a few
| months? What if their employer threatens them or
| discourages other employers in the area from hiring them?
|
| It would be great if competition made unions unnecessary,
| but it doesn't.
| avs733 wrote:
| > What in the world? This is the exact opposite use case
| for unions.
|
| Trade unions tend to have a large focus on training and
| skill building. Yes they make firing people harder but
| the flip side of unions can be increasing the average
| quality such that firing due to quality or skill is less
| often necessary.
|
| If I have need 10 people and I have a choice between two
| looks. Pool A is harder to fire and costs more but has a
| 95% competence rate. Pool B is easy to fire and costs
| less but has a 70% competence rate.
|
| Setting any contractual rules aside I'm going g to find
| myself firing from pool B more often, and it is easy to
| attribute all of that to the rules that make A harder to
| fire. They are easier to fire (component of variance),
| they are more likely to be bad (component 2), and because
| they are easier to fire in going to be more likely to
| fire than coach for quality (component 3).
| chasd00 wrote:
| as a home owner, i don't want any barrier to demanding
| someone never step foot in my house again.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| > Construction unions would be an absolute nightmare.
|
| They seem to work fine.
|
| https://nabtu.org/
|
| https://www.liuna.org/
|
| https://www.carpenters.org/
|
| https://ibew.org/
| britzkopf wrote:
| Framing is skilled, but landscaping and pest control are
| unskilled? Are you living in a well framed house overrun
| with mice and a terrible yard? I've done some framing. With
| a communicative foreman and a straightforward building
| design I did not find it _that_ hard.
| hollywood_court wrote:
| If performing quality framing was so easy, I imagine I'd
| have less trouble finding folks who want to earn $125k+
| per year to do it for me.
|
| Instead I just have a group of ~30 Guatemalans who do it
| while I listen to my American friends and neighbors
| complain about immigrants "taking all the jobs."
| epicureanideal wrote:
| Folks may not know about the jobs, or there might be
| other details that aren't mentioned here that make them
| less interested, for example are there occasionally big
| chunks of being unemployed, is the work dangerous, is the
| work stable, etc.
|
| 20 years ago, before I started making good money as a
| software engineer, if someone had offered me a similar
| opportunity, and training, I would've taken it assuming
| there were no big gotchas.
| southernplaces7 wrote:
| >Non skilled labor like landscaping and pest control are a
| dime a dozen.
|
| As a former landscaper, I can tell you that you either
| aren't taking the time to understand at least one of these
| professions at all, or simply have some very low standards
| for good landscaping. It is not a dime-a-dozen field that
| requires minimal skill, at all, and given all I've seen of
| GOOD pest control, the same applies, fully. You might have
| dozens of small contractors out there claiming to be either
| of these things but knowing little, sure, but those that
| actually know the technical balances at work and can apply
| those to what they're doing so that it creates durable
| results for your building/land/home, are people who need to
| know quite a few very fine nuances of their work.
|
| I mean, unless you think that constructing external
| landscapes that soon collapse, flood or fill with dead
| plants is irrelevant, or have no problem living in a
| building riddled with rats, mice, cockroaches and easy
| domicile to all of these pests and sundry.
| babyshake wrote:
| I'm a layperson and this touches on my greatest fear about
| hiring contractors, that I'm not able to quickly enough
| determine who does meet the quality standard or even what
| the quality standard should be for a given job. How are
| average people supposed to navigate these things? I suppose
| I would just ask Claude/ChatGPT these days but there is
| surely a lot of tribal knowledge that they don't have.
| bolobo wrote:
| And chatgpt is going to pull the data from an random UK
| website when you are in the US and vice-versa, and will
| augment it with knowledge from its model that come from a
| reddit thread from 2010 written by an italian plumber.
|
| I saw that on the DIY Uk subreddit where people were
| confused because ChatGPT was answering question using
| american standards. It's really hard to answer questions
| based on regional tribal knowledge.
|
| Apparently a good source are the tradesmens shop? THey
| might know their customers? Word-of-mouth?
| eecc wrote:
| poor prompting then. One should narrow down the question
| to the particular circumstance it should apply.
| bobro wrote:
| this is exactly what you can't do as an amateur though.
| You don't know enough context to provide your relevant
| circumstances.
| vl wrote:
| The most basic thing you do is hiring by referral, you
| talk to your friends and neighbors about contractors they
| used, and then hire the ones that were recommended, being
| ready to slightly overpay or wait for the slot.
| torginus wrote:
| This. I live in a very different place from you and I'm
| just a humble homeowner, but contractors here are less than
| competent and I as a layperson can often do better after
| reading up on the thing and watching a couple Youtube
| videos.
|
| I know it's meme tier and horrible when a guy who watched
| some videos tells the tradesmen how to do their jobs, but
| unfortunately I often end up being right and prove them
| wrong.
|
| For example one of the last things I experienced was one of
| the electricians needed to get a cable through the concrete
| upper floor, and just couldn't do the calculations on where
| to drill and ended up drilling into the middle of the wall
| instead of right next to it.
|
| These kinds of fuckups are constant and the contractors are
| pretty good at hiding these unless I stand next to them.
|
| I've yet to meet a roofer that could properly do trig to
| calculate the sloped roof area.
| Abekkus wrote:
| ....There's no trigonometry in common roof-slope-area
| calculations and designations, only pythagoreans. Rise
| over run, 6ft for every 12ft, etc.
|
| I do feel your pain about vetting "professionals",
| especially living in a place that tries to prevent me
| from making my own improvements.
| alt227 wrote:
| Arent sloped roofs just rectangles?
| ncallaway wrote:
| The intersections of the joists/beams and the rafters
| require you to cut angled cuts on the rafters to sit
| appropriately on the joists/beams.
|
| See: https://www.structuralbasics.com/rafter-roof-design/
| and imagine how you would get a rectangular piece of wood
| for the rafter to sit flush against the rectangular
| joists/beams.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| OK there might be some confusion here on what's meant by
| "roofer." Roofers as I have always seen the term used
| means the crew that puts the shingles on.
|
| The roof structure is built by carpenters or framers. Or
| more likely just delivered as pre-built trusses which are
| placed on top of the walls.
|
| For a roof built on-site, a speed-square or framing
| square will include markings for common roofing cuts,
| hip/valley cuts, etc. You have to know how to use them
| but you don't really need to understand the underlying
| trigonometry.
| bob1029 wrote:
| > a layperson can often do better
|
| I think it's a mixed bag. I've purchased homes where the
| previous owner thought they were a wizard at home
| improvement. One apt example is a dryer outlet that was
| converted from 14-30R to 10-30R because the homeowner
| googled the wrong thing and went down a bad rabbit hole.
| A good electrician would tell you to change the cord on
| your dryer and that anything else is a code violation.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >A good electrician would tell you to change the cord on
| your dryer and that anything else is a code violation.
|
| It would be a code violation for me to take my exiting
| 120yo retaining wall and extend it by copying it in exact
| detail despite the fact that the details of its
| construction are provably satisfactory.
|
| The code isn't there to ensure results. The code is there
| to make the subjective quantifiable so it can be bickered
| over and litigated in a fairly deterministic manner.
| bob1029 wrote:
| > provably satisfactory.
|
| I don't think the chassis of my dryer becoming energized
| is a provably satisfactory outcome.
|
| I agree that a lot of code amounts to bureaucratic
| nonsense, but many rules were changed over time for good
| reason.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Everything sounds like a good reason in a vacuum. I could
| write an equivalent appeal to emotion justifying why
| retaining walls ought to be engineered but the fact of
| the matter is that a bunch of barely literate people
| working from reference tables managed to do fine and
| copying them probably will do fine too.
| torginus wrote:
| How did ground fault protection not kick in when you
| touched it?
| gedy wrote:
| Yes agreed. There's skill and experience - and then
| there's... common sense? And some folks just don't have
| it.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| > I as a layperson can often do bette
|
| Except often times you can't because of all the
| regulations. First there's the code which you can't
| possibly understand sufficiently if it's not your day
| job. If you do figure out what you need to do you'll then
| find plenty of things you can't do without a license that
| you need to put in years for, not just pay and pass a
| test.
|
| The only stuff that's not subject to exclusionary
| regulation is the "average homeowner" type renovation
| stuff and even then only because there isn't political
| will to tolerate it, not because the government and
| trades wouldn't try if they could.
|
| But what do I know, I'm just someone who's been told he
| has to pay for $50k of engineering studies to assess the
| runoff impacts of converting forested former pasture back
| to the latter because a bunch of useful idiots 40yr ago
| heard some politicians talking points and thought it
| sounded good.
| jen20 wrote:
| > First there's the code which you can't possibly
| understand sufficiently if it's not your day job.
|
| Some of the stuff I found from contractors who worked on
| my house demonstrate that it turns out people whose day
| job is understanding the code also don't.
| MisterTea wrote:
| > I know it's meme tier and horrible when a guy who
| watched some videos tells the tradesmen how to do their
| jobs, but unfortunately I often end up being right and
| prove them wrong.
|
| Normalization of deviance is becoming common place.
| There's a lot to unpack here but there is a severe lack
| of professionalism, responsibility, genuine knowledge,
| and experience. Now its just a bunch of greedy man
| children who live by "fake it till you make it" and use
| every dirty trick to intimidate and mislead the client.
| Once they secure the job they barely show up to the the
| job site because they ran off to play with their golf
| clubs, sports cars and yachts or whatever while a crew of
| cheap unskilled labor shits all over the job site. And if
| you call out these morons and challenge them they get
| angry and defensive because they're the experts and
| you're a dumb client. Infuriating hubris.
| zerkten wrote:
| >> For example one of the last things I experienced was
| one of the electricians needed to get a cable through the
| concrete upper floor, and just couldn't do the
| calculations on where to drill and ended up drilling into
| the middle of the wall instead of right next to it.
|
| The exact same problem exists for small manufacturers in
| the US. There are lot of people who believe they should
| have jobs in skilled trades and check some boxes but are
| missing fundamentals.
| simpaticoder wrote:
| This is a little bit tangential to the conversation but I
| was wondering how you find the best skilled contractors? Do
| you use Google maps like everyone else and look at the
| ratings? Or is it information you glean by trial and error
| over time? Or do you check in with trade schools to see who
| their best graduates are? Or perhaps something that I
| haven't mentioned?
| pjm331 wrote:
| For me it's personal references from other people via
| local Facebook/whatsapp groups - since I have kids that's
| almost always parent groups
| hollywood_court wrote:
| Mostly from people at supply houses and lumber yards.
| They know how to tell if a contractor is good or not.
|
| Or if we catch wind of a good contractor doing great work
| for another builder, we'll go inspect their work and then
| try to get them to jump ship and work with us.
|
| Trade school information won't help us any because we're
| hiring contracting companies. We don't hire individuals
| unless it's for something specific that can be handled by
| one individual like kitchen installs.
|
| Highly skilled tradesmen are often like really good
| lawyers. Just because they're good at their craft doesn't
| mean they'll necessarily be good at running their own
| contracting business (or law firm).
|
| So being a successful contractor really boils down to
| being able to properly manage your skilled labor (and
| keep them content) while also keeping things on budget
| and following the critical path.
|
| The single most common mistake I see with most
| contractors (and most all small business owners in
| general) is the fact that they think "hey, I own this
| business, therefore I should be the highest paid person
| here." So they don't take care of their labor and they
| end up losing them to someone who will take better care
| of them.
|
| They think that they own the business so they must
| provide the most value to the company and should earn the
| most. That's rarely the case in real life though.
|
| When I was a contractor out on my own, there were plenty
| of times when I was paying some of my employees more than
| I ever took home. The President of the company I work for
| now isn't the highest compensated member of our team.
| mclau157 wrote:
| Is this a symptom of every teacher and parent telling kids
| to get college degrees?
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| A lot of this is a result of how trade licensing works.
|
| In most states it's not about whether you know how to do
| something -- you can't just take a licensing exam and get a
| license even if you know the material -- it's about having
| access to someone who already has a license to sign off on
| you. From which you get two consequences.
|
| First, if you know someone who already has a license but
| doesn't know what they're doing or isn't a good teacher,
| they sign off on other people without actually teaching
| them how to do a good job, and then you get even more
| people with a license who don't really know how to do the
| job.
|
| And second, because the existing license holder has to sign
| off on several _years_ worth of hours for someone new to
| get a license, you deter people who would do a good job but
| -- because of that -- have more opportunities in other
| industries where you don 't have to spend a large chunk of
| your adult life beholden to someone else because it's still
| prohibited by law for you to strike out on your own, in an
| industry that people would otherwise want to enter because
| they want to do exactly that. Which both lowers the average
| quality of the candidate pool and creates shortages by
| lowering the number of candidates.
| aaron695 wrote:
| Where I am it's $90,000 - $240,000 to subdivide land from one
| to two.
|
| Not including costs post-subdividing like selling the empty
| lot and tax's.
|
| Obviously the new buyer has building costs, but you might
| have to demolish the existing house to divide, good chance it
| was in the middle.
|
| On top of all this is the years to divide the property.
|
| On top of all this you can't then build what you want on the
| new property.
|
| On top of all this is the years to build on the empty lots.
|
| These all have a $$$ cost.
|
| $240,000 to quickly divide and rebuild high density, no one
| would care about that cost, that's ~$0.
|
| So the houses you can end up with can't be tight practical
| buildings, it's $$$$$ for permits and land and time. So this
| robot will help build mega mansions for single families.
| mmmBacon wrote:
| You need look no further than the poster child of red tape
| delayed construction projects: California High Speed Rail.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/04/us/high-speed-rail-
| califo...
| appreciatorBus wrote:
| That 7% is for the projects that actually happen. This misses
| all the projects that don't when start because they don't
| pencil due to the phenomenon that the original poster
| mentioned.
|
| If you want to see it up close and personal, go to any Public
| Hearing in your city for any new construction of any kind,
| and watch 100 of your neighbours who have already benefitted
| from past construction lineup to oppose the prospect of any
| additional construction for anyone else. It's not just that
| it adds a few percent costs, it's that it drastically reduces
| the number of projects people even try to build.
| reactordev wrote:
| In the US, it's vastly different. Just look at Ryan Homes.
| jahewson wrote:
| > promises to only work 8 hours a day, only use union labor,
| hire x police officers for y hours in overtime security
| positions a month, use xyz contractor etc.
|
| Those are not pre-construction costs are they? Massive
| differences in labor costs described there.
| jjcm wrote:
| To wargame the a rebuttal to this, the red tape might be
| circumvented just because there aren't rules to govern robotic
| work. You can fully agree to only use union labor, to only have
| humans working 8 hour days, or to only use certain contractors
| for hired work, simply because these systems aren't human
| operated (likely they will be early on, but you could spin it
| as this).
|
| There are laws for people, but not necessarily for tools.
| htrp wrote:
| they will put the rules on place for automated tools very
| easily ( look at how every state is pulling together a
| patchwork of AI regulation)
| xyst wrote:
| > a small cost seems to be the actual labor and materials
|
| Say less.
|
| HN used to be a message board to gain better knowledge around
| certain topics, but seems it more or less has the same armchair
| dilettantes that plague other platforms.
| kevinmpeterson wrote:
| There is red tape and certainly there are planning bottlenecks,
| but the GCs already deal with this. Once a project is funded
| and started, an established GC will move quickly to execute on
| projects. Also - some states (CA in particular) have an absurd
| amount of red tape. If you go to states like Texas, it's much
| easier. Robotic tools are pretty common already (machine
| guidance for bulldozers, remote ops for excavators, mine
| trucks), so there's good precedent. We view our machines as
| tools for people to use, and given the labor challenges, have a
| ton of customer interest as a result.
| scrubs wrote:
| Wanna know what we need? MARPA: management and research process
| advancement.
|
| Yes or no: can the USA get a medium sized build done on time
| and budget comparable to the top 15% worldwide?
|
| There has to be way to kick this problem in the butt. And i
| think management side has gotta step up
| iwontberude wrote:
| It doesn't matter. The costs are fungible to the buyer, if the
| price is lower in any regard it becomes a better value.
| jdmena321 wrote:
| Politics certainly adds layers of cost, but it doesn't change
| the fact that budget overruns almost always stem from
| unpredictable, non-political variables, sudden material price
| hikes, weather delays, labor shortages, or subcontractor
| disputes.
| PaywallBuster wrote:
| This would help mega projects in middle east
|
| all the labor is imported from abroad and live in miserable
| conditions, no unions or paperwork, just lots of earthworks to
| be done
| yreg wrote:
| > Hell these robots if they work will be made illlegal.
|
| Why are heavy machines like diggers and cranes legal then?
| Human operated, but replace countless workers on the site.
| gniv wrote:
| Tech startups have become giants by flaunting rules. This seems
| like an opportunity.
| pugworthy wrote:
| Rules for things like environmental studies, zoning, and
| planning exist for very good reasons.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| And yet, despite all of this, in most of my country (Canada) we
| have a construction labour shortage. Getting anything built is
| hard (and expensive).
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| Tech can help with the politics as well. More construction
| would happen if it was technologically possible for it to be so
| fast that major projects could be finished in a single election
| period.
| wpm wrote:
| Pre-fab is illegal in a lot of places too. Pre-fab is for the
| poors! Houses in this neighborhood must be assembled on site by
| lumber by a team of expensive humans from raw lumber, not at a
| factory churned out by the hundreds, shipped on site on a
| truck, and quickly put together.
|
| Like yeah, typical pre-fab, where it's legal, is going to go
| into a trailer park or something, but nothing says pre-fab has
| to be cheap and crummy. Why are we still cutting lumber on
| site?
| gosub100 wrote:
| This is a bit like saying "if everyone was just honest and a
| good person, we wouldn't need police or jails or criminal
| judges". All these things exist for a reason (except for
| kickbacks). We have labor unions because of worker
| exploitation. We have zoning to protect personal freedoms of
| existing property owners. We have environmental impact studies
| because corporations have proven they are willing to freely
| dump toxic materials wherever they feel like.
| orochimaaru wrote:
| You must live in Chicago - lol.
| mattigames wrote:
| If you read the other comments made by this user they are
| exactly the political leaning you expect, including support for
| the BBB among other similar opinions.
| shorbaji wrote:
| With the construction equipment market at $160B, this certainly
| is quite a sizable niche. Specializing in it is clever.
|
| And an $80M round sounds sane these days
| xnx wrote:
| > With the construction equipment market at $160B
|
| Wouldn't the value of their target market be the pay of
| operators (~$30/hour)?
| shorbaji wrote:
| At first, yes. Longer term, self-driving construction
| vehicles will likely change the entire market - perhaps
| similar to how self-driving passenger cars would change that
| market. Vehicles will be designed differently and
| consumption-based business models would potentially make up a
| larger part of the market. Investors are probably see that
| opportunity.
| barbazoo wrote:
| > Bedrock Robotics is focused on developing a self-driving kit
| that can be retrofitted to construction and other worksite
| vehicles
|
| > Bedrock is "upgrading existing fleets with sensors, compute,
| and intelligence that understands project goals, adapts to
| changing conditions, and executes work around the clock,"
|
| I can also imagine this applying to all kinds of mining too,
| where there's already all the heavy equipment to mine and
| transport resources and we're just turning it into a robot so
| they don't have to employ a human anymore.
| consumer451 wrote:
| So, comma.ai but for construction. That's pretty cool. Although
| as another user mentioned, right to repair/modify is likely the
| worst in heavy equipment.
|
| I wonder how that problem could be solved. Could something
| along the lines of warranty and service indemnification work,
| maybe?
|
| But really, an acquisition by the OEM might be the only way to
| make this work in the long term?
| torginus wrote:
| Maybe it won't be necessary?
|
| Once they have the whole stack vertically integrated, you
| could just contract out the job to them entirely? If the
| excavator breaks, that's their problem, they'll bring
| another, you're paying for results not equipment.
| bluGill wrote:
| In some mines they are willing to pay more for robots than
| human labor because of safety (which is to say they know they
| can't make it safe enough)
| themanmaran wrote:
| One big barrier I haven't seen mentioned is all the OEM
| competition they are going to face.
|
| Caterpillar, John Deer, etc. already have remote operation
| vehicles. And a lot of provisions on what types of kits can be
| retrofitted onto their equipment without violating their
| terms/warranties.
|
| I'm sure this is already something they've taken into
| consideration, but it seems like this will be more focused on
| partnerships with existing OEMs rather than selling add on kits
| to current fleets.
| echelon wrote:
| > Caterpillar, John Deer, etc. already have remote operation
| vehicles. And a lot of provisions on what types of kits can be
| retrofitted onto their equipment without violating their
| terms/warranties.
|
| Sounds ripe for disruption, then.
|
| If a startup demonstrates promise, VC money will flood in. Then
| it's just a balancing of economics. Is the new VC-backed method
| cheaper? If so, the incumbents will lose market share relative
| to the value prop.
| beau_g wrote:
| To the parent posters point though, those manufacturers are
| holding outsized control over what can be retrofit to their
| machines, so to disrupt them, you have to make your own
| machines. Working on and owning heavy equipment myself, I of
| course have looked at it and thought there's a lot to
| improve, but at the the same time, I don't really see where
| the big brain Silicon Valley + venture bucks ethos can be
| applied to the space, it would be a long and slow grind of
| doing mostly straightforward mechanical engineering and
| supply chain/vendor agreements to build something like a
| bulldozer, just to enter a near impenetrable market due to
| many existing sunk costs and long relationships between
| buyers and the existing manufacturers.
| bluGill wrote:
| The manufactures are aware of monopoly laws and will give
| you the 'key' to put your own thing on and even sell it -
| for a 'reasonable fee' which may be six figures and proff
| you will care about safety. Universities have got the key
| for student projects (under nda)
|
| disclosure: I work for jonh deere but am not speaking for
| the company. The above is all I feel I can say on the
| subject
| Espressosaurus wrote:
| Orrrrrr...venture capital money comes in and they sell for
| a loss until they achieve monopoly status and jack up the
| rates!
|
| Might be less successful now that money isn't free.
| foobiekr wrote:
| Venture hasn't managed to make a dent in Nvidia despite
| massive investments.
|
| Maybe they aren't as powerful as you think outside the
| comparatively trivial "build some software" markets. Hell
| even in networking, compute and storage there are only
| three or four real success stories in the last two and a
| half _decades_.
| 93po wrote:
| my understanding is that the barrier to entry in this space
| isnt manufacturing the equipment, but rather having a large
| dealer network for people to use for service and repairs.
| my impression is that people largely buy whatever has a
| nearby dealer for this reason. and these dealer connections
| are more and more important as they make it more and more
| impossible to work and maintain the equipment as an
| individual
| kevinmpeterson wrote:
| CAT, Deere are both doing very interesting things with older
| autonomy techniques. Deere has acquired several companies,
| and partnered with others to bring in talent from outside.
| CAT has worked with outside companies (notably Trimble,
| Topcon) for key technologies when it makes a big difference.
| Both are awesome companies, but not AI/ML companies at the
| core and it'll take a lot of work for them to get there. I
| think this is very much like the self driving world 10 years
| ago where OEMs tried very hard to become software companies,
| but ultimately Cruise and Waymo were the ones that executed.
| nickff wrote:
| Neither Cruise nor Waymo seems to be profitable yet, and
| the jury is still out on whether they will win the market.
| They may be the MySpaces (or the Fiskers) of autonomous
| driving.
| khurs wrote:
| The money raised is $80m rather than $800m which likely
| reflects all the challenges faced.
|
| It's the kinda startup that may be able to pivot easier than
| others.
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| >One big barrier I haven't seen mentioned is all the OEM
| competition they are going to face.
|
| Seems like that is a pro not a con. An exit scenario
| nickff wrote:
| It's only a pro if Bedrock has some sort of advantage that
| the existing companies don't and can't easily get. Without
| some sort of innovator's dilemma-type situation, they're
| likely to be crushed (into gravel).
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| Aqui-hire. The modern-day labor union (get more for your
| skilled labor than you would otherwise)
| whiplash451 wrote:
| Meh. Being acqui-hired by Caterpillar or John Deere can't
| really be a dream of theirs. Plus the financial upside
| would be limited as these giants would tie it to tough
| long term milestones. Does not sound like a great deal.
| _carbyau_ wrote:
| > One big barrier I haven't seen mentioned is all the OEM
| competition they are going to face.
|
| Not sure on this one. The company likely has it's own vision
| but I've thought for a while that a swarm of small electric
| rubber tracked earth moving vehicles (small enough to fit one
| or two in a tradies van?) could work longer hours due to being
| much quieter. For larger jobs you put a single person in a
| small tower on overwatch and run it 24 hours a day.
|
| This'd give you a somewhat scalable approach from small
| residential jobs to somewhat larger jobs while not competing
| against the incumbents directly and allowing you to work out
| the kinks. Then _if_ it makes sense later, you build bigger
| machines with hopefully better battery technology.
|
| Ultimately though, for proper big jobs, you need proper big
| tools. Maybe a partnership or "exit strategy" works.
|
| Though maybe I've played too many RTS games like Supreme
| Commander...
| defrost wrote:
| Equipment operators are lead by their largest clients, mining
| companies such as Rio Tinto for example.
|
| 24/7/365 large fleet operators that move a billion tonne of ore
| per annum and alter the spin balance of the planet by a
| detectable amount.
|
| Pages such as
| https://www.riotinto.com/en/mn/about/innovation/automation are
| out of date and don't do justice to the extant of and demand
| for grand scale semi autonomous mining and construction
| equipment.
|
| BBC coverage of one site and mining automation:
| https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgej7gzg8l0o
|
| There's a large yet to be built copper project in the US that
| has autonomus mining plans in the economic technical report.
|
| https://resolutioncopper.com/mining-method/
|
| https://resolutioncopper.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/RTRC...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resolution_Copper#Reactions
| threatripper wrote:
| If the missing ingredient is not some secret technology that
| only few of these old players have, they are probably too busy
| with their existing business.
|
| Management may invest many years developing some new key
| technology on the side but when it comes to actually taking the
| market, it's hard to focus on two areas at the same time.
| amelius wrote:
| Do they have a large patent portfolio that might get into the
| way?
| CharlesXY wrote:
| Definitely echo the concerns about bureaucratic red tape (looking
| at you, California high-speed rail fiasco) that kind of
| environment makes innovation in infrastructure extra hard. Still,
| there's something compelling about Bedrock's approach if they can
| genuinely deliver a system that adapts in real-time to the
| complex nature of construction sites. The big question is whether
| they can win through retrofitting existing fleets or by locking
| in tight partnerships with OEMs, adding to that the competition
| is going to be pretty tough
| khurs wrote:
| > is focused on developing a self-driving kit that can be
| retrofitted to construction and other worksite vehicles
|
| Seems sensible a project. $80m raised also seems a sensible
| amount. And the guy has a background in this field. Good luck
| hnpolicestate wrote:
| Just nonstop putting people out of work lol.
| khurs wrote:
| Most people don't enjoy the work they do.
|
| As long as the bills are paid then most people will be happy to
| not go to traditional work, but instead do more interesting/ of
| value to the community work.
| hnpolicestate wrote:
| I pray LLM's put programmers out of work. You don't enjoy it
| anyway, just bills etc. Learn to enjoy gardening or
| something.
| khurs wrote:
| What would a programmer rather work on. Some boring app for
| someone else, or an app to solve a problem he has of his
| own.
|
| What is more enjoyable, working on the language and
| database dictated by work, or whatever tech he wants to
| use.
|
| As long as a person gets out of bed and does a days work
| doing something productive in some way, it doesn't matter
| that it's not traditional work.
| yunwal wrote:
| I feel like most people who got into programming because
| they liked it (rather than for money) feel this way. I
| certainly don't wanna be solving the same problems over and
| over again.
| davidcbc wrote:
| Oh please, the billionaires who control these things aren't
| going to share the wealth with the people they put out of
| work. They're going to suck as many of us dry as they
| possibly can
|
| "As long as the bills are paid" is the key point. They won't
| be because people will be out of a job with no safety net
| hooverd wrote:
| who is paying?
| khurs wrote:
| Money is a made up system that the people have decided best
| meets their needs at this time.
|
| If AI completely changed the system, then the present
| method of exchanging labour for money would also need to be
| replaced or tweaked.
| lc9er wrote:
| Is this your first day on earth. You sound like you're
| new here. The wealth-hoarding overlords won't allow for
| that.
| khurs wrote:
| There are more of us then there are of them. So they will
| need to either kill us all, or work with us.
|
| And as many of the overlords claim to believe in a
| Christian/Jewish God, and so believe that one day God
| will come down to Earth and build a city at Jerusalem (or
| something like that) they will not want to anger their
| god by killing all of us (perhaps just the remainder of
| Gaza...)
| cbdumas wrote:
| I don't know anything about this startup but this is definitely
| an important problem worth solving
| https://www.chicagobooth.edu/review/us-construction-has-prod...
| halfcat wrote:
| > intelligence that understands project goals
|
| > adapts to changing conditions
|
| The real play here is starting a business that specializes in
| getting construction equipment unstuck from the mud.
| cperciva wrote:
| Unrelated apart from the words "rock" and "construction": I
| wouldn't be surprised if we see dry stone construction becoming
| very practical thanks to advances in computer vision and
| robotics.
|
| Dry stone construction is incredibly durable -- it doesn't rely
| on mortar which can weather away -- but it is limited by needing
| to reshape stones to fit together tightly (often by making flat
| surfaces). A human stonesmith can look at a handful of stones and
| find one which is close to fitting in the necessary spot; but a
| computerized system could scan thousands of stones and build
| tightly-fitting stonework with minimal need for reshaping.
| AngryData wrote:
| An interesting thought, im pretty wary on most automated
| construction techniques, but dry stone construction does seem
| like a good fit for automation. It needs to be done before any
| other construction is really done and takes a decent chunk of
| time even for a team of humans so not a lot of people or other
| things going on around the area or in the way. There are still
| some issues that need experimentation. You can go 99% of the
| way with fairly simple imaging, but that last 1% can be tricky
| and usually requires tactile sensation and probing and pushing
| on stones to get a rock solid fit, but perhaps the actual
| technique/style of stone fitting would alleviate that last bit.
| qrush wrote:
| These guys are going to learn a fun lesson about organized crime
| and labor unions in construction real soon.
| cadamsdotcom wrote:
| Construction robots can't happen soon enough!
|
| Eg. if bricklayers could talk to their machine the way we can
| with coding agents, and say "yep, wall here please, check the
| blueprints to confirm how high and where the holes for the
| windows go", retired & injured tradespeople could choose to come
| back. Less injuries means cheaper insurance & better margins.
| People could work in multiple parts of a site by supervising
| several robots, and not be exhausted at the end of the day. The
| list of benefits to individuals and the industry is long.
| atbpaca wrote:
| Machines will need humans, for sure. The question is how many?
| For instance, there is a company using printing technology to
| build homes in Austin, Texas. The target number of workers
| needed to operate the "printer" is 3, down from 10. So on the
| positive side, the remaining 3 workers will have a better work
| environment, maybe the costs of building houses will go down a
| bit, etc. In the other hand, 7 workers are no longer needed. My
| point is that the gains in efficiency will come with some
| winners and, in my humble opinion, many losers. And that will
| only help to downsize the middle class even further. Don't get
| me wrong, from a scientific/technological point of view, I am
| looking forward it. But I am concerned with the social impact
| in the long term.
| newsclues wrote:
| How many humans and where they are!
|
| Lots of remote jobs (pipelines etc) could be done with robots
| and satellite internet.
|
| If the maintenance and recovery teams can also be robots,
| suddenly lots of big projects could get done in very hostile
| environments.
| maxglute wrote:
| >if bricklayers
|
| If legit construction robots were a thing they'd be primarily
| trained on assembling the most automation friendly cladding
| systems instead of wasting time laying bricks, incidentally why
| brick fell out of favor.
|
| Ironically a lot of construction robot explorations has been
| bricklaying / mason bots, but that's because laying bricks is
| computation and mechanically simple repetitive task not because
| it's an efficient building system. The benefit is we'll
| probably be able to build with bricks/masonry cheaper, the
| caveat being it will probably be relative more expensive
| relative to automation optimized building systems.
| spoonsort wrote:
| Well said. The company is actually more focused on earth
| moving, but the same arguments you make apply there, if not
| even more. Earth moving is a very exhausting job that most
| would be glad to have automated. A little known fact is that
| you actually get boiled no matter what machinery you use in
| there on the black dirt mid day, and it's not totally safe;
| your machine could roll over if you aren't at the height of
| your awareness.
| brudgers wrote:
| My desire to believe in the technology runs aground upon the
| Conjunction Fallacy.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjunction_fallacy
|
| To build a commercially successful autonomous bulldozer requires
| building a commercially successful bulldozer. That's hardware and
| hardware is hard. Probably harder than the autonomous part
| because bulldozers are a century past the proof-of-concept era.
|
| My cynical take is this is financial engineering more than
| construction engineering. YMMV.
| xnx wrote:
| > To build a commercially successful autonomous bulldozer
| requires building a commercially successful bulldozer.
|
| Wouldn't it only be necessary to put a "robot" in the driver's
| seat of any existing dozer?
| shorbaji wrote:
| I wonder what fraction of the hardware goes into hosting the
| human operator and into ensuring their safety. How much
| hardware cam be optimized away when there is no longer a human
| operator?
| brudgers wrote:
| Very little. All the reduction gears, tires, and hydraulics
| are the same.
|
| Basically you can get rid of the air conditioner and the
| seat. Most of the hazards related to heavy equipment involve
| hitting something outside the machine.
|
| Rolling is the major hazard to an operator and you still want
| to avoid that without one.
| kevinmpeterson wrote:
| Waymo doesn't build cars
| poly2it wrote:
| They are also building a vehicle which doesn't have to adapt
| for a human, shifting the domain. Definitely not just
| complexity which is AND-able.
| iamleppert wrote:
| I wish them luck, but I highly doubt they have been on a real job
| site, or have actually operated a heavy.
| kevinmpeterson wrote:
| I'm the CTO and one of the founders of Bedrock. I was very
| pleasantly surprised to see the excitement from this crowd! Happy
| to answer any questions about us (and will look through the
| comment threads here). We're looking for really really awesome
| MLEs and software engineers, so if you're interested take a look
| at our careers page https://bedrockrobotics.com/careers
| noosphr wrote:
| Are you planning on using humanoid robots as drop in
| replacements for humans using the same tools?
| margalabargala wrote:
| Probably not. They've already gotten the VC funding, so no
| need to sabotage their chances of success like that.
| kevinmpeterson wrote:
| Humanoids will be amazing when they get here, but I think
| there are a lot of challenges between now and then - hardware
| alone is very challenging - add a ton of sticky mud and it's
| going to be complex even if the software works.
| 93po wrote:
| i had to look up whether stuff like mini excavators use
| control-by-wire/CAN bus or if the controls are actually
| mechanically operating valves, to determine how hard it'd be
| to just throw a lil computer connected to the CAN bus to
| autonomously operate equipment. it seems like newer and nicer
| models are control by wire, and older ones have joysticks and
| pedals that directly open and close hydraulic valves.
|
| i looked this up in a "cost of humanoid robot" versus just
| doing a retrofit on a computer/actuators on older equipment.
| i think even in the actuator approach, adding 12
| electronically controlled hydraulic valves to replace the
| human actuated valves is still gonna be cheaper than a
| humanoid robot
| kevinmpeterson wrote:
| 100%
| scythe wrote:
| I read your careers page out of curiosity. It's like all
| software and equipment (what I interpret from "hardware").
| Shouldn't you also hire some structural engineers and similar?
| kevinmpeterson wrote:
| We're mostly focused on the AI and software side of things.
| There are many great manufacturers for the machines
| themselves. We have amazing hardware engineers, so if we need
| to do structural work for our parts, we will. At the moment
| it's not core.
| AftHurrahWinch wrote:
| Structural Engineer is a type of Civil Engineer.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_engineering
| kevinmpeterson wrote:
| Ah I misread. We're working very very closely with design
| partners/customers for that side right now - they do more
| civil work than we will ever do and are happy to help us.
| We also have advisors who are in the civil space.
| dolebirchwood wrote:
| Small piece of feedback: It takes far too much scrolling to get
| to the list of open roles. Maybe that's deliberate, so you know
| your applicants are truly serious about working for you, but I
| could see a lot of potentially highly-qualified candidates just
| dropping off due to plain annoyance.
| 93po wrote:
| to add to this, hijacking default scrolling behavior is such
| a massive no-no and super freaking annoying. it's also
| problematic for accessibility reasons.
| chaosbutters314 wrote:
| make robots that cnc cut brick to cover the ugly ass houses
| around the US
| kevinmpeterson wrote:
| Cool idea
| torginus wrote:
| This is more of an open-ended question, but do you think there
| will be a sure in traditional (non-software) engineering
| demand, as well as software engineering in more of a hands-on
| hardware context?
| kevinmpeterson wrote:
| Couple of thoughts here:
|
| Software engineering IMO is alive and well, we're just going
| faster. Job will shift with AI, but that happened with
| compilers, etc. Clever engineers will continue to build.
| Going faster could mean you mean fewer SWEs, but could also
| mean you just go faster and build more things. If we go
| faster, the next thing will be down the chain (enough
| compute, enough hardware to work on). Since AI has always
| been insanely software bottlnecked, if it goes faster yeah
| there will be more jobs.
|
| Robotics works now! We should build more robots! Some of the
| best companies in the next decade will for sure be building
| some of the robots from Star Wars and the Jetsons. This will
| be heavy on hardware. Outside of robots, hardware will change
| too - no idea if Meta's glasses are the best thing, but
| certainly the iPhone format isn't AI native. This will be new
| hardware, and we'll need smart objects everywhere in our
| lives (car, home, etc). Will be very cool and definitely more
| hardware oriented.
| Symmetry wrote:
| Are you planning on having these robots work collaboratively
| alongside humans? Or something more complicated like only
| driving near humans to start with but digging near them being a
| longer term goal?
| kevinmpeterson wrote:
| They will work collaboratively with people
| maCDzP wrote:
| This looks cool. So this is extending the tech from
| Trimble/Topcon with LiDAR in order to have a fully autonomous
| excavator?
|
| How would I handle faulty geotechnical surveys? It has happened
| several times that the trench caved in and the operator saved a
| persons life.
| kevinmpeterson wrote:
| We don't have any relationship with Trimble or Topcon, but
| yes much more advanced capabilities on the machine. On
| caving/shoring - ideally we avoid having people in at least
| some of the trenches... if you can dig a trench and lay a
| pipe down without manipulating it by (human) hand, then
| trench collapse is less of an issue. Obviously doesn't work
| for everything, but we have LIDAR on board, so we can handle
| surveying remotely without someone standing in a cut with a
| stick.
|
| Faulty geotechnical - I'd be interested in understanding how
| the operator helped here. Will take time, but anything the
| operator is doing (watching subsidance, feeling the ground,
| watching a wall collapse, confirming that the ground is
| actually what you think it is), will be doable with the
| sensors we have on board. The operator we're building will
| have many lifetimes of experience, so will be able to learn
| things that even the best operators can't. We saw this at
| Waymo (now at 100 million miles!!!!) - it seems like magic,
| but if you had 1000 lifetimes of experience, you'd be
| incredibly good at very subtle things like this.
| waynenilsen wrote:
| do you see a change in the machinery landscape due to the
| removal of humans?
| to11mtm wrote:
| Semi-shitpost, but Bedrock at this point has hit 'lazy name' tier
| for projects/startups...
| y1n0 wrote:
| Seems appropriate for a construction related company.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| I could see this really accelerating strip mining or
| deforestation in places where there either isn't a lot of local
| opposition or there is a favorable regulatory environment. It
| makes me wonder if Tinto is an investor.
| ripped_britches wrote:
| Banks generally aren't allowed to finance strip mining
|
| Deforestation is usually bottlenecked by major multi-million
| dollar equipment, not hourly unskilled laborers
| beanjuiceII wrote:
| but they didn't even automate cars yet
| mNovak wrote:
| From the imagery, they seem to be focused on earthmoving. Some
| cursory googling indicates an excavator operator can cost on the
| order of $1000/day (to the end customer, presumably less to an
| owner-operator). For some loose context, a slab-on-grade
| warehouse project I was distantly involved with a couple years
| back budgeted some $3.5M of sitework (includes other things than
| just earthmoving), which was about 10% of the total construction
| cost.
|
| Plug in your own longevity and uptime assumptions, but if that
| roof-mount kit costs on the order of $50k, it seems viable.
| achatham wrote:
| And imagine a hypothetical project that's 75% excavation. It'd
| never be built today, but if excavation gets cheaper the
| project could be feasible.
|
| And then an explosion of underground bunkers and volcano lairs.
| stego-tech wrote:
| This feels more plausible for long-term success than Waymo for a
| number of reasons:
|
| * Construction sites are smaller in footprint
|
| * They're more easily covered in sensor networks to support
| autonomous operations
|
| * They're typically controlled-access environments, which reduces
| potential interruptions to automated routines
|
| * Since they have higher risk profiles than public
| infrastructure, the expectation is that workers will be more
| aware of autonomous operations and any deviations before they
| cause serious harm
|
| Honestly, I'd wager closed-site autonomy takes off before anyone
| nails national or global self-driving on existing infrastructure.
| whatever1 wrote:
| The flip side is that they work with a lot more degrees of
| freedom (a car has just steering and speed to adjust), very
| diverse machinery and a ton more exceptions that need to be
| handled frequently
| stego-tech wrote:
| True, but they have more freedom to attack low-hanging fruits
| and build capabilities in order of ease. With a self-driving
| car, there's not a whole lot of iteration allowed - you have
| your capital to do R&D, but eventually investors expect that
| car to drive on public roads without incident or support,
| something nobody can do at the moment.
|
| For construction sites, on the other hand, you could (more)
| easily automate things like dump trucks or material
| transports using preprogrammed routes and manual triggers
| when something is done or needed. Then you can iterate on
| those systems to add more capabilities, more automations,
| more integrations with other equipment.
|
| Kind of like how tractors have iteratively improved over time
| because they benefit from a lot of the same limitations as
| construction sites. At least that's my thinking on it.
| whatever1 wrote:
| Definitely they can keep slicing the problem and deliver
| viable solutions within the boundary specified.
|
| I just don't think that a single solution will cover the
| full suite of construction site machinery. Scaling will be
| tough. But as you said they will be printing cash in the
| meantime.
| tetha wrote:
| There are btw modern tractors that can drive autonomously
| on the fields. You configure the GPS coordinates of the
| field and the tractor can do various routes and patterns
| through the field on it's own. You're just not allowed to
| leave the wheel alone with current laws.
| Duanemclemore wrote:
| I'm an architect. Well really now an architecture professor who
| (elevator pitch) writes computational tools to implement
| sophisticated geometries in advanced fabrication...
|
| That's all to say I want advancements in jobsite automation
| desperately. But it's WAY harder than people from other domains
| think. Imagine driving on a road while you're also building it
| while others are doing both around you too...
|
| These folks seem to be concentrating at the moment on excavation
| which (without looking) if I recall is already a pretty active
| and developed in terms of automation. But get out of the ground
| and you hit some pretty big issues pretty quick. To get a sense,
| heres's one of my go-to articles when people wonder about jobsite
| automation...
|
| https://www.construction-physics.com/p/where-are-the-robotic...
| brudgers wrote:
| Construction is dominated by scheduling. The high bit of
| construction scheduling looks a lot like job shop scheduling
| and job shop scheduling is NP Hard. To the degree that is true,
| there are no generic optimization algorithms.
|
| But like all real world optimization problems, better solutions
| based on the specific nature of the inputs are usually
| possible.
|
| In the case of construction scheduling, relationships are the
| most likely route to optimization. You can dig all night long,
| but if the plumber does't show up in the morning to lay pipe,
| your schedule is not improved and the plumber shows up in the
| morning at your job site because of the long term business
| relationship across many projects instead of some other
| jobsite.
|
| [I practiced architecture in the past. Everything takes as long
| as it takes].
| Sophistifunk wrote:
| The wasted time and money in construction comes entirely from two
| places: a small percentage of crooked builders (and their local
| council mates), and the bureaucracy that is trying to protect the
| citizens from same. Big brother puts in a lot of hoop-jumps
| standards and supposed checks and balances that end up creating
| massive delays and costs for the consumer, but the actual
| standards (while usually quite sensible) are easily sidestepped
| by the crooked builders, so the war continues, and the overhead
| constantly increases with the usual expansion-only government
| regulation ratchet.
|
| None of these things are susceptible to "AI" and other such
| automation. We have had prefab construction for decades.
| jmyeet wrote:
| Automation will break the back of capitalism. That's a good
| thing. But it's going to get very bad before that happens.
|
| There are a ton of jobs that should be automated like working in
| an Amazon warehouse. Automation can go one of two ways: it can
| make all of our lives easier or it can displace the workforce and
| suppress the wages of those who remain so those are the very top
| can have $250 billion isntead of $200 billion.
|
| Those displaced will be told to find new jobs and that will work
| for a time with considerable personal hardship for those
| affected. We've seen the impacts of this with manufacturing jobs
| being shipped overseas from the Rust Belt, for example. But at
| some point we'll start to run out of jobs for people to go. And
| then things will get very, very bad.
|
| I imagine a distant future where food is grown with automation,
| houses will be built that way, robots will pick up the trash and
| so on. This will leave people to find more meaningful pursuits.
| But this will require the ultra-wealthy to share and history has
| taught us that this will get bloody.
|
| Instead we'll face a future where companies will fail because
| there simply aren't customers because nobody can afford anything.
|
| I welcome less labor intensive constructions but construction is
| a significant (~20%?) sector of the economy. The potential for
| negative impacts from such mass layoffs is enormous.
|
| and as others have mentioned: there's a ton of cost built in that
| really comes down to corruption and overcoming NIMBYism.
| thelastgallon wrote:
| First, real estate in US designed to be the sink for excess money
| globally gained by nefarious means, sell and make the money
| clean.
|
| Second, all the prep work before actual construction costs the
| same regardless of the size of the home. Its profitable for
| builders to build large homes (cheaper per square foot) and sell
| them at a premium.
|
| Third, zoning laws that make anything thats not a SFH mostly
| illegal to build.
|
| Fourth, manufactured homes are illegal in most areas.
|
| Finally, The building codes are localized to each county, there
| is no federal/state building code.
|
| As long as these perverse incentives exist, costs are not going
| to come down.
| nikolayasdf123 wrote:
| robotic construction is going to be big. 99.9% of what is
| constructed will be constructed by robots
| nikolayasdf123 wrote:
| soon you submit YAML and get something build in physical world
| svag wrote:
| So is this like https://comma.ai/ but for bigger vehicles?
| OkPin wrote:
| What's interesting here isn't just the move from self-driving
| cars to construction, it's how Bedrock is betting that autonomy
| will take off faster in industries where safety, labor shortages
| and cost pressures already demand it.
| tartoran wrote:
| Safety becomes a non issue when no humans are involved.
| pilaf wrote:
| This is tangential, but I recommend Katsushiro Otomo's (of Akira
| fame) dystopian take on large-scale automated construction, the
| short movie Construction Cancellation Order, part of an anthology
| known in the west as Neo Tokyo[1], released in 1987 (Akira was
| released in 1988).
|
| I won't link to it here, but it seems someone uploaded it to
| archive.org (most likely illegally).
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo_Tokyo_(film)
| skatanski wrote:
| This to me vibes with the world of manga Blame by Tsutomu
| Nihei. In it large automata, have been building the mega
| structure long after biological humans are gone. The structure
| already encompasses the moon, and they are still building. Cool
| concept, which goes well together with the architecture
| background of the author.
| beskababan wrote:
| Ty
| mycatisblack wrote:
| Near-topic: does anyone know of automated deconstruction
| attempts? i.e. dented car goe in one end, parts come out the
| other?
| lnsru wrote:
| I love science fiction, so I could imagine decomposition
| machine where dented car goes in and buckets with
| rubber/plastic/steel/copper/aluminium/glass come out. Identify
| materials and cut them piece by piece should be doable.
| Identifying individual greasy parts and removing them maybe in
| 25 years.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| Looked at the linkedIn career paths in the profiles. Nobody there
| worked in construction before this. They may have hired some
| domain experts, but i doubt they will get it together.
|
| Especially, as automated construction has very little to do with
| "copy human" constructors and replicate and all todo with
| abstract the environment away and get it done. Meaning, you will
| want classic autonomy with excavators and trucks and concrete
| trucks - until you have poured the base plate for a house.
|
| Then the best approach still is, to have basically a factory for
| pre-built components and assemble them on site. The "doing
| constructor things" with machines on site- does not scale.
| ironman1478 wrote:
| I'm skeptical of the plan to provide a "kit" that can be put on
| arbitrary construction vehicles. I think Cruise tried something
| similar with personal vehicles and quickly learned it really
| could only build a system for a specific vehicle. There are tons
| of complexities associated with mounting of sensors and
| interfacing with the vehicle specific control systems.
|
| Not saying it can't be done, but I wouldn't be surprised if the
| company has to pivot to supporting a subset of their goal and
| then gets bought out by some larger company to work on their line
| of construction vehicles.
| poly2it wrote:
| It might be easier to collaborate with an established producer
| of a specific vehicle and create a partially custom vehicle
| from the same "car platform".
| foobiekr wrote:
| It is not. These companies are actively hostile to this sort
| of thing and with good reason: muddy liability in a context
| where people can be injured, maimed, crippled and killed.
|
| The "add on" thing belongs in he list of tarpit ideas.
| Watching Cruise and Ghost Automation flail about for years
| vaporizing cash trapped on this idea was like watching a
| comedy.
| ironman1478 wrote:
| Waymo did it successfully with the Jaguars. I think the
| idea is that the VC environment isn't conducive to this
| type of work (I worked for Cruise). The companies grew too
| big too fast b/c they need to show results to investors.
| This forced them to invest in custom hardware before they
| even knew how to solve many of the fundamental problems and
| got their software stack in order.
|
| Waymo got away with what they did b/c they stayed focused
| and didn't grow too big, but they could only do that
| because they had Google to finance them.
| foobiekr wrote:
| Waymo didn't do it for anyone else's gear. They own it
| all. The liability is all on Waymo.
|
| Traffic laws are a hell of a lot more lax than the
| situation around on the job injuries.
| poly2it wrote:
| Is this site built in some futuristic new framework? Why does it
| not allow scrolling at an adaptable speed on mobile?
| AndyMcConachie wrote:
| There are already so many specialized machines in construction.
| When I was a kid I thought we needed exo-skeletons. Then I
| watched modern construction happen and realized we already have
| all these wild Bobcat like machines doing all the heavy lifting
| that humans have done in the past.
|
| I guess it's cheaper to use a computer to drive a Bobcat than a
| human driver. But I wonder if the cost is worth the loss in
| immediate knowledge and speed. There's no way a computer is going
| to be faster than a human while also being safe. So I have my
| doubts.
| amelius wrote:
| I'm still waiting for a robot that can put a LEGO model together,
| given nothing but the bricks and the instruction booklet.
| Aeroi wrote:
| I've been building a voice+vision AI assistant for tradesman,
| industrial services, and DIY consumers the last 8 months.
|
| It streams vision+voice+text+spatial data to a multimodal llm, to
| help users solve problems on the job. Basically a "Cursor" for
| tradesman. Most of my work now has been figuring out what to put
| in the context window, when, and how to provide the best
| deterministic response.
|
| This assistant is a bridge between where we are now (little to no
| tech for these guys) and where the future will be (robotic
| automation). I think the in between stage will be a significantly
| longer timeframe than people realize, and I hope my app can
| provide value to these guys while they work. www.camerasearch.ai
| xnx wrote:
| Look like Caterpillar has been doing some of this too:
| https://www.cat.com/en_US/news/machine-press-releases/caterp...
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| An old idea for colonization of the solar system is to create a
| self-replicating machine that just goes and carves out
| settlements for settlers.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_spacecraft#Vo...
| cstanley wrote:
| Did these guys just kill their QSBS status by raising 80m instead
| of 75?
|
| Cool idea, but a lot cooler to be able to attract talent with
| QSBS stock
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