The Best Construction Tech Rarely Wins. Here's What Does.

Elliot Christiansen · Senior Vice President of Operations · Cleveland Construction

In this episode, Elliot Christiansen shares his strategic approach to technology adoption in construction, emphasizing leadership, pilot management, and data-driven decision making. Discover how intentional pilot programs and strong leadership can transform construction workflows and improve ROI. Today's Guest: Elliot Christiansen Elliot Christiansen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elliot-christiansen/ Episode Sponsors: Check Out Trunk Tools: https://trunktools.com/ Check Out ClearStory: https://www.clearstory.build/ Check Out Document Crunch: https://www.documentcrunch.com/

1. 00:00Meet Elliot and co-host Lars
2. 01:39Why executives must roll up their sleeves on pilots
3. 03:47OpenSpace and the weekly walk as job documentation
4. 05:41Trunk Tools pilots and straight-line submittal time savings
5. 09:48What a good vendor pilot looks like
6. 15:11Initiative fatigue and switching Procore to Autodesk
7. 26:30Measuring ROI across the tech stack
8. 31:40Picking detractors and champions for pilots
9. 38:24Taking vendor calls and advice for salespeople
10. 50:25The 2015 Procore pilot and career lessons

Timestamps are from the recording and may drift a minute or two from the published edit.

"If I'm gonna put my name behind it, then I'm gonna be involved in it throughout the rollout, throughout the pilot process."

Elliot Christiansen · 02:30

"Superintendents are very skeptical people. They're gonna ask a question and it's gonna give them an answer and they're still gonna check. So it's not necessarily always saving them time until they get to the point where they trust the answers."

Elliot Christiansen · 17:43

"If their product only does one thing, it's probably not something that we're gonna look for. We don't want twenty point solutions. We wanna have a couple things in our tech stack that work really well and solve several problems each."

Elliot Christiansen · 40:30