Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 <inaudible>
Speaker 1 00:00:11 Good morning, LinkedIn community. Welcome to another exciting and riveting episode of copy of the CIM and James, you know, me, you know, I'm a little animated. I like to, you know, show emotions and such like I do. And let me ready for this one, James. Ready? I've been trembling with anticipation where this episode trembling with anticipation. Let me bring my brother in arms in Mr. James Cross. James, how are you? This fine and beautiful day,
Speaker 2 00:00:46 Man. I'm trembling. I think excitement, uh, that, that might be the worst one. Edward, um, Jim I'm, I'm happy. I'm happy that the intro is over and I'm happy to have Mark with us from tremble. Mark, can you say your last name? Because every time I feel like I add four more vowels to it. Well, that's, that's a, that's interesting because it's happened my entire life. So I'll, I'll I'll I hope I can say it right. Uh, fear Rita, think of, kind of like margarita. I got, I'll never forget that Mark is joined news from tremble. Uh, he, uh, I don't even know the first time I met Mark, um, somewhere out on the road somewhere. Um, and, uh, and, and we talked him into being a part of our conference one year. So I've saw him there. I don't think you were at our last one. Where are you? Mark was not to miss that one. Well, it was the best one ever. Um, you totally missed it, but, uh, Mark's a good friend of ours. Uh, we're pumped to have him on board. Uh, I don't know about you, Jimmy. I'm just pumped as I am. I'm still trembling.
Speaker 1 00:01:54 Absolutely. No, you know, it's, it's great. Having our friends on that share so much industry knowledge and expertise. I was absolutely looking forward to this episode. Let's dive into it. Um, Trimble, uh, give us an overview, let our, let our viewers understand what Trimble's about and, uh, some of the great things that you are doing in the industry.
Speaker 2 00:02:19 Absolutely. Well, first of all, I'm sure you guys get this all the time, but my disclaimer is, um, I've got three kids and two dogs. I sounds like two or three of them are down here right now. And I don't know which ones, so, uh, well, we'll keep rolling with it, but I'm sure you guys are used to these, uh, these types of interruptions and odd background noises. So this was not being any different time. Couldn't get loud. And, uh, as you Jim animated, well,
Speaker 1 00:02:45 Virtual world, this is the world that we're all in right now. So it's perfectly great. Sir.
Speaker 2 00:02:52 Feels like a news anchor on Mark. I usually have to go around my house before we record these and just all the streaming off my son's playing fortnight, you know, my daughter's on YouTube or something and I just go around. Everyone hates me when it's conference in Jamestown.
Speaker 3 00:03:08 Yeah, we can strain. Well, perfect. So Trimble is, um, uh, it's a pretty cool story. If you think about, uh, comparison to, to Apple or even Microsoft, we were founded about the same time. All those things were happening, um, in the same area, um, we bought, uh, this guy, Charlie Turnbull bought the rights to GPS through, uh, this company. You may have heard of Hewlett Packard. Uh, they decided they didn't think that anybody was ever going to use GPS in the civilian world. Charlie said, Hey, I'll do it, bought it. Uh, started building GPS devices in his garage. Sounds eerily familiar, right? Fast forward, 42 years later. Uh, we're not just a, uh, GPS company. We're a geospatial company. And really what we care about is spatial components, right? Uh, it's a spatial world, spatial intelligence, spatial knowledge, spatial awareness, as it relates to the guest industry.
Speaker 3 00:04:06 It's where are my assets? What is my asset? How do I get to my asset? And how do I gather information about that asset? Now that could be existing already in the ground. It could be, we're putting it in the ground a more, it could be the above ground assets in any of those scenarios. It's about the gathering of information in the field, which we'll refer to this field data collection through a technology that, or a, uh, solutions that we have called gas ops. Um, and then utilizing our GNSS or GPS devices, um, either on your phone or through one of our mobile devices and really being able to take that data and get it back into the office and do something with that data because collecting data is one thing, doing something with it is, is a whole different animal.
Speaker 2 00:04:54 No doubt, Mark you, um, uh, I've got a funny story about Trimble, but I'll tell first because that's what we do. I think, um, I didn't know how big Trimble was and, and how much, you know, where all the fingers were, you know, when you say, you know, everywhere and everything. So I was in Colorado, went on a family trip. We were just North of Denver. I forget exactly where, but we were in a big five-star hotel when we were just staying there for a couple nights before we head back and we walk into this hotel and out front, it was, uh, it, there was the Trimble logo, just as big as it can be. And I thought, what in the world, you know, and, and w Mark, you and I were actually working on something at the time. And, and so I was blown away and I walked in and I realized that it was the tremble conference for the farming side of, uh, the Trimble organization.
Speaker 2 00:05:52 And I did, uh, aside that I had no clue even existed at the time. And so I went through and I rode the elevator up with, with some guys and, you know, ask them what they were here. So I've got kind of the 30,000 foot view, but I was blown away when I, when I saw really the reach of what Trimble does. Um, will you dive in a little deeper, you know, obviously our show is really focused on the natural gas side. Um, that's why we're here, but can you talk a little bit about the gas ops, uh, portion of, of what you guys do?
Speaker 3 00:06:22 Absolutely. So several years ago, several, all the years run together anymore, right? So ultimately what happened was, um, we were exploring the natural gas market to understand why decisions were made, what drove the, the gas market. So I got a background in electrical, electric distribution, um, and so didn't really have that much knowledge in the, in the gas distribution space. So we wanted to research and understand, well, where do we need to play? Where are we best suited to play with the tools that we have now? And what are the gaps? So we can think about what tomorrow looks like long story short. This was probably circa 2012, 13 found out about tracking traceability, and we'd already done something similar with another solution set for the water side of the business. Um, and so from that, it just kind of started to build, we started to understand where the, where our current technology fit.
Speaker 3 00:07:16 Well, it fits pretty well. The problem is we don't address some of these specific gas utility scenarios. And in particular, it's more from the compliance side, because I think attracting traceability, that's compliance, we got involved with you guys from an OCU perspective, again, from a compliance scenario. Then we started investigating other, uh, vendors, uh, leak detection, devices that our manufacturers, um, um, uh, locate manufacturers. And so what we did was we took, um, we took all that intelligence and we released a triple gas ops in 2016, uh, to be compliant with the tracking traceability, uh, OCU certifications, as far as gathering that information, we don't manage any of that. And then integrations with, with, um, organizations like, uh, Heath, and then in some of their leak detection devices, um, buybacks Metro tech, while we have some integrations with, um, um, um, their, uh, locate devices.
Speaker 3 00:08:13 Um, and then looking at, you know, how do we continue to build this out, right? Because routine inspections have in their scheduling scenario. So it's not just digital as-builts for new construction or pipeline replacement or repair. It's managing that all of that field work that could be done because the data collection can also be red lining, right? And so we packaged all this stuff into a mobile platform, and this mobile platform allows you to do whatever it is you want to do from a field data collection side, and then spin that data back into what call it system of record, but it could be GIS. It could be asset management. It could be both depending on how you want to disseminate that information.
Speaker 4 00:08:54 That's fascinating, Mark. And I,
Speaker 1 00:08:56 I tell you, you've hit on a few things. I've seen multiple presentations that you've given over the years, and again, you do a fantastic job with laying this out. And some of the, the, you know, we're littered with acronyms in our industry, which is wonderful GIS, G N S S other items. Can you, uh, break that down for me? I know James gets it, but me, I'm going to need to get a little bit clearer on that if you could. And then I do have a follow-up to when you, you mentioned that that whole safety measure, uh, thing, w w we've had some folks on from eight one one in the past. I, and I believe that you guys all connect the dots with that. So kind of a two-part question.
Speaker 3 00:09:35 Yeah. So, so I'll start with the, the, the last question, the dressing, the eight one, one aspect. So, um, think of, of GPS global positioning systems. And then I use the word GNSS. Basically what we do is we change the acronym, right? So GPS and GNSS, they're the exact same thing. Only GNSS means global navigation networks system. Right? So it's same thing, right? Just think of those as the same thing. But ultimately, if we think about the asset, um, the location where it actually is, is the foundation. So we think about this as building a house, the most important thing when you bought the house is what foundation we can put the founder, you can have a solid foundation, and then you can have lesser. Um, you don't have to have all brick, all stone as a facade, right? It could be wood, it could be paneling, but whatever you want bottom line is, is, is it's that foundation.
Speaker 3 00:10:28 Well, the GPS location of the asset is the same scenario. And when you do that out of the gate, in today's world, they come back the ability to use your cell phone with, um, a software that gave you some meter, even sub foot GPS, accuracy. Think about that concept, right? That's pretty cool. You could go out and your phone and say, all right, show me where I am. Where's my asset. And then if you could actually take that component when you got to your location, and you could turn that into an augmented reality solution. So think of the way that that impacts damage prevention, right? Because seeing is believing when you know that it's within four to six inches of its actual location or greater your locate one becomes a simpler tool to use because you can see it there. Boom, there it is. You know what you're locating.
Speaker 3 00:11:18 So that's really how we tie these things together. So that's the answer. The last part first, the first part is we're talking about maps and all this stuff think about Google maps. We use GIS, which is geographic information systems. And I was actually talking to a, um, uh, uh, a fellow the other day. Who's just in the college. Doesn't really know what he wants to do. So, so we start talking about GIS. He didn't know either, but I said, you use GIS today. If, uh, if you want to know where the gas closest gas station is in the city, that you don't know, what are you going to do? You open up your map, right? Whereas Chevron, or, um, if you and this actually happened to me, I was in a, I was in Europe and I packed everything I needed except a belt. I got go wear a belt.
Speaker 3 00:12:04 I don't know where to go. So what do I do? I open up my map and I say, men's belt. Cause that's what I need. It showed me three or four stores that were within a certain distance. And I was like, all right, I can walk to those. I can walk to that store and get back. Wait, two of them are closed. One of them was open. Boom. That's where I'm going. It was a five minute walk. That's the that's utilizing GIS because it's think of, like I say, Google maps with, instead of having gas stations, stores, and all these other things we searched for, uh, the buried infrastructure. And in this case, what we would be looking for is a very valve or maybe a specific foreign tap farm tap with a unique identifier, right. Or I need to get to this gate station or this rectifier. So that's really what GIS is, is layered data that has facial intelligence. And then it's relative to where you are because at the end of the day, I want to know how to get to it. When I get there, I need to know how close I am to it. Does that help?
Speaker 1 00:12:59 Yeah, it absolutely helped me. I know James already knows this stuff, but, uh, absolutely.
Speaker 3 00:13:04 Um, actually, um, I refined this, this concept in a, in a presentation I did, um, at SGA a couple of years ago because it kinda hit me. Um, I had used, um, I'd used, uh, another map solution or I would do a search and it would take me to the wrong place. How frustrating is that? And the way that I correlated that was if you're a Google maps and you're constantly searching for things that when you get there, they're not there. Or they're a mile down the road where there are costs to straight another thousand feet. How frustrated do you get with using it? You're pretty frustrated to the point like this is useless. I don't even use it. Or what we see in the utility industry is those are the maps that people use today. And when you incorporate GPS, where I am with those inaccurate assets, that's the same effect. Right? You get there, it's, McDonald's, isn't here. I don't even see a McDonald's. This is, this is what I needed. Right. And so that's where the challenge comes in, but that's an easy way to pour light and bridge these two gaps. Right. Because at that, and then McDonald's been GPS located, you would have been able to get right to it. No problem. Front door, you know, you just seen it. You didn't know normally you were going, but because you continue to have these challenges, it removes the ability or leaving the possibility to utilize GPS.
Speaker 2 00:14:21 Dude, Mark's a nerd man. That was an impressive tangent. That's one of my favorite things about this show, uh, is that right there, give him a C into somebody's head like that. Mark, uh, you talked about the compliance ecosystem and where Trimble fits into it, where, you know, tracking and traceability fits into it. You talk a little bit about that and what that means to our industry.
Speaker 3 00:14:50 Yeah. I think, you know, there, there is a compliance ecosystem, right. And really at tremble, we're thinking about this ecosystem from a solution perspective, right? So yeah, you got the field things you have to do, but that data has to come back in and you have to do things with that as well. Um, you know, you want to do analysis, uh, in our business RBA, right? Risk makes analysis. Where's my highest risk. Why is it my highest risk? And then what am I going to do to mitigate those risks? Right? We'll through our solution set. So we even have, we even have, uh, devices that re uh, monitor pressure and flow for, uh, gas utilities that can report that information back. And so over pressurized means is, is a, is a big topic and a big focus for us, right? Well, that data can feed back in from the same platform.
Speaker 3 00:15:39 And then you can do all your data collection. I still think of that as a data collection, you're gathering data from the field and then the day they can come back in and we can utilize other toolsets that we have, um, that feed this ecosystem. So if we think about the, the routine inspections, right, um, um, even maintenance activities, right? To me, that's part of compliance. And so what I've seen is, is there are always different pieces and parts to this ecosystem. What we're working towards is this ecosystem that still has those pieces and parts, but it's covered under one platform that allows you to do a lot of different things. Instead of, uh, this is my favorite example. Um, most of the utilities and the guests that, that we talk to will have in the neighborhood of five to six mobile solutions. And generally one of those is specific to delete survey. So
Speaker 5 00:16:29 You do as the survey with this, what we might do a little bit of Chrome.
Speaker 3 00:16:34 So now you have resources that are supporting these multiple mobile solutions, right? What if you could do it all? And I mean, you don't have to, and everybody's got their eggs in different baskets, and that's cool, but having this ability to, to have this communication and bridge, all of these other solutions sets together, I talked a little bit about asset management, pork management, right? So, and in the utility world, we work through work orders.
Speaker 5 00:17:00 You can call them work orders, service orders, work, ticket, work, project,
Speaker 3 00:17:04 Whatever, but it's the same concept.
Speaker 5 00:17:06 There's a system that creates that work order
Speaker 3 00:17:08 And being able to consume digest and disseminate that information to the field is huge. And so that's really where we come into this ecosystem is, is being able to offer up a solution, um, that can be, uh, uh, modular. So maybe you only want it for leak survey. That's cool, but it can do all of these other things that can handle all of your field activities. And then also take that data and you can start to be active with it. We talk about it as a system of action, right? Because ultimately that's what we want in the gas space. We want to be, um, react. We don't want to be reactive. We want be proactive, right? And the way we can do that is by getting embedded better data in the, so that we make better decisions based off a better analysis based on that better data. So it becomes a system of action. I've got that together. Is this dilutions, no,
Speaker 2 00:18:01 James, I know where your mind is going. I know you brother, and I'm telling you the passion that is bleeding out from Mark and all this invigorating. I love, I love the proactive, you know, finishing that with the proactive stance and talk about that all the time. You know, we've unfortunately our industry, you know, years and years back, you know, we weren't as proactive. I think, you know, big operators, contractors, a lot of us that are on the, you know, the service side of it are looking at ways to really provide solutions that, that put us in a proactive state across the industry. And so hearing that from you, Mark, and you guys being a leader, obviously in what you're doing, that's, uh, that's what we'd like to hear, but Mark, I'm going to ask you a question I want you to think about, I want you to think about our industry, your role Trimble's role, all of us, right. Um, you love what you do, Mark.
Speaker 3 00:19:06 I do immensely. Y Y um, I'm gonna, I'm gonna be a bit long winded here, but ultimately after. So, so I came from the field. Um, I did GPS, uh, so I've been doing this line of work GPS. Uh, we'll start at the top utilities, GPS GIS it really in that order. Um, but I started as a, as a field data technician, whatever that meant then, but I did GPS data collection for utilities that are all over the country, South Florida. My brains are all over the, uh, um, um, the swamps of Florida, right. Um, and even in Texas, my brains are all over the Hill country. And I spent a good bit of time about a year and a half, uh, in, uh, in parts of Austin and San Antonio, Texas doing data collection. And then I've done it, um, Alaska, and there's not many States I haven't touched in that realm.
Speaker 3 00:20:04 Right. And so one of the things that I started doing was I was, I became responsible for, uh, GPS, um, product sales and training for our customers. And so what I would do is that what asked him, you know, I would go through a series of questions. I was diagnosing what it is they wanted to accomplish, but I was a certain, I was, I was a field guy, man. I'm not a sales guy. Right? Fast forward. I got into the sales aspect of it. And I had a mentor who used to tell me lies. Uh, no, no, no, you're not in sales. You're not in sales. But in fact I was, we were Trimble business partners and I sold, sold the Trumbull product. I had to train on it. And then any implementations I had to do, or I had to partner with organizations, uh, luckily one of my, one of my best skill sets is networking.
Speaker 3 00:20:52 Um, so I had those contexts to do those other things. Um, what I learned was I really enjoyed diagnosing, Oh, I'm really good at asking questions and I love doing it. But I think the bigger thing is I love helping people. And so that's, that's really the thing for me. If I don't believe in a product or a tool it's really hard for me to try to sell you on it, because why am I going to sell you on something? I don't even like myself now. I believe in the product I use the product. I buy the product myself or in Trimble's case, I would, um, then it becomes an easier scenario, but I also knew the ins and outs. I knew the field side of the work, right. Because as I, as I, even today, if I'm doing a training, which I am in sales, but also do trainings, um, giving, giving somebody a GPS with the, even if it's on a phone, right.
Speaker 3 00:21:44 And then in the, the solution set, that's not the same as giving them a shovel. You give somebody to shovel in one. Well, how deep, how wide you give somebody a GPS tool, uh, with a software on it. Now you've got some trouble shooting because GPS isn't it. It's man-made, we, we tend to forget that, right? It's kind of like the internet as an example. Uh, you go without the internet for two days, four days, you're questioning whether water is more important or the internet, right. Because especially like we stream now, we don't have cable. So that means we don't have TV. So the point there is, um, what I do is, is I like working with people. And when I got involved in the gas industry, seven, eight years ago, uh, I quite literally fell in love. And I'm, I'm what they call an opportunist.
Speaker 3 00:22:29 Um, I'm really good at identifying opportunities and, and trembles in business to make money. Let's make no mistake about that. But at the end of the day, it was about learning. Um, and I learned something every day. I love it. Um, I, I, if I had to go back to the electric side, no offense to any of the electric people out there. Um, I w I wouldn't be like pulling teeth. I have really fallen in love with the natural gas side of the business. Um, and it's, it's, it's, I've taken that same passion for educating myself learning, um, and then trying to get trembled in a position, um, from my division to help, um, help bridge these technological gaps that we know that exist, right? Because so many times it's, well, that costs something that costs something not really cost says, I get nothing back ROI. When you have an investment. Now you're getting something back. And I won't argue with anybody, and I believe I'd be successful in this. If you buy GPS technology, you're not, you're not, it's not costing you something, and you're going to get a return on it based on one incident, uh, at two o'clock in the morning on Christmas Eve, that, that scenario right there pays for itself.
Speaker 6 00:23:42 You know what? I might need another coffee after that.
Speaker 1 00:23:46 And I, you though, I've known Mark for years. And, and that's my favorite question we ask at every episode, do you love what you do? And I, as I was trembling or trembling with it,
Speaker 2 00:23:58 Um, ruined it.
Speaker 1 00:23:59 I kind of a Southern my mind, but that was the about Mark. You, you hit on some things that absolutely resonate with James and I, and the industry relationships networking. A lot of times we don't sell in the industry we educate. And when we can educate the people, we'll good process, a safe process to help our industry be safer. The return is like you said, one incident. If we can, we can change one person to be safe for one day. And that goes to another person, another person we're doing the right things. And, um,
Speaker 2 00:24:31 I, I do want to add one last thing. And that is that, um, even though Mark hates the electric side of the business now, uh, the show coffee with Jim James and totally does not feel that way. And Mark does not represent us now. I'm just kidding. Hopefully things continue down this path and no one trembled, they'll probably buy all the electric in the entire world or something. And you guys will be on that side of the business to Mark you. You've been an awesome guest. Uh, Jim, I'll let you do a corny ultra, if you want to,
Speaker 1 00:25:11 Uh, why not? I it's it's, uh, the highlight of my day is doing something corny, but you know, Mark again, we're all friends. Thank you so much for taking the time to join us today. We appreciate it. I think we absolutely shared some critical information for our audience to understand your world a little bit better. Understand if you're humble, understand all the values that you bring to our industries with safety in my, you know, when I hear your name, when I see your presentations, I think of safety as, as the cornerstone to everything that you folks do, you want our, our people, our industry, to be safer. We can't thank you enough for that truly. Um, I'll encourage all of our audience to please connect with Mark. Uh, he's a great guy, uh, as you can see, he loves to talk. So if you have any questions about his and his world do connect with him, follow Trimble, they're a great company. Um, do all those things. If you're not following James and I come on here, hit that connect button and we'll, uh, we'll connect. So until next week on behalf of this, well, two nerds and a guy that just likes to be goofy. We thank you so much. God bless you. God bless our industry. Stay safe, and we'll see you on the next episode of coffee, him and James powered by energy world net.
Speaker 0 00:26:24 Take care.
Speaker 2 00:26:25 Thanks Mark. Thanks guys.
Speaker 1 00:26:29 Well, you could say any, anything else or we're done, I think right James. We're good. Yeah, we're good.
Speaker 0 00:26:36 <inaudible>.
