Joe Annino 15:31
Oh, yeah, they won’t have to stand in the corner.
Greg Owens 15:33
Yeah. Yeah. So are you seeing what else are you seeing? Or what are you hearing from your client? Like, sort of needs and wants, and the opportunities coming up here in 2021?
Joe Annino 15:48
You know, I would say it’s, it’s kind of the same for everyone is they want the best skilled people that, you know, the market can offer them. And I would say that’s probably the number one challenge that that I have is finding those people, as it is a bit of a it’s a, it’s an ageing workforce that are, you know, truly the ones that know how to do this work and truly operate a building in this way. So it’s, I see, yes, I would like this guy to be able to be a chief engineer. And well, my, my player pool is, is shallow, because the ones that have proven themselves are, you know, coming up to retirement. And the bigger problem is, is that are not enough new people coming into the trade to cover all these folks that are, are sort of getting towards retirement.
Greg Owens 16:48
Yeah, I can see that being complete. Because I don’t think people quite understand like, a true building engineer, is such a generalist problem solver on so many different aspects of what all the different aspects of functioning building from hv AC to water, to electrical, security, all these different things. And that’s hard to find these days, even for us as a painting contractor and a general contractor and finding people with those, that mechanical ability has gotten much, much tougher, right? Like, it seemed like there once upon a time, kids might grow up taking apart things and putting them back together and become a sort of mechanical and being able to build things and it doesn’t seem like that’s, it’s harder to find that talent anymore.
Joe Annino 17:38
It is it truly Isn’t it neat. I mean, for me, I think the best way is to just sort of grass roots, build it up. So that means getting folks into positions. And then providing them with mentorship skills training, there are still a lot of resources out there for people that want to learn how to how to work on HB AC and mechanical systems or, or even carpentry and electrical, plumbing. You know, of course, there’s the union, which is fantastic, a very pro union when it comes to our employees, I think they do a pretty great job of training and providing skilled labour. But I don’t think at the same time, I don’t think that that’s enough, I think there needs to be to be more and giving people opportunities to learn and then put those skills for the test in the field.
Greg Owens 18:37
And then what do you what would you say to like young people that sort of get an idea or are somewhat interested or you know, that have a little bit of mechanical ability, I don’t want to get involved becoming you know, an employee working, working in a skyscraper and becoming a building engineer.
Joe Annino 18:55
The floor, the first thing is, I would encourage everyone to, to go to school, get some get some education, community colleges, I’m a big fan of Laney college, I think they do have a great program. And that’s an Oakland believe the program that’s at San Jose City College also has a very good program. But not to say that others don’t, I just those are the ones that I happen to know. So I would say start there, you know, get your get your sort of your feet wet a little bit to just see if you like it or not, if you don’t like the studies, you probably won’t want to do it every every day of your life until you retire. So yeah, I would say start with that and then and then go get a job doing it. You know, I think there’s plenty of places out there that know us included that are looking for people at an entry level
Greg Owens 19:46
that can come in and you know, do you know do some very basic things from the start and then as they go can can learn more and start doing Yeah, and I think for really ambitious young person, they could force somebody to transitioning in their careers, take some classes with the college and also be an apprentice or, or work as an intern or something like that. And then they can get that hands on the grant along the way, too, because there’s so many I see that there’s so many benefits that being a building engineer or facilities manager, especially if you’ve got like somebody that can’t sit still for very long, right, like and wants to be up moving about, there’s so many opportunities, and a lot of these buildings to be always on the go. problem solving. You’re on the roof, you’re in the basement, or in an behind the scenes in the building, making sure all these things work correctly.
Joe Annino 20:43
Yeah, absolutely.
Greg Owens 20:44
Absolutely. And I think it’s interesting too, because I think people take it for granted. Like we were so used to going into buildings and expect so much expect that it’ll, it’ll be the right temperature, the right feeling, it’ll feel safe, it’ll be clean, but it would be the right lighting, so that you can do your work and get things done and not have to think about the space at all.
Joe Annino 21:05
100% when people walk into a building, they’re looking for that experience.
Greg Owens 21:12
Yeah, you know, it
Joe Annino 21:12
doesn’t matter what kind of building is from a commercial building, to, you know, to a to a theatre to a stadium, to a you know, it’s like when I’m in this building. And I walk through the door. I mean, that that’s setting the stage for everything else that’s to come as somebody walks through that property. And Joe, like,
Greg Owens 21:36
I’m curious about your origin story, how did you get to this place in time in doing what you’re doing? Sure.
Joe Annino 21:42
So that’s it. So coming out of out of high school wasn’t really sure exactly what I wanted to do. But my parents were, they knew I had an aptitude for taking things apart. And
Greg Owens 21:57
you were one of those kids, you’re
Joe Annino 21:59
a little bit i’m not i wasn’t it as much as some other people and in my dad actually worked for a building maintenance company of Ogden are called Allied Maintenance. And it just kind of went from there. And my parents thought that I would that I lean toward the scientific things a little bit more than the other things. And some extent, I think they were right. And I ended up going to the College of San Mateo got a degree in engineering technology. So then from there, I thought I’d take a stab at computer science and that was a big fail for me just wasn’t, wasn’t my thing. I liked playing video games, but didn’t necessarily want to make them whatever I did,
Greg Owens 22:41
I went the same route. You know, I love playing. Got it. We thought like, this would be great. I’ll go into Video Game Boy. So programming is that wasn’t a good fit.
Joe Annino 22:53
No, but I tell you, what I did learn is that I I like, you know, I like sort of the assembly of the computer. I thought that was pretty cool stuff.
Greg Owens 23:00
I taught my nephew how to build a computer and now he now he repairs people’s computers at the age of 30. He doesn’t just for fun all the time. And yeah, you know, his friends don’t know the first thing about how they work, but he can take it apart and put it back together again. There you go.
Joe Annino 23:14
Then after that, and then at the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo where I graduated with a degree in Industrial Technology, sort of with the idea that maybe I get into a management role somewhere as though maybe when this is I graduated in 96. This is the time when computers were in microchips are really getting
Greg Owens 23:37
the internet just getting started.
Joe Annino 23:40
Yeah, it was really getting becoming Universal Time extreme, beautiful.
Greg Owens 23:45
Cal Poly for sure. But yeah, I suppose amazing. Yeah, it’s it’s beautiful.
Joe Annino 23:51
I start from there. I ended up trying to start my own company making calzones with a friend that I met when I was at Cal Poly. And from from there sort of long story short, is I ended up with a job at Dover elevator up here. And up here in the Bay Area, did elevators, sales management, and did that for like 13 years before 2008 2009 happened where a transition happened for me, I got into HVDC got a job with company doing that. And then I ended up with ABM before joining GSH. So getting into building management and building engineering in particular. So, yeah, that’s a career path.
Greg Owens 24:42
Yeah, and I noticed too, that you coach, do you still coach soccer?
Joe Annino 24:47
Yes. I love soccer. That is, um, that I I grew up on. My dad being Italian was Mensa.
Greg Owens 24:55
They call it football over there.
Joe Annino 24:57
Yeah, they sure do. And And that’s what they call it in England.
Greg Owens 25:02
Yeah, in other parts of the world. And so I’m really I’m always I’m really fascinated with coaching, because it’s like, this management style that I prefer, right? It’s helping people sort of come to that understanding rather than just telling them right, like, they get the ideas that they I help them sort of asked by asking the right question to how have you seen being a soccer coach? Have you been able to transfer some of those kinds of skills that you learn?
Joe Annino 25:32
Yes, 100%. There’s a lot of, you know, just working with people. And I’m coaching youth soccer. So it’s
Greg Owens 25:43
a lot of patience.
Joe Annino 25:44
It’s a lot of patientce, certainly my patients get tried, often, you know, out in a soccer field, we’ll talk about kids and kids, I think, just want to play for the most part. And I think that’s something that’s very similar is that, you know, workers just want to work, just want to come to work and do their job, the more that you can they want their teammates to do their job, too. So you’ve got all these heads, trying to get them all like, Hey, we know you want to play but let’s play in this direction. and get right. Exactly, exactly. And, you know, with these stalker, it’s, it’s a lot about the kids just developing the skills. Like if a player can’t receive the ball at their feet, and not have a go everywhere, you know, they can’t necessarily make a great pass until they can do that.
Greg Owens 26:32
Right.
Joe Annino 26:32
And so a lot of building blocks stuff, the same thing in the work process, you know, in No, just day to day work with us. Think about somebody that doesn’t know much about, let’s say, electronics. Well, you can’t, can’t really work on a circuit until, you know, some of the basics about how that all works. How the building works. So
Greg Owens 26:59
that is true. It’s not a wise idea to go messing around with the logical panel watching YouTube videos. Yeah.
Joe Annino 27:07
Exactly. Exactly. Oh,
Greg Owens 27:09
hold on. I was doing that yesterday. Yeah, but I’ve had, it’s just I needed a little bit of a refresher. It’s been a while since I was inside the electrical panel, moving wires around. So I wanted to, you know, just remember what, what’s the do’s the top do’s and don’ts in there? Yeah, no, anti
Joe Annino 27:25
YouTube videos are a wonderful source for, for information. At the end of the day, the person that’s going to go do the work still needs to know, like, what kind of what they’re doing is to use the example of an electrical circuit. You can’t, I can’t go tell a guy to go, Hey, I want you to take this, take these four referred frigerators and plug it into this one receptacle. And then and then it blows up. And they wonder why. So but so you need you need somebody that that understands those those those concepts?
Greg Owens 27:59
Yeah. Hence why I was in the inside the electrical panel yesterday, my guys plug too many things into one thing, one outlet. Too many, too many power deals. It’s like, hey, like, we can’t overload that like that.
Joe Annino 28:13
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That’s, yeah, that’s certainly like where our guides come in. That the that’s what they’re expected, the kinds of things
Greg Owens 28:22
that they’re expected to know. Right, right. And as we open up here, the one you were saying one of the biggest challenges would be finding, finding the talent, training talent, anything else that you see? Or do you see any like interesting technology coming down the buildings or looking at implementing and that kind of stuff at dime,
Joe Annino 28:44
there’s a tonne of stuff out there. I mean, it every every corner, just depending on where you want to look, one of the things that I found to be pretty interesting, recently, for the last couple years is this, the demand that’s out there for energy conservation in buildings. And you know, there, there’s a lot of places where, you know, water can be saved. Electricity can be saved the city ordinances that are coming down the pipeline, that our power company is looking to become carbon neutral, by 2025. And it’s those sorts of things that I think are are going to be real interesting for me, because how do you get there? I mean, you’re talking about some, some buildings that have very old systems. So talking about a lot of capital money that needs to be put into these systems to make them more efficient. But you know that with that for a building owner, that mean they may or may not be interested in doing that kind of thing,
Greg Owens 29:54
just just depending, right, hence, the tax credits that were the last change. Going forward, right? Yeah, exactly,
Joe Annino 30:01
exactly. But I think for me, I think we’ve only, we’re only scratching the surface at this point on that, and that’s a, that’s going to be a very big thing to,
Greg Owens 30:14
yeah, you and I both watched, like fluorescent lights become very popular in our time. And then those are out now it’s led to change. Right. And then, and then now we’re seeing the better sort of controls of all the systems. So all the lights aren’t still on all the time when there’s no occupancy, which is still you know, when you look at San Francisco skyline at night, it’s amazing how much of the buildings are still completely lit, even though there’s nobody in the building and hasn’t been this whole year.
Joe Annino 30:43
Yeah. I think that’s something that’ll that’ll change. Yeah. At some level, I mean, there’s still a need for lighting when it’s dark. Oh, for sure. For a number of different levels. And if I’m a hotel, I want that I want my hotel looking looking bright.
Greg Owens 31:01
Yeah, no kidding. No kidding. Well, this has been great. Joe Annino. Yep. Yeah. So it’s wonderful to have you on this podcast? How could people find out more about you and your company GSH Group.
Joe Annino 31:17
So I’d encourage everyone to go to our website at GSHgroup.com. You can find about find out about everything that we do. Currently. I’m on LinkedIn.
Greg Owens 31:28
We’ll put put your LinkedIn info with this podcast notes. Fantastic.
Joe Annino 31:33
Yeah.
Greg Owens 31:33
That’s the best way to do it. Right. And then this summer coming up, what you personally, what are you most excited about? Looking forward to
Joe Annino 31:43
this summer? No, I’m just most excited about things just getting back to normal. Yeah, and just pretty simple guy, just I’d like to hang out on the deck. I like to eat some good food now and again, and spend time with friends and family. So I’m hoping I can do more of that and maybe a little bit looser, maybe start going back to restaurants a little more often than I have been over the last year and a half. Right,
Greg Owens 32:11
right. I got lucky I was I started cooking before the pandemic hit. And I never used to cook. And so I was really into cooking, coming into this. So it’s been great. But I’m also looking forward to like meeting up with friends and going out and having you know, that social interaction over food. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for being on the Watching Paint Dry podcast. This has been a pleasure talking with you today.
Joe Annino 32:38
Thank you, Greg. I appreciate it. Appreciate your time.
Outro 32:52
Thanks for listening to the Watching Paint Dry podcast. We’ll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.