Industry Feature: David Taguchi, JRS Engineering Ltd.

Name and occupation/company: David Taguchi, Project Manager/Roofing Services Manager - Calgary; JRS Engineering Ltd.

Have you worked with Kryton previously? The majority of experiences with Kryton products was with my previous employer, Trow Associates Inc. (now called Exp Services Inc.) I only joined my current company in May, 2011. 

Broadway Tech Centre 4 (Renfrew Street side foundation/parkade wall) - KIM admixture, 2010.

• This was a blind-form wall up against high water exposure.  Although water-based blindform waterproofing was specified, we recommended the use of KIM admixture as the last line of defence because of the mixed reliability of conventional blindform waterproofing. Sure enough, water got through during construction but was eventually stopped by the KIM admixture.

BC Cancer Radiation Therapy Annex – Krystol T1 & T2/Kryton Plug, 2006.

• This was a unique project where the building is actually a 2 storey building underground. The bottom level contained all the heavy cancer therapy radiation equipment.  The electrical ducts were run under the slab and through open portals in the slab – there were 6 of these open portals.  It turns out there was significant ground water retention, so much so that the electrical pumps specified by the geotechnical and mechanical engineers could not keep up.  As a result, water was flowing into the radiation therapy rooms, through the conduits penetrating the concrete slab.  We first recommended a dense polyurethane foam sealer, but it had no effect.  We then recommended the Krystol T1 & T2 with the special sand treatment around each conduit and conduit hole and Kryton Plug.  The leaks stopped and as far as I know, there hasn't been any leaks since.

Why you are on social media and what value you see in it? Social media is not the be-all, end-all for marketing and business development, but it is a tool where people interested in what you do, or where people who see value in what you offer via social media, to keep in touch.  Humans are such forgetful creatures in that if you're out of sight you're out of mind, and as any good sales person will tell you, follow-up, follow-up, and follow-up are critical in sales. However, social media allows one to "follow-up" with clients with one status update or one tweet.

The construction industry has been relatively slow to adapt to social media. Do you see this changing and how can we encourage our peers to come online? Oh my goodness, is the construction industry far behind.  I only "discovered" Twitter a few short months ago, and I wanted to connect to colleagues, companies, and most of all Clients, but there were hardly any of them on Twitter.  Sure LinkedIn helps, but it's not "real time" like Twitter can be – even I check my LinkedIn account maybe 3X a week.  I see more and more people sign up to Twitter, but like with anything else, you get what you put into it and I see some people/companies open up an account never to tweet ever again.

I think a lot of why the construction industry is so far behind is that if you attend any construction industry association meeting, conference, etc., you will notice there is a lot of grey hair in that room.  More and more, I see the younger generation who replaces the grey haired folks, but it's a really slow go.

Your top three sites (blog/website/RSS feed/etc.) that you recommend to your colleagues?

1. Bnet.com has a lot of good business related articles
2. www.gitomer.com is one of my personal favourites. He's a sales speaker/teacher that really embraces social media and has a really blunt, dark sense of humor (like me :)).
3. www.csc-dcc.ca, and myacma.com. These are my (targeted) Clients' associations. And of course, www.jrsengineering.com