Introducing Hard Hats & Data Chats: A Podcast for Builders Who Think in Rows & Columns
Hard Hats & Data Chats
Most construction companies aren’t short on data – they’re short on ways to make sense of it. That gap between having information and actually using it is where a lot of teams get stuck.
At Onware, we think the industry moves forward when people can see and understand what’s happening in their own projects. That’s the real point of construction BI – not more dashboards, just clearer answers about what’s working, what isn’t, and where information is getting lost along the way.
Hard Hats & Data Chats brings that conversation to life. Hosted by Fraser Gallop (CEO of Onware and a Tableau Ambassador) alongside Steve Gross, VP of Client Solutions at Computer Guidance Corporation, the show digs into construction, data, and the systems running quietly in the background of every project.
Every episode is a grounded, real-world conversation about contractors putting data to work – what’s going well, what’s still messy, and the lessons in between.
Topics covered so far:
- Why ERPs hold everything you need, but getting it out is another story
- How spreadsheets create bottlenecks and version-control headaches
- What it costs a team when reporting can’t keep pace with what’s happening on-site
Along the way, they trade real stories – from month-end WIP struggles to what happened when one contractor switched from nightly to twice-daily data updates.
More Episodes on the Way
Six episodes are already lined up, dropping every two weeks:
- You Already Have the Data
- What Customers Are Really Looking For
- Where Things Go Wrong
- The Real Challenges (and How to Work Through Them)
- Success Stories: What Good Looks Like
- The Future of Construction Data
And that’s just the start.
More Voices Joining the Conversation
We want this podcast to grow into a space where the people actually building the industry get to speak. Down the road, expect to hear from:
- Operations and finance leaders in construction
- Technology partners and industry innovators
More perspectives means more honest stories from the field.
Why We’re Doing This
Construction is packed with smart people solving hard problems – but talk about data usually gets stuck in reports, dashboards, or jargon nobody outside the systems team wants to decode. We wanted to pull that conversation out into the open.
The goal behind Hard Hats & Data Chats is simple: get more people in construction talking honestly about data – how they use it, where it trips them up, and how it can help them build smarter. If a few episodes spark new ideas or make the tech side feel less intimidating, we’ve done our job.
Connect with the hosts:
New episodes published here as they drop.