Rejecting Drywall's 'Hidden Costs': Advancing Temporary Containment

When it comes to the temporary containment of construction dust and debris, drywall is a costly solution that's rapidly becoming a relic of the past. In this webinar, our panel of experts dismantle the conventional thinking around traditional containment and show how more innovative wall systems are directly improving budgets and timelines, customer experience, jobsite safety and security, and sustainability.

Full Webinar Transcript

For those who prefer text, we've included the complete webinar transcript below. Use it to quickly find topics covered in the presentation and reference important details shared by our speakers.

Thank you for joining today's webinar, rejecting drywall's hidden costs, advancing temporary containment.

When it comes to the temporary containment of construction dust and debris, drywall is a costly solution that's rapidly rapidly becoming a relic of the past. Today our panel of experts will dismantle some of the conventional thinking around traditional containment methods and show how more innovative wall systems are directly improving budgets and timelines, customer experience, job site safety and security, and sustainability.

I'm John Farrell, Senior Content Manager for STARC, and I'll be moderating today's event.

Our guests today are Leon Young, Network Infection Prevention Manager, Facilities and Construction at Allegheny Health Network.

Lindsey Jones, Project Senior Manager, McCarthy Building Companies Inc. And Shannon Sleight, Chief Sales Officer at STARC.

Without further ado, let's dive into our first key focus area budgets and timelines. Leon, why don't you start us off?

Thank you, John. This is Leon Young. It's a pleasure to be here today And thank you, everybody, for joining, and thank you to STARC for asking me to to be a panelist on this. This is great. I'm very excited to to discuss these to discuss these topics. I'm gonna start with budget and timelines.

So for project managers, the contractor will need to put in the bid the cost for drywall and metal studs for the ichor containment.

With many hospital construction projects, there are multiple phases in multiple different locations.

With these additional phases for a project, that original temporary drywall containment will be demolished and discarded.

Hence, new drywall and new metal studs will be needed for the additional phases.

What does that do? I think it's pretty obvious.

That increases the overall bid and the overall cost.

Conversely, with reusable containment walls, the bid will be lower because the reusable containment walls can simply be used for subsequent phases on that particular project.

The next slide kinda talks to the labor costs.

Next, you need to consider the time, materials, and personnel involved with constructing temporary drywall containment with metal studs. And like I stated a second ago, and then in many cases, constructing reusable, prefabricated, contaminated walls.

Next, I'll hand it over to Lindsey.

Thank you, Leon.

So I've, been with McCarthy for, over sixteen years and had many opportunities to do temporary containment, in regards to phasing during construction.

Most notably, I'll be speaking in regards to the aviation realm as that's the type of project that I've been working on for the last ten years.

You know, there's a a lot of in extensive enabling scope, over the last project that I did. It was over approximately nine phases. And so I wanted to put this table together to really show just a quick comparison, that we were able to forward face to the owner. And this is just a sample of four hundred linear foot of ten foot tall partition.

You could see on the left hand side the comparison of schedule, just how long it takes. When we work on aviation related projects, drywall a traditional drywall temporary containment wall, is required to have at least a level four finish. So that does take additional time. And you can see the it requires a four person crew, just to be completed over the course of seven nights.

The reasonable wall installation, two people can do that, over one night just for this sample here, the four hundred linear, linear foot.

Moving on to the budget portion, don't wanna give any tricks of the trade away here, but, it's pretty apparent when you start looking at just what is required to actually build a a temporary drywall containment.

How many man hours exist to build, just this sample and what kind of tools are required were required to do that.

The timeline is pretty clear. There there can be a higher upfront cost, when we're talking about reusable wall, but that drastically diminishes as Leon touched on as you continue to use that over different phases for the same client.

When you start taking into consideration the man hours and the diminished future materials cost, really, reusable wall comes out ahead, really consistently.

Next slide.

Budgets and timelines are important, of course, but what about job site experience? From a project and facilities management perspective, what's really at stake here, Lindsay?

Yeah. So an airport is basically a self contained city. It never sleeps. There's very little downtime. As passengers are generally already in a stress mode, trying to find their gate, getting through security, waiting for their bags, Additional disruptions are a very unwelcome addition.

I've had opportunities through my time in aviation to provide a variety of different temporary containment solutions.

A back of house delineator is something as simple as this queen that you can see on the left hand side there.

There are some pros to that. It's a quick install. It's budget friendly. It can mitigate dust when it's properly sealed. However, you you can still see through it a little bit. There's a lot of noise transfer. It's not really visually pleasing.

And in addition, there are safety and security challenges as well.

When you look at the right hand side, that's one of our temporary drywall walls, in one of our aviation projects. Again, you have that level four or five finish. It does provide a nice seamless finish. It does have dust mitigation, can be any size or height.

However, it is very pricey, and and not just for the materials, but really it's in those labor hours for the installation.

And you've got you gotta also add in those labor hours for demolitions as well. And again, it's it's single use. We're creating a lot of waste with that.

On the next slide, you can see, that, you know, the temporary containment, on the reusable wall system is just a cleaner install.

Construction really creates curiosity.

We joke that, in in airport is just a construction site that people fly out of, and so there's constantly work being done.

It's really best if we blend into the background seamlessly.

And reasonable wall systems allow us to capitalize on the four to five hours overnight, that does have limited activity in the airport so that we can complete a full temporary wall installation with as little impact operations as possible.

I'm sure Leon can relate in the health care realm.

Thank Thank you, Lindsay. That was a perfect transition.

So, obviously, yes, airports airports, schools, other commercial buildings, that's one thing. But let me share with you the other side of the coin, and that's the health care environment, the health care facilities.

The appearance of drywall versus reusable containment walls will affect the attitudes and the experience of building occupants.

Hospital staff, nurses, and physicians, they see drywall containment littered with the yellow acre tape, and that kinda that I mean, obviously, that screams construction activities.

Many times in my career, I've been called in by physicians to discuss what they are seeing and answer their numerous questions.

Reusable containment walls have the appearance that they belong and are part of the facility, which is evident from Lindsay's previous pictures.

They don't send the message that there is construction in the health care facility. And and furthermore, the next slide further, illustrates this message.

What patients and patients' families see, will affect their attitudes and, most important importantly, their anxiety level.

That drywall contain containment litter with yellow tape tells patients and families, that there are construction activities close to their loved ones. Again, back to my personal experience, I have had to speak with families, to relieve their anxiety and their worry based on, you know, the activities that are that are happening in the health care the health care facility in that hospital.

Reusable containment walls, however, not so much because of their appearance.

Much they're they're obviously much more pleasing to the eye to the point where patients' families, essentially don't even realize that there are construction activities nearby.

And and and from that, I'll I'll hand it back over to Lindsay.

Thanks, Leon. We're talking about what people experience during commercial renovations. One of the biggest concerns, regardless of the industry, safety for building occupants and workers.

Lindsay, how does using a temporary wall system improve safety and elevate compliance with building codes?

Alright. I plugged in a couple of stock photos here, courtesy of the Phoenix New Times just indicating the amount of volume that airports get.

Again, as I mentioned before, it's a high stress environment.

People are not usually at airports every single day, and so it's it's a new place that that you're at. There's also a lot of security when it comes to aviation.

If you've ever traveled, I'm sure you've gone through the TSA checkpoint.

That same level of security extends through all operations in an active airport, and construction compliance is heavily regulated.

There are restrictions on access for passenger safety, and there has to be a robust division between the general public and the back of house operations.

On my next slide, you can kind of see how we're protecting those building occupants.

This is a an installation that we did and and you can you can even see baggage carousel eight at its future point on the left hand side there.

Being able to put up a temporary reusable wall, over such a quick time adjacent to active operations, really helps mitigate the the dust, which is a safety issue, and also tools.

Making sure that we have tool containment immediately and overnight is of the utmost importance when you're working at an airport.

Again, any negative impact to the passenger experience can really create safety issues just on a personal level.

You can see up on on these pictures here, it's the reasonable wall is seamless.

The quick installation but also the quick takedown, and and no dust with takedown, it allowed the operations to turn over overnight for this particular carousel.

As I mentioned before, we had over nine phases that used temporary reusable containment on my last project. And every time, we require security sweeps both before and after turnover of these areas. And the entire safety and security teams were impressed with the cleanliness and the speed of removing these containments.

I know that there's also stringent safety regulations in health care too. Right, Leon?

Yes. Thank you, Lindsay. So this section of the webinar, protection protecting building your documents, this is what I'm most passionate about.

I could speak to everybody on the call here for hours, but I'm gonna, you know, obviously spare you from from my motor mouth and and and do my best just to touch on the most important things.

Reusable containment walls. They're far superior to temporary drywall containment when considering your things like fire safety, life safety, and infection prevention.

Now as the network infection prevention manager, my concentration and focus is obviously around infection prevention.

Yes. The type of containment used during a project, whether plastic or hard wall, is important.

But even more important is the removal of that containment at the end of the project.

With drywall and metal studs, all of that material needs to be wiped down and vacuumed before the construction.

The metal stud tracks are a repository for dust, debris, and mold spores.

Gypsum board, also as many of as many of you know, is not your ideal wipeable surface.

Construction dust and mold spores will adhere to that gypsum board surface.

And my biggest worry from an infection prevention perspective has always been is the contractor actually wiping and cleaning all the materials prior to deconstruction?

And how well of a job is the contractor doing with that task.

And and the next slide shows an example of this point.

I personally have actually inspected containment prior to deconstruction and found dirt and debris in the stud tracks even though the contractor has told me and thought everything was clean, everything was was was ready to be deconstructed.

You don't have that with re with with reusable prefabricated containment walls. I don't have to worry if the reusable containment walls are being wiped down properly.

They are a wipeable surface without the many edges, corners, and hidden areas that metal studs unfortunately carry with them.

Additionally, in some sensitive patient care areas, infection prevention, will sometimes require hanging of plastic around the drywall containment prior to deconstruction.

A construction project in a transplant ICU or a bone marrow transplant unit will require this extra step prior to deconstruction.

This is due to the amount of dust and debris that gets trapped on the temporary drywall and along those metal slug tracks.

Reusable containment walls, like for instance what STARC offers, provides an easily wipeable surface prior to tear down.

That equals minimal infection risk to surrounding patients when containment is removed. And, obviously, that is, obviously, that is my number one goal.

Thank you, John. I will turn it over to the next section.

Thanks, Leon. Those are good points. One of the biggest drawbacks to using drywall, and it's true for plastic sheeting and other traditional methods as well, is the tremendous amount of waste and carbon it produces.

Waste and CO2 are top of mind right now as businesses of all kinds work to align with green building goals.

Maybe each of you could weigh in with your thoughts on this. Lindsey?

Yeah. Thanks, John.

Sustainability definitely matters. It matters in everything that we do.

In fact, every project that McCarthy builds for municipal clients does have a requirement for elements of sustainability.

Generally, it's it's a LEED based or US Green Building, construction based system. But one of the things that's directly applicable to contractors, has to deal with the construction waste and diversion.

I I have the the stat up there. Every one hundred foot of drywall, just one-sided, can create up to one ton of landfill waste. And we're talking about projects that have a lot of phases. That's a lot of additional waste that we're introducing, not just to our construction site, right, but over to our landfills, and and it has a bigger global effect.

There's a snowball effect on-site as there's multiple dumpsters that are required for lay down. It takes time to sort these materials, and then we're trying to find appropriate facilities to recycle every little bit that we can. But conventional temporary drywall walls are still single use.

Reusable containment solutions really provide immediate benefit related to waste diversion.

On the next slide, I wanna expand on on the fact that McCarthy is a community builder and because we are, we don't just depend on LEED scorecards to encourage us to build with sustainability in mind. We seek extra opportunities to make positive environmental impact a part of our standard operating procedures.

Reusable temporary wall systems lean into alignment with our best practices, so much so that we seek opportunities to, purchase our own, temporary reusable, containment systems, whether it's for aviation or health care or anything like that.

Leon, I know you've got some thoughts on advancing sustainability.

Thank you, Lindsay. Yes. I do have some thoughts.

My fifteen year old son and I, he's very intuitive. He asks likes to ask a lot of questions. He's very educated.

A lot of times on the way to school, we will get involved in a deep conversation about one topic or another, something that, you know, something that revolves around around the world or America or something like that. And one day, we started talking about, landfills and everything that's being put in there. And I think I brought up to him, you know, the fact that we're continuously making trash. Where is all this trash going?

And, you know, the the trash you put on your curb every Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday morning, that's going to a landfill and so and so is this drywall. So he and I have talked and kind of discussed that that, you know, are we just eventually gonna be consumed by landfills because of trash?

And with that so with the green building initiative and hospitals adopting adopting this initiative, it is important that contractors are not contributing to the landfills with excess construction waste, obviously.

And this can be reduced by using your your prefabricated reusable containment walls because you're not discarding anything.

And then, the next slide shows the environmental impact of discarded drywall.

And to be perfectly honest, I was not aware of this important negative environmental impact until just recently.

Over five hundred and eighty four million tons of construction and demo waste hit our landfills every year. That's a that's an astronomical number.

Twice that is twice the number of consumer waste. And then of that, it is estimated that a thirteen million tons is gypsum drywall.

Disposable drywall leads to many channels of pollution, of which here are three that I'm gonna briefly briefly discuss.

So number one, contamination of soil and groundwater due to the high levels of sulfur and other heavy metals present in the gypsum core.

Number two number two is your hydrogen sulfide gas is released when buried in landfills due to the anaerobic environment underground.

And then lastly, they're the practically all disposed drywall, absent new construction scrap has been painted. And as a lot of you know, prior to nineteen seventy eight, which the Department of Housing and Urban Development says accounts for thirty five percent of US housing, there's gonna be buckets of lead paint attached to it. So there are right there are three very important environmental impacts, negative environmental impacts of of of discarding, your your your jibson board. And at this time, I'll hand it back over to John.

Thanks, Leon. A lot of great information there. Okay, Shannon. The water's warm. Given what we've learned so far here today, maybe you can share with us how STARC is making a difference in all these areas.

Yeah. Absolutely. Thanks, John. And first, want to, give a thank you to to Lindsey and Leon for, for doing the presentation.

Clearly, I can hear the the passion in your voice around this particular topic and, you know, helping paint the picture for, you know, why STARC is growing at the rate that we are and why there's such know, demand growing demand for, for our products. So, who is STARC? So I I thought I would start out, John, by explaining yes. The answer is STARC is an acronym.

It actually stands for Simple Telescopic Airtight reusable containment. So it's a question that we get often. And, you know, the way I explain STARC and the way I think that I would love for the audience to think about STARC is we are the leading manufacturer and supplier of reusable, modular containment, containment solution. So, the way we like to think about our products, again, is, we help our customers solve from the simplest to the most complex challenges in a diverse number of verticals in highly demanding environments.

That's who that's who we are and that's how we we think about ourselves. So, we design, innovate, create, and deploy products that are focused on a couple key things that we've already talked about, but I'll hit on again. The ability to deploy, easily and and very cleanly. We are, you know, obviously wear, you know, the badge of supporting sustainability, very proud, through our reusable wall system.

Safety and protection of these in these critical environments is something that, is obviously important to us. Beautiful aesthetics. Lindsay talked about, you know, the aesthetics that go with, with our products and the importance of that, in the, environments that these are, are being deployed. You You know, and the last, I would say, John, is performance.

Right? We build our products to last a long time, and, you know, obviously, we're very proud of that. So so that's really STARC in a nutshell, John. I'll ask you to move to the next slide.

A lot of people don't know this, but, the genesis of our company was actually born in health care.

You know, it it comes from the this product was, imagined and designed and engineered, starting with a third generation contractor in, in in Maine, we're actually Brunswick, Maine, where our headquarters is located, to solve for containment in a health care environment. So the product the initial product RealWALL, which we'll show you a picture of here in just a second, was designed with that demanding environment in mind. So the users of our products, get the benefit of knowing that the products that they are deploying are designed and developed with the rigorous standards of health care renovation in mind, and, you know, that, that performance translates again across a diverse number of verticals.

This slide wanted to show you just a snapshot of some of the folks that, you know, that we get the pleasure of doing business with, you know, locations that, that take advantage in our STARC adopters, long time STARC adopters, and now other verticals that our products are find more, you know, or are aggressively expanding into other verticals where they find need and benefit for, for our products. So we're finding STARC, really all over the place, today and, anywhere, you know, our solutions are deemed, you know, an appropriate fit. So next slide, John.

So here's our product line. We have four main product platforms. RealWall, I mentioned earlier is our flagship product. That is the first product that, that Star came out with.

That is the telescopic wall solution, you know, that, that we've been selling for roughly ten years now. LiteBarrier, it's lighter little brother to the side right there. FireblockWall. We actually released FireblockWall roughly three years ago.

FireblockWall is the only, rated one hour modular solution in existence. And then our newest release, StackBarrier, which fits a very specific need, most specifically, tall wall solution. So imagine being able to deploy a rigid tall wall solution up to thirty two feet high with speed, beautiful aesthetics, and, and obviously minimal to, to no waste. So each one of these products has their own, you know, individual, you know, individual, selling points from, you know, noise reduction to super lightweight, obviously, the one hour rating, you know, tall complex wall solution.

So, you know, the theme here is that we have a product that fits whatever your particular need, and we continue to innovate and think of new ways to to, to better serve our customers.

John, next slide.

Wanted to take a moment to pause and talk about StackBarrier. This is, you know, something that we're incredibly proud of. Just, you know, an individual product highlight here for just a second. So this is our newest product.

It's currently being deployed, really all over the United States. Large airport projects, which we'll talk about here in just a second, casino, hospitality, really you name it. Again, if the if the demand of the installation requires a tall wall solution, this is the product that we go with. And the graphic to the right that you'll see over there, one of the the things that we keep in mind, again, back to aesthetics and why that is important to our customers and end users.

You know, this is the solution that we promote as the best, and most, beautiful display of vinyl graphics. So, again, new product, super excited about it, and, the demand for this product is, you know, extreme and and very exciting for us. So John, next slide.

So, Lindsay talked about reusability.

One one of the things that we do often at STARC is we actually survey into our existing customer base. And one of the questions we ask in a in a recent survey is how many reuses after the initial installation or initial purchase of STARC? How many times did you redeploy STARC? And this is the results that we got back.

And, again, this is from, you know, our own customer base. So you can see, you know, you know, the the the dominant number of dozens. Right? That was, that was the answer.

So whenever you know, Lindsay did a great job of highlighting how a single use drywall for a temporary wall solution is exactly that by name. It's single use. Well, you know, STARC, the the economics of reusability with our products is abundantly clear whenever you talk about, you know, the existing customers that you have adopted and use our solutions enjoy being able to redeploy these literally dozens of times. And, obviously, you can do the math on, on cost savings there.

But, again, wanted to call out that this was a survey into our existing customer base and, you know, the multiyear adopters of STARC. So John, next slide.

Here is a, a testimonial from a customer. The deployment that you see right there, that is actually our RealWALL product in a hospital environment. Obviously, you can imagine, you know, extremely sensitive environment. Whenever we are, you know, our selling force is talking to contractors or facilities teams that are working in hospital environments.

There's some similar things that they have in common. One of them is the ability to deploy this wall solution fast, dustless, and they also, like the idea of sound attenuation. So the idea that whatever's going on on the construction side or the renovation side or the demolition side of that wall should not disrupt what's happening in the sensitive areas where patients are actually being cared for. So RealWALL product, as you might have seen earlier, is our sound attenuating, product. And, again, just a great testimonial from a, a contracting partner that we have right here around this deployment in, in health care. So next slide.

So, again, wanted to talk to, contractors, facility managers.

We we find lots of different users, of STARC in a lot of different, a lot of different use cases. So this is actually a commercial environment. This is our LiteBarrier product.

Dust containment was the principal need for, for modular, modular containment services or modular containment solution in this particular environment. We steered the customer to LiteBarrier there. Sound attenuation wasn't necessarily of critical importance, not necessarily a sensitive environment, if you will. But, again, just a great testimonial and speaks to our ability to design and customize solutions that fit the exact need of the customers we serve. So, again, just a beautiful image of a commercial application of STARC's LiteBarrier product.

The second thing we talked about, you know, through here, kind of the the these core, you know, these core components that we try to focus on when we're working with customers and designing solutions is experience.

So the picture you see there, that is actually a deployment of our new StackBarrier product. Those are eight foot StackBarrier panels end to end to end deployed in Harry Reid, International Airport.

That installation was actually a five hundred foot installation of temporary containment walls. Graphics obviously overlaid on top of it, you know, that look absolutely amazing. That five hundred foot deployment was around a baggage carousel, and end to end, from the time that was pulled off of, you know, out of the shipping containers that we set to the time that product was deployed and looks as you see it in this picture was a total of six hours. So five hundred feet in six hours, and what's what's neat about this particular application is this is one of eight phases.

So this will be taken down. It will be redeployed eight times as the baggage carousels get renovated one by one in Harry Reid International Airport. Lindsey, I actually jot it down while you were talking. You gave an interesting stat there that, I believe it was a hundred feet of wall can, basically contribute to one ton of non biodegradable waste. So, you know, this installation right here would say, by that math, this installation would save five tons of non biodegradable waste from going in a local landfill. Take that, multiply it by the eight deployments, and now we're talking about forty tons of non biodegradable waste that will not end up in a landfill again because the contractor made the decision to go with, reusable modular containment through STARC Systems. So, again, just a beautiful example of some of the projects out there that we're proud of.

Another testimonial, that you'll see right, right here. Again, this is our RealWall product. One of the things that I would highlight in, in this particular image is the door. One of the things that, you know, we think of STARC as panels and modular containment panels or reusable panels.

One of the exciting exciting parts about selling our product is we have a very comprehensive, catalog of, of, door options door options and different options and accessories that allow your modular containment solution to be redeployed and reconfigurable in a really exponential number of applications. So this highlights a, one of our real world doors. This one actually has a viewing panel. It's built into it, a customized viewing panel.

So, you know, we take tremendous pride in working hand in hand with our customers, whether it be over the phone, whether it be on-site, you know, side by side during walkthroughs, really listening to the needs of that customer specific, you know, to that particular project, you know, both current projects and potentially future projects. So we love designing solutions that are obviously fit the need current, but obviously help you think long term and redeployment of our products.

So protection. You know, I I believe it was Leon talked about protection. We think we typically think of protection in a health care environment. Right?

I I I talked about our RealWall product. The genesis of that product was in health care. It exceeds all the most rigorous ICRA standards, which is a rating for infectious disease control. I mentioned earlier as well that we're finding our products in a much more diverse range of verticals.

Some of that we are obviously pursuing on our own because we feel like there's a great fit and even bigger number of those opportunities are coming to us because they've heard such great things about our products, specifically when it comes to protection. So what you're seeing right here is you're seeing an airport, environment, a RealWall deployment of, there's obviously construction happening on the other side of the wall. But when you imagine the number of travelers that are going through that particular corridor and the fact that those travelers need to be kept safe and secure, you know, from potential risk on the other side, more and more airports and more and more contractors that do work in airports are choosing STARC, you know, to make sure that, that that protection is insured.

So, again, just another beautiful image of how our products are being applied in a growing number of diverse markets.

One of the things that, you know, we always try to educate our customers, you know, to do as well is to look for the label, look for the certification. So one of the things that, you know, is a promise, it will always be a promise of start to our customers, is all our products are certified, and certified as a full wall system.

That is a differentiation between individual parts and components that go to build the wall versus the full assembly. All of our products are certified. So when it comes to the liability that goes with deploying solutions that is on contractors and facilities teams to ensure, you know, safety and rigorous testing standards have been achieved, you know, we're able to demonstrate that. So one of the things is you're looking at wall solutions or modular wall solutions, whether it be STARC or whether it be, you know, something something of the like, we encourage you to ask for the certification.

It's something that's on the back of every single one of our panels. It's something that our sales teams have, you know, ready and willing to share. And certainly, we get a sense of a real true sense of pride in all the rigorous testing that our products have gone to to reach, you know, this level of control standard. So, again, we we educate our customers to look for the label and ask for the certification.

But whenever you make the choice to use STARC, you can know that, it's gonna be there, like I said, on every single product that we deploy.

FireblockWall. So, you know, a great example, we talked earlier about, there is only there are two choices whenever you need a temporary, true fire rating wall. One is obviously gypsum board, which we talked about, you know, the downside impacts of of gypsum board being deployed in a one hour rated solution, or we have now a modular option, which is STARC's FireblockWall system. So, you know, we, we rolled out this product. We released this product about three years ago.

Incredible demand and satisfaction with this product. You know, again, we we keep all the same things in mind of ease of ease of deployment, ease of installation, dustless. Obviously, you can you can see the clean, sterile look, especially, in a hospital environment is, incredibly pleasing to not only the patients that are there that gives a true sense of safety and security, but also, you know, we have to think about the, you know, the the kind, brave folks that actually work in those facilities as well. So the feedback we get is always tremendous around FireblockWall and really all of our products. But we love customer testimonials, and there's certainly no shortage of them. And, again, just here's a an example of a customer testimonial around FireblockWall.

So sustainability, you know, again, one of our core pillars of, you know, how we design and why we design and what goes into the thought process of designing our products. So again, I shared a graphic earlier from a survey from our existing customers around how many times they redeploy our products. So think about the economics of using and reusing this product fifty times versus the economics and waste created by having to build that same containment solutions fifty times with single use drywall. Right? It doesn't take long, you know, to realize that there is a better way, and that better way is is gaining steam and gaining traction, you you know, very quickly. So a couple of highlights about STARC's products, they're actually ninety besides the fact that they're reusable dozens and dozens of times, they're actually ninety five percent recyclable by weight.

You know, in our estimation, you know, with all the products that we deployed and the number of uses that, you know, we know they get, thirty five thousand tons of c o two emissions, that STARC has helped, you know, helped, I guess, mitigate, with the deploy creation, building creation, manufacturing deployment of our products.

Another interesting fact is that our products are actually manufactured using a hundred percent renewable energy. So not only do we talk the talk around sustainability, we we walk the walk, and it's something we live and breathe every day and and goes into every single product that we build.

Thanks, Shannon. That was great. It I'm gonna ask you to turn on your cameras now so we can take some questions from the audience.

It's a reminder to attendees.

If you could enter your questions in the question box, that will be great.

Let's see. It does look like we have some questions coming in.

First question is for Leon.

Leon, do you have an example of a conversation you've had with physicians or patients' families regarding construction containment?

Yes. I do. So I have had conversations in the past, with, specifically specifically physicians.

Obviously, because they are I mean, not obviously, but they are, you know, well aware of what's going on with their patients, looking around, you know, seeing things.

So they they have asked, you know, what is going on? Why is there drywall up on this, you know, on the patient unit?

You know, why is all why is there all this tape? It doesn't look that good. It just it just kind of sticks out like a sore thumb, if you will. And so I've I've had the conversation with them to explain to them that, you know, it's a construction project in there, what they're doing.

They're creating dust. They're creating mold spores. You know, that's why the containment is up, you know, to keep the surrounding patient, patient area safe, and and and obviously those types of things. And I've also had conversations with patients' families.

I've been I've I've been calling to a couple of patients' rooms, just recently, actually, about sort of the same thing. You know, construction happening outside of their outside of their, outside of their loved one's room, on the patient room or down the hallway. You know, what's going on, because there's drywall up or there's plastic, whatever the case may be.

And that, like I said in the slides, that brings a little bit of worry, a little bit of anxiety, to those to those patients and their families, in the hospital because they can hear things going on back there, obviously. You know, if you're involved in construction, you can hear the drilling and the banging and, you know, all the all the all the all the noises that are associated with construction. So that's gonna bring that's gonna bring worry and and and and bring and bring anxiety.

And to be honest, I have never had a conversation with a hospital staff member or a family when it relates to reusable containment walls. It's only with the drywall and or the plastic when it just doesn't look great. You know? It just it doesn't look like it belongs there like a reusable containment wall does because it like I said, it just sticks out like a sore thumb. Thank you, John.

Thanks, Leon.

Lindsay, a question for you. It seems like storage can be a challenge for reusable wall containment.

Have you been able to offer any solutions to your clients regarding what to do with temporary containment when not in use?

Yeah. So there's there's at least two different tabs that that we've taken related to reusable containment systems.

Once we make the business case for use, and if it's a client that does have a lot of construction projects, just like in an airport where it's constantly under construction, really, we help them to facilitate that storage. We help show them how neat and tidy the reusable wall, can be. And in fact, STARCH does provide even like a almost like drywall, rolling carts that the reusable payment can stack up on, which makes it really nice. So we can help facilities in that way, to help them find a place for storage because they know they're gonna be using this over and over again. And another opportunity is if, the project purchases it, we have a construction yard ourselves that we're able to facilitate some of that storage as well. And so that's something that we're willing to take on at the end of the project if that particular client maybe doesn't wanna use it in the future or this was a one off, but but still that reusable wall was the, prudent, thing to do.

We can help them with storage and our own Great.

Thank you, Lindsay.

Couple of questions, asking about getting copies of the slides. Yes. Slides and a copy of the recording will be sent to all attendees, so don't worry about that.

Here's a question. I'm thinking it should go to you, Leon. What processes are recommended to clean and disinfect reusable containment to prevent cross contamination from project to project?

Great question. Great question. So reusable containment, the prefabricated walls, that's just a simple wipe down with a hospital approved disinfectant wipes.

You know, basically anything, but your run of the mill Clorox wipes or whatever hospital disinfectant approved wipes that your hospital uses, that's what the contractor should be using to wipe down the inside of those walls. You know, you're essentially wiping down any dust, any mold spare any mold spores that that may have happened to to adhere to that to the inside of the, prefabricated reusable walls. You're just gonna wipe that down.

Okay. Thank you.

And, Lindsay, what would you say is the biggest barrier to clients' willingness to adopt reusable temporary wall systems, and how have you addressed it with them?

Yeah. So, actually, there's just an uncertainty. Right? Everybody's seen drywall temporary walls. They know what it looks like.

They know what to expect, even with the noise, the dust. They know what the end product is and there's a familiarity with it. In addition, there's a really great historical aspect related to the pricing for temporary drywall containment.

I think as our clients are becoming more ecological ecologically conscious and wanting to promote sustainability, in construction, that's one easy aspect. Right? Really, all of the points that we talked about today are things that McCarthy brings ports to the clients when we do have projects that do require a lot of phasing, to have that selling point for reusable temporary containment.

Like I said, you know, in one of my my budget slide off initially, there there is a higher upfront cost and it drastically diminishes, over the course of a project that is multiple phase where the labor hours for standard drywall, temporary wall installation is so much higher at the end of the project than if we just purchased outright the reusable wall system.

It's pretty easy. We like our, Excel matrices, and it's pretty easy to use Excel to, show the owner just the numbers right off of the bat. And then when you start talking about, how it contributes to our lead scorecard, it's just another, check mark that, you know, ekes the client onto, wanting to use the reusable containment.

Excellent.

The next question is for Lindsay and Leon.

Who owns the walls used in your projects? Do you rent walls, or would you rent walls including installation and removal if it was an option?

As far as I know, the contractors own the walls. The contractors purchase the prefabricated reusable walls, from the company, and they own those.

And obviously, they store those and keep those where they need to be until they're ready to be used for a hospital construction project.

Yeah.

So we we both ways. There have been projects where McCarthy has purchased the wall outright, and then we deploy it on different projects that need it, such as in health care.

One unique part is actually my aviation project. That owner wanted to, use project funds to purchase all of the reusable wall, and they wanted to keep it on-site. And now they're actually, just using it for all of the other g c's that are on this active airport doing different projects and really just seeing greater returns than we could have even hoped, because of the reusability of this particular product.

Yeah. It truly is an investment.

Yeah. John, if you don't mind me jumping in here as well. Sure. So Lindsay, I was gonna go, everybody wants it.

Right? It's it's whether it's the the, you know, the contractor that whether it wants to keep it or the facility team. Whenever you see the value, you see the value. Right?

And, John, a diverse mix of customers that are coming to us, you know, it it's whether it be through purchase or what I was gonna share, Lindsey, is, you know, we actually have a national rental partnership with Sunbelt Rentals, who exclusively exclusively uses STARC RealWall.

So if storage is a concern, right, for, for whatever reason, capital investment or storage is a concern, we have a solution, which is our national rental partner with Sunbelt Rentals. So, if there's interest in using STARC, then, obviously, we can connect you with those folks and you can get STARC, and not, you know, have to deal with yet, obviously, the, the the challenge with, with with storage. One more thing I was gonna say too, Lindsay, is, you know, you you talked about doing your matrix for customers on the benefits of, you know, making that investment. What we say our math says that it's roughly two uses, two to three uses, or redeployments of STARC is the equivalent to using drywall one time.

Right? And those economics are changing. It may even be better than that, but, you know, back to our existing customers and users of STARC that are saying they're using it fifty times. Right?

Remember, the breakeven point was forty eight times ago. Right? So every time they redeploy that, that's drywalled or not having to purchase, and that's not even touching all the, the, nonbiodegrable waste that's being saved along the way. So your your economics actually line up with ours, and, I checked the math, and then so we got the same number as well.

So k.

Thanks for jumping in there, Shannon.

Times timing is great too because the next question is for you. You mentioned the ease of use to install for LiteBarrier and RealWall. How many tools are needed to install those systems?

John, I don't know if people are gonna believe me, but if you can turn an Allen wrench, you can deploy our system. The entire that's one of the beauties of this, which good reminder for me to highlight that maybe in some visuals. But the entire system is designed, and we act we actually send you one if you don't have one, one Aldridge.

That that's it.

So it it's you know, I'm a sales guy, and I I could do it. Right? And if I can do it, anybody can do it. So, yeah, the entire system is made to go up easily with, with with limited tools, to be able to do it.

So it's a it's an incredibly fascinating product, whenever you, get your hands on it, you're able to taste it, touch it, and feel it. But anybody that's used our product would, would vouch for that single tool, and you can deploy, you know, again, a hundred feet of our real world LiteBarrier solution in an hour, right, with that single with that single tool. So, pretty neat. Little, little little extra factoid about our products.

Great.

Let's see. I'm thinking this is for you too, Shannon. How does your system work when a fire rated containment is required?

Do you penetrate the ceiling to reach the floor deck above, or do you have to run a lid across the top of the contained area?

In any whatever is required for that particular project, one of the things that we've learned is is local jurisdictional requirements can vary region to region.

We are, if it's if it's a requirement to go to the deck, what we recommend for for contractors is to build a soffit down, and our our solution will meet at the soffit to get a full one hour envelope.

We also do, John, have a one hour fire rated lid, that can, that can sit on top of our firewall solution, again, giving a fire rated ceiling and a full one hour, you know, one hour fire rated envelope. So, you know, we work hand in hand with our contractors. We help we use their intelligence of what local jurisdictional requirements are to help us design the solution to make sure it meets code, you know, for them. And, you know, we're helping ensure compliance out of the box with our product.

So we've seen it go a bunch of different ways. Sometimes it's just to the grid. Sometimes it's to the deck. We've got a solution to meet whatever the requirement is, John, but I would say it varies.

We'll work with you to make sure that you're in compliance.

K. Next question is from Whitney.

In regards to cleaning and disinfection of the containment walls, as Leon was discussing on the pre on the previous question, does this product have an IFU instructions for use that contains this information on cleaning and disinfecting so that hospitals have documented IFUs to follow to demonstrate compliance if any regulatory agency arrives and asks this of the staff?

Throw that out to Shannon maybe too.

Yeah. Maybe Shannon because IFU I cannot answer to. We've never, you know, I've never been exposed to that type of question or needed to answer that. It's just, you know, the bottom line is get your, get like I've stated before, is get your hospital approved disinfectant or whatever disinfectant wipe you're gonna use and just wipe down the inside of those walls. But as far as IFU, I don't know.

Yeah, Tom. We we certainly send best practices when it comes to clean cleaning and sterilizing panels for reuse in sensitive environments like hospitals. You know, anything that's required above and beyond that. Again, what sounds like Leon and I are both saying, I mean, would love to help solve those problems if it's a real challenge being faced by some of our customers, but we'd certainly provide, best practices and even recommended products, that, you know, to our customers for cleaning and sterilization of the products through for reuse and sensitive environment. So absolutely plenty of experience there.

Okay.

And let's see. Another question for Leon here. Why would a contractor need to hang plastic on the outside of temporary drywall containment prior to deconstruction of that containment?

Another great question, and I have seen this firsthand many, many times. Like I stated in the slides, when you're dealing with a sensitive patient, care population like your bone marrow transplant, your ICUs, your ORs, when you're doing construction in those spaces, with your temporary drywall containment, Like I stated before, that drywall, the gypsum board, the metal studs, that is all a repository for dust, debris, and mold spores.

So what happens is if you don't let's let's let's take the, the the the bad case scenario. If you don't put up plastic on the outside of that containment and you start removing that containment, all those containment walls and all those metal studs, If those things are not cleaned properly, vacuumed properly, wiped down properly, when you take those down, you're gonna release all of that dust. Not all of the dust, I mean, there's not a lot, but you're gonna release some of that dust and possibly the mold spores into the adjacent, patient area.

And obviously, that's that's a bad thing from an infection prevention perspective because if you're gonna do that, then why did you even have containment up in the first place? Because you had this containment up during the project and in a hospital environment to keep your dust, to keep your mold spores contained in your construction project.

But then if you remove all that and you release it, then again, what was the point of even having the containment out in the first place? So when you're in a sensitive patient care environment, in my experience, I have asked contractors many times to put up plastic on the outside of that containment wall, the temporary drywall containment, which then acts as a second barrier for any dust, debris, mold spores that are trapped inside, that gypsum board or the stud tracks. You put up that plastic so that when they take the drywall down, they take the metal studs down, all of that dust and debris mold spores, that's all contained inside that plastic with negative air machines in there, HEPA machines, scrubbing the air, so that none of that bad stuff gets on it gets out into the adjacent, out into the adjacent patient area. So that's the whole point of putting the plastic up on the outside of those containment walls.

Yeah. John, in our world, we say put up containment for your containment. Yeah. Right? And it and it's the dust and debris created whenever putting it up and taking it down versus using a dustless solution like, like our product. So excellent, explanation, Leon. Thank you.

K. Just a reminder, if there are any other questions people wanna ask, please put them in the question box.

Shannon, I do have two questions here for you. The first is, is there a warranty, or do you have a lifeline for the panels?

Yeah. There is. It actually comes with a, our products are with a two year manufacturer's warranty, from defects through the manufacture process. So, yes, you know, we we understand the capital investment of reusable walls is a little bit new for some. Right? You know, the, the added, you know, benefit of having, you know, our products be warrantied, is something that we will always pass along to our customers. We certainly stand behind those behind those products.

What was the second part of that one, John?

Oh, and lastly. Yes. Yeah. So it was so technical support.

One of the things that, you know, I feel is a big differentiator between us and, like, products too is, is the technical support that we offer. Interesting factoid about STARC, the original designer of the product, the original engineer, his name is a gentleman by the name of Bruce Bickford, who designed, every single product that we offer is still an employee. He's actually employee number one, and STARC is still is still here. And and we take a tremendous amount of pride, again, on helping with real time, not just at the you know, after the first purchase and first deployment, but real time anytime technical support to all of our customers.

We know that first deployment is, is probably the easy one. It's the it's the complexity of how do I reconfigure this and use it over and over and over again in changing and demanding environments. We wanna be there to make sure that we help you do that, do it with ease, and real time, all the time technical support is something that, you know, we we will always offer and certainly stand by and our customers really enjoy the benefit of.

Okay. Well, the only other question I have left is for Shannon, and that's how do you purchase STARC, which, I guess that works out pretty nicely for you there, Shannon.

What a softball. Right?

Yeah.

No. So, you know, we have again, I'll I'll talk about rental again. Just a reminder that, we do have a national rental partner, Sunbelt Rentals. What a great way to use start.

Test it, use it for the first time. Put your hands on it. Taste it, touch it, feel it. We certainly want, you know, to promote our national rental partner.

For direct purchase, John, we can actually do it over the telephone. You know, there's a few things we require to help tailor that solution, you know, for you, project specifics, things like that. What are you envisioning using the product for? Is it a redeployable inventory?

Is there something project specific? We encourage you to call us, reach out by email, call us, visit our website, request a quote, probably the fastest way to getting a hold of us. We also have, John, a national direct sales team, that is loves to get on-site, with our with our partners, actually walk projects, design solutions, customize, tailor side by side. So, you know, we will take our, our customers and folks that are interested in using a purchasing star through a very, you know, comprehensive consultative sales process to make sure that, what you get is exactly what you thought, and you can see the benefits of using our products for years to come.

So, again, whether it be on the phone or in person or through rental, John, you know, the best way to to get STARC is any way you want is what is what we say. So I think you're gonna post a little bit of contact information for us. Always encourage you to visit our website as well. That's a great way to, to get in touch with a, a STARC sales representative.

I will. Well, I I wanna thank all three of our speakers, Leon, Lindsay, and Shannon, for all the great information, and thanks to everyone for joining us today. We hope you found this presentation valuable. Look for a copy of the recording and the slide deck in your email. Also, be sure to check out the STARC blog at starcsystems.com for more information on a wide variety of topics related to commercial construction and renovations.

Let's see. I'll go ahead and put our contact information up. Thanks again for joining us today. We appreciate you being here and hope you have a great day.