Speaker 1: To the conversation already turning to rebuilding L.A., one of the largest construction companies in Florida is using artificial intelligence to help rebuild affected communities. Coastal Construction is working with two A.I. companies, Togol A.I. and Code Comply A.I. to provide Los Angeles area builders, contractors and governments with one year of free access and training that could significantly fast-track the rebuilding efforts. Chief Information Officer of Coastal Construction and founder of Togol A.I., Patrick Murphy is here now with more. He's also a former U.S. congressman, if he looks familiar to you. Patrick, thanks for joining us. Do appreciate it. This is a fascinating conversation. Tell us how A.I. technology could actually help the L.A. community rebuild and what then would be the biggest obstacles.

Speaker 2: Yes. Well, thank you for having me. Look, I'm from Florida. We see firsthand what disasters can do to communities, and we've dealt with hurricanes for a long time here. So being in the construction industry, we've seen firsthand some of the delays that can happen after these disasters. So our heart goes out to those in L.A. that are dealing with this tragedy and want to help out because it's going to take our whole country to come together to help rebuild. And in order to rebuild, right, there's going to have to be a lot of construction. So on top of the plan reviewers and code compliance and local officials that are dealing with everything that just happened in their community, there's not going to be a surge of new construction that's needed in order to make sure that that is compliant, that it has up to all the latest code, whether that's fire code, life safety, ADA, mechanical, electrical, plumbing, right, all that code has to be reviewed. It's a very manual process to date. However, we developed A.I. technology that automates that process, that basically takes weeks and months of work and now does it in mere seconds with greater accuracy, also reducing human error. So in order to help the community rebuild, we believe it's going to take A.I. technologies like Code Comply that we developed and Toggle that we developed to help get people back in their homes faster.

Speaker 1: So last night, the president and first lady toured some of the disaster areas and then sat down and talked at this roundtable and he talked about waving federal red tape and getting the rebuilding process faster. I'm wondering what you think the balance is for speed versus regulations being met.

Speaker 2: You know, we have to balance both, but, you know, I believe we can do both here, right, because of artificial intelligence. It is really good at taking complex things like permitting and code compliance and compressing it into mere seconds. So often what happens is the plane reviewers don't have time in a normal environment to review the 400 plus tests that they need to go through. So now imagine all the new work that's going to be entering the system for the reconstruction efforts. A.I. can now go through all those 400 plus tests, automate that and then let the human focus on the higher value tasks. So you're actually getting more coverage of safety, of compliance, of regulations with A.I., letting the humans focus on the higher value tasks and compressing months of work down to just seconds. So I hate to say you can have your cake and eat it, too. But thanks to A.I., I believe we're going to help people get back in their homes a lot

Speaker 1: faster. Well, I'm just curious what you think that timeline would be, because for people, you know, it's hard for a lot of people to wrap their head around what you're talking about months down into seconds of processing all this information, which is really cool. But what does that mean in theory, in actuality, rather, for the folks out in L.A.? Because yesterday we were hearing people telling the president it's going to take 18 months to get permits and things like that. If the president can wave some of the red tape, how fast can people rebuild? How much faster can people rebuild because of A.I.?

Speaker 2: If you don't mind, let me just backtrack real quick, because one of the core problems with construction or benefits of it, depending how you look at it, is that most buildings are unique, right? Everything we build, unless it's a sort of a track home, is one of a kind, right? It's new architects and engineers and contractors and materials and building codes. Right. So everything we do takes time. So with A.I., though, we can process all of that unique and nuanced information and make sense of it, whether that's the code compliance or whether that's the actual estimating of the job, the timeline and the materials that are going to be used. So our software is now being used by thousands of people and being used by several governments. So our idea and hope here is that by giving this away for free that, you know, and helping with the onboarding, we're going to enable those local officials that are already dealing with so much in their community to now have a tool to automate their workflow and again, take that 18 months that was alluded to and compress that down to a fraction of the time because of A.I. and ensure that they're doing all of the compliance tests that are necessary to make sure we're rebuilding faster because you don't want to cut quarters. Right. In fact, I think we should be pushing to rebuild back stronger, right? Newer materials, better designs, you know, seeing and learning what just happened and improving that process.

Speaker 1: Well, that's going to be welcome news to the folks out there. Any any any kind of speed in the rebuilding process. Patrick Murphy, thanks for taking the time to tell us about it. I do appreciate it.