Schedule Wrecked? Check Your Materials. | Eshan Jayamanne, Krane

Materials are roughly half the cost of any construction project, and on most jobs they get less management attention than the coffee order.

Eshan Jayamanne, Founder & CEO of Krane, joins Robert to talk about why the construction supply chain stayed broken for so long — and what changes when jobsite delivery data starts flowing upstream into preconstruction.

They cover the whiteboard that started it all, why hospitals are quietly fighting data centers for the same transformers and switchgear, and why the right time to find your bottleneck is before you pour, not after.

Eshan also explains why Krane refuses to pitch itself as "AI for anything" — lead with the problem, and let the tool be the how.

Three takeaways:

• Your procurement log is a diagnostic. Columns, macros, submittal ties — the spreadsheet tells you exactly how a team actually works.
• Design around the supply chain. Same cost, two supplier paths, six months of schedule difference. That decision belongs in precon, not month nine.
• The tools now train the people. GCs are using these systems to onboard new project engineers faster than the jobsite learning curve ever allowed.

Eshan Jayamanne is a licensed PE and third-generation builder who worked at Stantec, WebCore, Boldt, and Chevron before founding Krane, now deployed across major healthcare and data center programs.

Listen, follow the ConTech Exec Podcast, and share it with someone still running their supply chain off a whiteboard.