Construction Meeting Notes: How to Run Better Site Meetings

Meeting notes are one of the most important records on a construction project, but what should actually go into them, who should run the meeting, and how detailed do they really need to be?

In Episode 43 of What the RFI?, we continue our three-part series on construction meetings with a practical walkthrough of how I prepare for, run, document, and follow up on site meetings as part of the Construction Administration process.

We cover construction meeting notes vs. meeting minutes, preparing a site meeting agenda, tracking attendance and action items, reviewing the construction schedule, and working through RFIs, submittals, change orders, pricing items, and consultant coordination.

I also walk through my own meeting notes workflow, from preparing and distributing the agenda before the meeting to taking notes live and assigning clear responsibility for follow-up items.

We talk about how to keep construction meetings to 30 to 60 minutes, when to sidebar discussions that are going nowhere, and why I block time immediately after a meeting to clean up the notes, complete my own action items, and distribute the meeting record while everything is still fresh.

Plus, I show how I use Granola AI as a second set of ears during construction meetings while still actively taking my own notes.

If you’re an architect, contractor, consultant, project manager, or anyone involved in Construction Administration, this episode provides practical tips for running better construction meetings and producing clearer, more useful meeting notes.

This episode includes a screen-share walkthrough of my meeting notes process, so check out the video version on the What the RFI? YouTube channel.

GRANOLA AI

Watch the previous episode on using Granola AI for construction meetings:

https://youtu.be/6d4UR3qOczA?si=ANSVjO4VhbhbX60V

Try Granola AI FREE using my referral link:

https://www.granola.ai?via=matt-brennan

CHAPTERS

00:00 | Intro: Meeting Minutes & Meeting Notes
01:53 | What Are Construction Meeting Notes?
03:39 | Who Should Run the Site Meeting?
05:53 | In-Person, Online & Hybrid Meetings
06:31 | Software for Construction Meeting Notes
07:59 | Preparing Your Site Meeting Agenda
09:13 | Screen Share: Building the Meeting Notes
13:21 | Tracking the Construction Schedule
18:13 | Submittals & Shop Drawings
19:40 | Changes & Pricing Items
23:01 | Tracking RFIs
24:40 | Owner, Contractor & Consultant Items
27:37 | Wrapping Up & Scheduling the Next Meeting
28:00 | Preparing the Next Meeting Agenda
33:00 | Tips for Running Better Construction Meetings
36:00 | Action Items & Distributing Meeting Notes
37:08 | Closing Thoughts

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1:00:00

Meeting minutes,meeting notes, what are they?How do you write them?How do you actually runa proper site meeting?All this in today'sepisode, let's get into it.(upbeat music)Welcome to What They RFI.I'm Matt Brennan and thisis the podcast all about CA.So today is aboutmeeting minutes, meeting notes.Pick and choose what you wanna call.We're gonna go intothose details in a second,but this is continuationof the three part series,all about meeting minutes, meeting notes,how to write them, howto run your first meeting.And the last episode,we went into meeting notesthat are using AI, right?We talked about granola AIand we went through a full demo of it,how it works, how Iwork in this workflow.And like I said, thiswas a three part serieswhere we started withthe AI function out of it.Today, we're gonna get into actuallythe meeting notes andkind of why the value,why you even do this.And then the next episode's all aboutkind of that first site kickoff meeting.So once you kind ofdo this little session,these three partmeetings, these podcasts,you're gonna have a clearunderstanding where to go.So definitely check out the links below.We'll have the linksof the previous episodewith the granola AI.And if you wanna take thatproduct out for a test drive,there is a referral link in there.It helps the show.Gives you a free month, fantastic.And I think you'll be very pleasant,it's pretty surprisedand how efficient it works.We actually are just movingour whole office over to it.So it's definitely got alot of merit to it, okay?And again, like the last episode,I am gonna do some screen sharing.I will do my best to describe this.So do check this on the YouTube channel,what the RFI, subscribeif you haven't been there,give it a like, comments, you know,all that kind of stuff too.So let's get right into this.What are meeting notes?And first of all, Ikeep saying meeting notes,meeting minutes, like why,what's the difference, Matt?Well, meeting minutesare contractual completely.It's transcripts of transcripts, right?Meeting minutes would besomebody out in a courthousedoing, you know, on their typewriter,laying that all out, it is to the tee,he said this, she said this, period.Meeting notes from a legality side thingsare a little bit more loosebecause they're my notescompared to your notes.So if I do make an errors and omissions,there's a little bit of flexibility.So that's the technically, Irefer them as meeting notesbecause they're my notesthat how this site meetingor the client meeting went, okay?So that's kind of thedifference between the two.And the big thing is why dowe even have meeting notes?Well, it's a contractual documentthat allows us to go backin time and basically referversus having Jim saying, Isaid this and I said this,we can go back to this documentationand going through the minutes here,we can actually see who said what,what action was takingplace and who was to follow upand that kind of stuff.So it just gives anagenda to a site meeting,lets us run through certaincritical issues, make notes.And you'll see this more in a secondonce we get into it on thescreen sharing side of things.Okay, and the big question,and this is one of those arguments,they've had a lot ofdiscussions with listenersand clients and friends and et cetera,and it's who runs the site meeting.I have some people enjoythe contractor running,no problems, it's nice when they run itbecause then I can sitback and actually relaxand just do the work as is.As the architectural on record,the firm has taken part of this project,it's nice to do the minutesmeeting notes right there,you to control it.And the value of that is that,if you're fair and just,you're not gonnabasically throw anyone on the busand that's necessary, okay?You're gonna keep it clean,you're gonna be fair and just.I find with some of thecontractor site meetings,their information is not correct, right?Matt, you're responsiblefor 10 out starting RFIs.Actually, there's only two,and there are two brand new ones.So by doing it, you'rebeing fair to the logs,you're being fair towhat's actually critical,what's out there.You're actually drivingwhat the critical items are.And we'll get into thiswhen we actually draft upthe minutes here.But you just don't, you lose that controlof that site meeting.And I don't,personally, I don't like that.I think I'm on amicromanagement individual,but there is some value ofrunning those site meetings.So I would encourage you, ifyou're not doing it right now,I would encourage youto start looking into itand see how you can do that.It definitely varies by per contract.We do a lot of STIP-SUN, CCD, C2contracts here out in BC.And in that case, then yes,we will run the meetings nomatter what we insist we do it.Now, when it comes tocontract management type of jobs,and again, we've doneepisodes of this on the past,so check them out.That's where we do letthe contractor run it.But again, there's acontractor running it,and I've been in many of those meetingswhere they have noticedso many outstanding itemsand their logs are not updated,and I imagine what our logs are.And it's veryfrustrating because you wanna talkabout the real items of business.We don't wanna kinda be discussing logsand who's actually up to date right now.That's not acceptable,we wanna get into it.And the other thing toowith your site meetings,sometimes they're ran byonline, usually on site of course,and sometimes a bit ofa mixture of a hybrid,which is nice.So you may be on site,but then you may have acouple just joining onlinebecause they're needed therefor like one or two questions.But ideally when we doall these site meetings,we do want all consultants to beparticipating into it.Maybe landscape, they might be the onesthat we would kinda excuse at the end.And then same thing, structural,we'll want them at the very beginning,but eventually they'll fade offbecause the building's built, right?So it comes in waves, but you as the CRP,the architect director, ofcourse you're gonna be running,you're gonna always beat each of those minutes.Now with these site meetings,what software wouldyou use to write these?Well again, we kinda last episode,we talked about AImeeting minutes, right?Meeting notes and howthose note takers can come in,they can do some good stuff.But at the end of the day,you still need control, right?You still need to put the rightinformation in there.And yes, there are somegreat tools like Decisionsand like Fathom, they doall the video recording.We talked about Gornol AI,where it's kind of a hybrid,where it lets you type the notes,but then it takes AI's transcriptsand then fills in the gaps, which isvery, very fantastic.Those are great for justkind of casual meetings.I wouldn't hold that true to beingfor our final site meeting notes,because that's whatwe're gonna get into today.But I would definitelyrun it in the background,so if I ever need tocheck something, I can, okay?In terms of an actualminute application software,I've looked, I haven't found anything.I'm gonna go back toMicrosoft Word or Mac's pages.Those are the two defaults.It's on your, you know, it's free.It's on your computeralready, and it's great.But if you've got a great applicationthat fills out the numbersand sequences and everything,let me know.I'd love to check itout and do a review of it.But at this point, I'mgonna be featuring everythingon Microsoft Word, because again,it's the application of choice.We have it, and itjust makes sense, okay?Now, before we jumpinto the site meeting,what I like to do is Ilike to prepare my agenda.And what I mean by this is I take theprevious site meeting,I copy that Word document,the one that was finalized,I give it today's date,or the site meeting date,and note it as agenda,and I go through there,and I clean up thelogs, so I start to lookat the RFI logs and theshop drawings and everything,old business, and I clean it up to thebest of the way you are.And I'll show you how to do that,kind of part two of today's video,how I'd set it up formeeting number 26 or whatever,we'll get into, okay?But that's kind of the plan of approach,that we would go into this,we'd start off with this agenda,we would email that to theteam kind of a day before,maybe the morning, Iwould physically print that,bring double-sided pages,bring it to the site trailer,and then once we get there,we get right into it, okay?And like I said, I do rungranola in the background,just to capture anymiscellaneous things that I miss,sometimes in the momentyou're typing up so much,you can only take in somuch as a human being.So let's get into it again,highly recommend youchecking out the YouTube one here,I'm just gonna share my screen here.And here we go.So here is what the RFI agenda, okay?So we've arrived onsite, we got our PPE on,we get in there, themeeting's starting at 11 a.m.on June 11th or whatever the date is,and we're ready to go, okay?So the first thing I'm gonna take noteis I'm gonna see who's in the room.We've got this kind ofwho's present for the meeting,and this is good torefer, was the client on site,or is it not, in that sense.So at this point, what I like to dois this is just alittle table in Microsoftword in that respect.And I would just say thepresent, maybe Dwight was present,the contractor Jim was present,Mr. Architect was present, I was present,Pam from Beef Civil was present,and then Ryan from Structural,he wasn't reallyacquired, he wasn't there,but definitely Bob, who'sour mechanical engineer,we got Roy who's electrical,and Landscape Toby was not there.So you're gonna justbasically do a roll call,who's there, you'regonna see it, you can do it.Again, if you're running a Teams meeting,you're gonna have that inthat, you'll see them on that.And again, yes, alltheir emails are on this,so anytime anyone wants to get in touchwith them afterwards,everyone's got a record of wherethey can reach these individuals, okay?So once we've kind of done that,which you can do that before you actuallyofficially start themeeting, it's 11 o'clock,let's get in and start this meeting.And this is where I like to break upagenda sections, okay?And ideally, I'verearranged my actual notesto be one kind of continuous group,but again, that depends,you wanna put your brand,your flair to it, go nuts with this,but this is where it is.So our first section iscalled the general section.Well, this is whereyou may maybe wanna knowmaybe if people are on holidays,maybe there's welcome to the team,welcome Heather to the group,she's gonna be takinglead on some of these jobs.Maybe you wanna put that as just an FYI.Matt is going onholidays in August, okay?And you would note thisis just, and from there,this is gonna be theitem tracking number,and I'll get into thisas we go through this.And then also the action by,is there an action item?This is just information, nothing,nobody needs to go from there, okay?And the other thing too,I would highlyrecommend turning off Grammarlyas doing this, I useGrammarly to help outthroughout the day andeverything with my task,but when I'm doing my meeting minutes,it's not necessarily accurate,it's not really word friendlybecause I'm more justdoing point forms to the point.I mean, eventually you're gonna startto train your brain like this.The next item, the next gen item is sitesafety and security.So typically I would like tohave no site safety incidents,right, there was no, nothing on site,no one hurt themselves, okay?Maybe there was a, youknow, when we bring this up,I'm assuming there's nosite safety there, Jim,actually break in over the weekend.Some tools were stolen, okay?Maybe there was, someone fell off a lotor we wanna recordthat, we wanna document,we don't wanna know what's happening.If we have any site safetyconcerns away of our own,we can bring it up, butagain, it's just high level,that's all it is, is just to make surethat things are goingsmooth on site and that.And maybe there was an insurance claim,so that's where we want toinvolve the school district,SD to follow up on insurance, okay?Next item, let's go in.So now we get into the scheduleand this is where I find the meeting,not necessarily stalls,but we do take a lot of time.Sometimes we've lastedthis, sometimes as we get closerto the end of the project, wedefinitely want to make surethis is very clear, okay?So first thing Ialways have in my agendasis four week outlook and I always keepthe previous meetingand then eventually I'llcopy and delete the old ones.We always have oneprevious site meeting in here.So four week outlook, wesay high level contractor,what do you've gotgoing, basically ongoing,exterior flat works,interior mill work arriving,lowering, et cetera.Put as much as you want,don't have to be detailed,it's just more high level.This at this point isjust telling the team,boarding in level two.These little indicatorsare great because then,hey, you're about to board,I want to get my field review out there.So this is just basicallygetting the conversation going,knowing what you'reexpecting through this.And yeah, ideally justtrying to get some clarity on it.Another two sections that I like toinclude in the scheduleis BC Hydro, which isour power and Fortis Gas,which is our basicallyutility gas, natural gas.And if you got anything else from autility application,I like to put this in.I put this kind of the first meetingbecause these are the two,mainly my electrical isgetting power to the buildingfor some reason, eventhough you're so proactiveduring your design stage,you're in yourelectrical engineers involvedand communicating, thiscan hold up a project.This can hold up a substantial project,ready for takeover and so on.So I like to keep track of itbecause if I just leave it out of there,eventually I'll find out too late ifwe're not on target.So over my kind of mymeetings, I'll have,oh yeah, we've got anupdate that the designersbeen assigned to the project.The next meeting we had atarget date of July 20, 2026.Hey, we're in Julyright now for this meeting.And then we would go, okay, contractor,how are we doing with this?Right, where are we at?Yeah, we just got anotice of permit delay.They are scheduled for August 11th.Fantastic, okay, we're gonna note that.We wanna keep track because our next sitemeaning when we come back to thisand we're past thatAugust 11th, what's the plan?What are we doing becausewe're trying to get thisin for occupancy or whatever the case is.So it's great.Maybe we want to have our contractor so in this case, it'sDunder Construction DC.And again, useabbreviations DC to follow up.And this is where under the actionswhen rather than being info,we're going to put DC in this case.And then we do thesame thing for the Fortisand we go to the list.If one thingeventually when we're gettingabout three, four months before theproduct is closing up,I like to put keyconstruction schedule targets.So again, we wanna makesure that certain elementsof the project is being follow up.So we're not missing that target datefor August 10th occupancy orwhatever the case is, okay.And maybe over time,you'll have other items like,hey, August 5th, what portables we move.The contractor was review the process,provide the scheduleto the school district.And sometimes when these things come up,I just go, how are we doing this?Yeah, it's on track for next week.Fantastic, ahead of schedule.So put your notes in.Again, it's no actionitem, it's an ongoing thing.And we as the architect,RFI is gathering S 1000 quotesand we'll review thiswith the school district.So again, for doing thatfinal testing for the occupancy.So these are kind oflike the schedule itemswe'd like to talk about.The most important one isbasically the four week outlookand then these two.And then again, as you getnear the end of the project,about key construction milestone datesand just make sure thatwe're not slipping schedule.If we do get anupdated construction scheduleand the schedule has changed,we'll wanna talk about thatduring this portion of it.So like I said, Ithink you can start to seewhy the schedule aspectwhere you can get stuck onbecause depending on how it is,this is one of the most importantsections to talk aboutright at the get go and where it changes.The next one, we mayhave a progress claimfor the end of the month.It's nice just to keep this on record.How are we doing?Progress claims has come in.We're waiting for the consultants,whatever the case is,waiting for the contract.Again, it's just one, two lines.That's all it is andthe way we document it.Next one is shopdrawings, submittals, right?How are we doing?Okay, so we got shop drawing 77 signage.It's in review.The school districtnote that they don't wanta racing wheel wheelchair.They just want more of astandard wheelchair symbol.Great RFI to review and return.We also have another shopdrawing of 100 for appliances.We're reviewing it.The school district notedthat appliances are to be white.Great, so we willfollow up and return that.Maybe this waselectrical needing to review it.So EE to review.EE to review before returning.And again, as you're gonnasee, I'm gonna go over hereand I'm going to put aslash and it's the two of us.We're both responsible for this.So that's the idea.Through this and we'll goabout tips and tricks at the end,but we don't wanthaving long listed itemsof all these outstanding shop drawingsthat are not being returned.They should just be what'scurrent and what's fresh.So we go through this andthis should match our logs.And that's why we keep track of our logsfor our RFI's, submittals, et cetera.And then eventuallywhen we're wrapping upthe meeting agenda,we're looking at that logand just inputting over here.So it's very clear.And again, this is why by usdoing these meeting minutes,meeting notes, allows uscontrol meeting in that sense.Next topic is the proposedchanges, any pricing items.And this is probably the second sectionthat does get really hung up on.Depends on how muchoutstanding items are there.So we would go in.So rather than we, herein BC, we call them CCNs,Contamulant Change Noticesversus Braland in the US,you're calling them as proposed changes.This is one of thoselanguages that just changesbetween job to job, stateto state, country to country.So they're all overthe map in that sense.And they can even be,anyways, it just changes.So that's my proposed changeis also being referred as a CCN.So we issued a CCNfor concrete replacementat the front entry.Basically that firstmeeting, meeting number 17,we said waiting for pricing.And the secondmeeting, number 18, ongoing,pricing to fall into weeks.And eventually waiting forpricing 178 days overdue.And then we gotpricing received in review,waiting for civil to review the pricing.And we are good for this meeting.We just got, we just basically,everyone's on board.We're in the process ofissuing that final change order.So that's what we're gonna do.It's in our case to put together.We go to the next item,CCN33, Court Door Revisions.You can see there's some history herethat's been grayed out.And we just got the quote in reviewworking with the doorhardware consultant.So put your notes again,it doesn't have to be anything fancy.Keep it simple.And as you can see,I'm doing this with talkingto you and I'm writing it.Do the same thing in your meeting.If you can bring your laptopand do these in live action,you're gonna save a lot of time.It's fresh, keep it in there.Sometimes, what I do if I have,there's a little bitmore I wanna add to this,just highlight the whole thing.And then at that point,you can always go backand find it really quickand then go from there.And you just basicallyrun through your items.And again, if for some reason we get anew item at the end,we've got some requests for extras,some additional changes,and maybe we've got the contract saying,I've got a new changeorder coming, right?And now the request extra, no problem.Right in the meeting, youcan start to add your rows.And basically DC2 has requested an extrafor some additional bumps.Okay?So DC, and thenbasically the final action,I make sure it's really good.DC2 formalize, quote, and submit.And of course, I wouldre-tag this and make it blackbecause it's brand new.Again, it's somethingthat's not the past.At that point, it would be noted as that.So this is a good section we kind of,like I said, we go through,we wanna document the pricing.It definitely can take some time.Hopefully you don't haveso many outstandingpricing items, but if you do,you gotta go through them.And each item, like keep it toa minimum of a minute or two.Like we don't want it,the more items on this,the meeting is gonna go longer.So sometimes it's just simple.Are we on trackwaiting for revised pricing?Any updates?Yeah, it's coming in the week.Great.I'll note that andpricing coming in a week.The next one is the beautifulRFI is what the RFI tell ya.This is again, wherewe wanna track our RFIsthat are outstandingthat we haven't closed off.You can see that RFI 193,Elevator Remote Recall Switch in review,switch is not required.We are to respond.We would be typing this as is.RFI 199, curve from previous contracts.Civil is reviewingit, waiting for civils.And they noted, hey,we got a CSI to follow.Fantastic.And that's kind of how we'regonna just keep noting this.Again, noting who'sresponsible for this in that respectand who we're waiting for.If they, again, the contract says,I got a new RFI coming, great.Put it in the notes justas an FYI as you're there.But you're gonna go through thisand hopefully this isnice and short and sweetbecause again, we don't wanna haveanything outstanding.Once we start seeinglike three, four meetingsthat we've talked about thesame RFI, that's a problem.That means the RFI is not being resolvedand maybe it's because of you,maybe it's because of the consultant,but it becomes embarrassing.Let's just be very honest here.We want these RFIs in and outand they should alwaysjust be fresh, right?It all depends.And you can see when I did this draftof this meeting agenda,I had three brand new fresh onesand then three that were in reviewbecause we're waiting on for a consultantor whatever the case is.Now at this point in the meeting,we've really covered alot of the items alreadyin terms of new businessthat we already been talking about.But now it's, this was the pointwhere the meeting kind of moves overand directs it to everyone in the roomif they've got any new business.Cause a lot of the old business,it would be already whatwe've already talked aboutin the scheduling andchanges to RFIs, et cetera.And you're starting to see that.So then we get into the owner.So we turn to the owner,he's the one that'spaying for the project.What do you got?Right?This was the previous meeting,SD required about the ACM cladding.The contractor is gonna review this.Next week, item is closed, closed.Note this becausethis is really importantbecause when we getinto the next agenda here,I'm just gonna look through theseand just strike these off.Cause I don't want totalk about this again.We don't need to talk about closed items.So we've, in thismeeting, we've concluded itand then we, way we go.And the contractor confirmedthat the brickflashings have been orderedand DC did issue somephotos to us, what the RFIand forward to the city for inspection.Oh, contractor saysthey're installed in site.And we're gonna, itemis complete and closed.Maybe we're gonna saywhat the RFI to follow upwith the city, whatever you want to do.But the point is, is that we're,we're just trying toget these items closed.And we're gonna talk about again,is there something we needto look after the meetingin that respect?So we'll go through thewhole entire owner items.And this is where Idefinitely come in hereand I, you know, adda whole bunch of rowsbecause usually the owner will come inand add a whole bunchof new business, right?Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.Sounds great.Who's responsible and the way we go.Next, it's the contractor's turn.Contractor, is thereanything we haven't talked aboutthat we've already discussed?No word.Yeah, cause they're notgonna talk about schedulingcause we already talked about that.Usually they don't,maybe they'll have something.Maybe they'll be like,oh, hey, we have a conditionin the learning stairs roomwhere we want to see some trim reveal.Let's go look at it after the meeting.Put just a general notein there, note it, great.And then at that point,we move on to the architectural side.Oh, Matt's gonna be on vacation fromAugust 15th to 19th.Maybe we want to notethat we're planning,we're in discussions with the city.We're gonna bring them out for the prewalkthrough for this.Whatever you want to do,the point is, is note it, get it in thereinto the meeting notes, right?And then we follow up with a civiland we follow up with structural.If they don't have anything to say,if they've already, causeit's already been talkedand addressed, all Ido is put no new itemsand it's for information.So you get a lot ofthese, no information,no new business, no new business.But this is kind of like your last call,you know, mechanical, electricalor anything that you want to bring up.Maybe electrical will say,I will be on site next week.We move to electrical and they say,hey, we're to followup on electrical pumpfor some pump that needed,the contract's gonna follow up,whatever the case is.And then eventually wewrap up on landscape,any geotechnical items,any building envelope items.We're done the meeting.And then kind of just afinal, any last things?Nope, fantastic.Time, well, it ran till 11.50.Great.Next meeting is August7th at 9 a.m. on site.And then your disclosureon the meeting is done.Shut her down, get up, do your site walk.We'll talk about that in another episode.And then basically,you'll kind of clean upand then you're gonna get to the office.Okay, you're gonna open up your laptop.And then at this point, weare going to do this again.Now we come up, weopen up this agenda hereand we know, yeah, it's meeting notes.We had all that.Now, the one thing I need to do isI need to start adding the numbers.So this was 2304.So in this case, this would be 2304.Or 2304. The next one is going to be 23.05.And this is what I'm saying.If you got an applicationthat does this automatically,I'd love to see it.Definitely just, yeah, it can be achallenge in that sense,but it honestly doesn't take much time.And I do this at the very endbecause if anyonestarts adding little notesin between things, you do your numberswhile you're doing themeeting, you have to redo them.So I just leave it to the end.So basically, at this point,I go through all these numbers.I make sure maybe thatafter the site meeting,we did talk about something.Maybe I'll put itfollowing the site meetingwe've met on site and we discussed thisand we wrapped it up, items closed.That's okay.Put it in there.Because you kind ofstill had the conversation.It's not live random meeting,but it's just kind of the general notes.Once you're done this, then yes,you would throw into Bluebeamand maybe we'd create a PDF of this.We would email this to everyone saying,here's the meetingnotes, everything's good to goand the way it is.So at that point, thatwould be coming into place.Looks all good.The people would pop it up, PDF it.And yeah, there we go, right?Send it off and the way the team goes.Now, we wrapped this up for this meeting.That was fantastic.Now a month has passed.We're going to go tosite meeting number 24.So what I would do isI'd open up the notes.I would go save as.(mouse clicking)I just love how word takes me everywhere.So now this is going tobe renamed to 24 Agenda.And then we get right up here.And of course we aregoing to change this.And this takes me about five minutes,or five minutes, 10minutes, depends what's going on.So again, change your date.So we said it was goingto be the August 11th.Okay, it's on site.It's at 11, nope, it'snot 11, it's actually nine.They just change it to the client, great.And of course we're goingto just delete all thesebecause we're going to prepare it.And then really simple, I'mjust going to go like that.And this probably be no new items.(mouse clicking)And again, because wehad to follow up on,the school just had to follow up,there was something that needed.New line, I would just go update,put a question mark in the previous line,because it's still inthere, I'm going to turn it,I use my favorite kind ofmedium gray, light gray,and I gray it out.So this is all prepared.When I get into thatmeeting, I can update this.And then same thing,the four week outlook,what I do is I go four week outlook.I delete the grayed out zone.And again, it ischallenging on a track pad,but you get it.I gray that out, I delete the 22,because that was not where meeting is.And then we get that ready.And then same thing,we just kind of go through the minutes.Now, if I scroll down the list here,and I see anything that is closed,these guys, I just go inthere, hit my backspace, gone.It deletes it from the table, okay?And basically clean it up.Same thing for the RFIsor CCNs or SIs or whatever,I pull up my logs, I see where I'm at.Oh, RFI and 193 was returned,I'm not even gonna talk about this.This one was returned.This one's ongoing.Maybe there's something, what is it?But I'm preparing myself,again, I would highlight it,I would shade it and go on,and you're starting to see this history.So I do all this, get this all set up.Again, I would export this as the agenda.I would email it to everyone, save it as,and call it now notes.I go to site, I open it up,and then we can carry on with this.So that's kind of thelittle demo portion,how I run a site meetingas I go through these items,how I record it, how I document it.Like I said, I bring myphysical laptop on site.And if I have to plug in, plug in,I have my teams running,I have granola AI running.And at that point, I dothat live and that's it.Now I'm gonna stopsharing my screen here.And that kind ofconcludes the demo portionof this.Now, kind of sometips during the meetings,some common mistakes Isee from individuals.It's one is keep yourmeeting anywhere from 30to 60 minutes.This is an expensive meeting.Think about who's in the room.It's all your consultants.There's both, you know,anywhere from 10 to 15 people.It's a very expensive meeting.So let's be concise, let's be to point,let's get into it andgo from there, okay?If a topic can't beresolved in kind of that two,three minutes mark, that's where we'regonna have to sidebar.We're gonna have to take it offlineand we're gonna have totalk about it after the meetingor maybe it may follow up email orsomething like that.It's good to get someof these items resolved.It's very powerful.It's great.If we can save an RFI, then fantastic.Sometimes it is worth it.So it's a judgment call in that respect.But keep in mind, the more you go onthese side tangents,you're wasting everyone'stime, that hour is approaching.So you've gotta just be agood judge of character to it.I find meetings in 30 minutes,unless it's like a brandnew job and it's very little,it's not, it typically doesn't happen.Just because of how muchyou have to talk into it,but a typical job, atypical school that I'm working onwill take about 40 minutes, 45 minutes.And again, sometimes I'veseen them go up to two hoursand it just, we havesome people like to talk.Sometimes eventuallyyou just gotta be blunt,whether it's call it rude or not,but just point out that timeto move on, we've gotta go.So again, let's justkeep it to that point.Don't write atranscript versus decisions.Like again, you can seemy notes are very clean,very to the point andwhat they need to be.Have direction, make sure you're taggingwho is involved in thatrespect, what needs to be done.And as we kind of gothrough those sections,make sure as you kind ofwrap it up as we noted,those, that's kind of oldbusiness and just put out there.Is there any new business?Is there any new RFI's upcoming?We should be aware of owner.Do you have any new items?Yeah, I got my own list.Right, let's document and putone by one, put it in there,get it in the notes, okay?And like I said, notewho should be responsiblefor that action item.That's reallyimportant of course as well.And most items like RFI's and Smittles,they shouldn't carry from meeting,meeting as we went over.Sometimes it's okay,sometimes a shop drawingcan go for some time.Maybe it's with the owner, owners areslow to make decisionsor they have to gothrough other third partyor they gotta go to asocial event with a groupor everything, usergroup meetings and that stuffand bring it forward.It all varies, right,in that respect, okay?But just keeping atrack that these are thingsmoving forward.When you get back to theoffice, write your notes,get them done, get themdistributed right away.Very, very important.And don't wait three,four days, don't wait a week.You're not gonna rememberall the intimate detailsthat went into that.So that's where General AI helps.But again, ideally just get those minutesin, get them processed and get them out.And before I processthem, one little tip I findthat's really helpfulis what I like to dois I like to, as I'm going through it,if there's any action items,not to run this RFI wetalked about, I got direction.Great, take that and quickly put that inand then away we go.And those are kind ofthings that are very helpfulas you're going throughthese writing this out,you're basicallycompleting and wrapping it up.And what I like to dowith that is just concluding.It's done in that respect.And that's a good way tokind of just complete those,get them in, get them done,and then you don'thave to worry about it.So I always allow extratime in my schedule for that.And like I said, Iphysically block the calendar offfor that.So in closing andwrapping up this episode,every site meeting iswe tracked, end of story,even design meetings,sometimes client meetings,but formally tracking this isdefinitely your site meetings.If I just do one-on-one owner calls,I'll just use your kernel AIto kind of do those meetingsand take the notes fromthat and then paste it over.But it's a similarformat that we're facing here.We're still following that.Okay.And again, I highlyrecommend you do the notesright in the meeting,type them up and get them outand distribute right away.You don't have to be crazy detailed,but just get it to the point,make those decisions, make it happy.And be sure to check out thatgranola AI application video,right, how the AI notes,and then you can searchover all the meetings.It's really cool.Go check it out.Link's in the description.We'll try it out, theaffiliate links there and that.But I hope youlearned something like this.Drop in the comments, send me notes.I'm always interested inseeing how you guys recordthese meeting minutes, meeting notes,and what your applications are you doing,any tips and tricks.It was something I kindof personally developedover the years and lookedat how others were doing itand basically came up with a system.So happy to share itwith you guys and that.But last but not least,architects keep designing,contractors keep makingthose blueprints reality.We'll see you on the next one.(upbeat music)

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