After 25 years working his way from laborer to senior superintendent, Scott Miller moved into construction technology to help build the tools he wished he had in the field.
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I spent 25 years in the general contracting world. Started as a laborer and worked my way up through foreman, superintendent, and finally senior superintendent. The kind of work where a hundred things can go sideways before lunch and it's your name on the schedule.
When people hear I traded the field for a title like VP of Hardware Products, I usually get the raised eyebrow. Fair enough. Let me tell you how it happened, because I wasn't looking for a career change. If anything, I was terrified of one. I was looking for a way to solve a problem on a construction site, and that one problem changed the whole back half of my career.
I spent a lot of years watching technology arrive on construction sites that clearly wasn't built by anyone who'd ever worked one. The superintendent standing in the trailer at 5:30am doesn't need a feature roadmap. He needs something that solves the problem in front of him right now, holds up in the field, and doesn't add work to an already full day.
That gap between what technology promises and what it actually delivers on a construction site is something I lived for 25 years before I decided to do something about it.
The most complex job I ever ran was a DC school project that had a little of everything: net zero, mass timber hybrid steel, design-build, and the one I still talk about, a floating electric room so we could keep the existing school in operation while we built the new structure around it. That job took its toll on a lot of us, but we got it done and occupied on time.
While getting the site set up, I ran into a requirement I had to meet: I needed a way to track which workers had completed their background checks. That search, really a search for better construction site access control, is what led me to Sitemetric. I met the founders on-site, walked through the system with them, and by the end of that one conversation I knew it was the right fit for the project.
But that's not the part that hooked me. The part that hooked me is what came next: I started asking for changes.
I didn't want a product that did just one small task. I wanted one that could earn its keep by doing several. Project budgets are tight, so the more a single system can do, the more value it brings.
After getting Sitemetric set up on my project, I got connected with the dev team and started requesting changes.
First was an online safety orientation and pre-registration. That meant workers showed up ready to work instead of me sitting in the trailer for hours every morning running orientations one group at a time. Then I asked for zone alerting. I wanted to know the second a worker went up on the roof so I could verify their PTP and go put eyes on their tie-off systems myself. We set alerts on the energized electric rooms. And the first real test of the whole concept was alerting me if a badged worker walked into an occupied area of the school where they didn't belong.
Every one of those requests came from a problem I was living, not a feature on a roadmap. I'd spent two decades watching construction technology get dreamed up by people who'd never poured a footing or signed fifty guys in before sunrise. This was the opposite. This was technology being shaped by the field, in real time, on a real job.
After that project, the math got simple. I could keep being one superintendent solving problems on one construction site at a time, or I could help build the tools that solve them for every superintendent and worker on every construction site. After 25 years, that's the work that pulls me now.
Here's the way I think about my role: I'm a construction guy who learned the software, not a software guy who picked up a little about construction. When our team is weighing a feature, I'm the one who can tell them what it's actually like in the field: what a super needs, what just gets in the way, and what'll get ignored the first time it slows the crew down. That perspective is the whole reason I'm here, and it's the lens I bring to everything we build.
What we do at Sitemetric is Integrated Construction Intelligence, and integrated is the word that matters. It's hardware, access control, and cameras working together as one connected system, so it holds up in the field and not just in a demo.
The requests I was making on that DC school project (zone alerting on energized rooms, real-time access verification, instant notification when someone was somewhere they didn't belong) weren't just feature requests. They were the beginning of a system that needed to work around the clock, because construction sites don't stop.
That's especially true on mission-critical builds. Data center projects running 24/7 with aggressive timelines, sophisticated owners, and no margin for error need a system that matches their operating tempo. When I was a superintendent asking for alerts on energized rooms, I didn't have language for what I was describing. Now I do. It's what happens when the right technology, the right data, and the right people operate as one system.
The tools have changed a lot in 25 years. What hasn't changed is what the job is really about: getting the work done, and getting every person on that construction site home safe at the end of the day.
The superintendents, foremen, and workers who've stood in the trailer know things that don't show up in a product spec. They know what slows a crew down. They know what gets ignored when the schedule tightens. They know what a real problem looks like versus what just looks like one on a dashboard.
That knowledge belongs in the technology. It's the difference between tools people actually use and tools that collect dust after the demo.
The construction industry has always been built by people who solve problems in real conditions, under real pressure, with real consequences. The technology that serves it should be no different.
Talk with our team about your jobsite needs and learn how Sitemetric can help your project succeed.
