Navigating Digital Transformation in AEC: Strategies for Success

Joe Giegerich

Hi everybody. This is Joe Giegerich with the ProjectReady Podcast. Today, we’re going to be discussing how to navigate digital transformation in the AEC and strategies for success. And we have Shaili Modi-Oza, as always with us on the panel. We’re also fortunate to have Nicholas Childs, who’s a construction account executive for Autodesk. The lower and short of it is what we’re going to be discussing is look, the industry was traditionally on premise. It’s slowly but surely moving to the cloud. I was looking at stats in 2018. It’s less than 10% of companies even had a strap. Energy and today it’s about half is what I read and growing exponentially predicted to grow continuously about. 10% year over year for the next 5 years. And just a quick aside there, so Nicholas, is that also your understanding where the industry was and where it’s going?

Nicholas Childs

Oh, I I totally agree. Yeah, absolutely.

Joe Giegerich

All right. And so with that, there are challenges. So that kind of comes back to strategies for success and the challenges around transitioning to cloud based solutions. Having a digital strategy upfront, not doing it Willy nilly. And the importance of really having our friend Sala always refers to this basically a digital strategy. Plan as you start adopting platforms that alike and of course important to us is the the requisite. You have to have a way to integrate your platforms both internally and also to communicate that information. Those workflow statuses bridge, that’s our work bridge product between different systems. So let’s understand those challenges. And so Nicholas, I turn to you this and what? Prompted our desire to have you on the panel was I had asked you, I said what’s really driving this digital transformation, the interest in what we do and the features that we’ve been rolling out to market, what’s driving that digital transformation in the industry?

Nicholas Childs

Yeah. No, it’s a it’s a good question and you know. I’ve been in this role with Autodesk for quite some time and been around the industry and so I’ve I’ve have kind of an interesting perspective. I would say one of the main focuses or or kind of trends that is really driving the. Industry is the is the use of models so. When I first entered the industry back in 2015, Autodesk had design models right. We we had rabbit, but most of our clients were still in AutoCAD. I think there was. Just we were just starting to see the the larger shift to kind of parametric modeling. And once that shift happened. Then all of the data behind all of those models became something of importance, right? And and that has transcended both in the government commercial, you know, private sectors, everyone is really trying to get access to that data. And that model information.

Joe Giegerich

Got it. And one of the things that you had mentioned was in terms of that digital transformation that’s being driven from the top down that owners are really pushing on this. Can you talk? About that a bit.

Nicholas Childs

Yeah. So if you really think about it, when we start to look at a model, right, who does it benefit the the idea of a model or a digital twin, an envelope of a of a physically built asset is really going to. End up or should end up in the hands of the owner, the person who is going to maintain that asset. And so owners have a large stake in pushing this. In fact, I would say they are the majority of the industry leaders in either requesting. Or investigating themselves into this type of, you know, interconnected data industry or world that we’re going into, right. And and you’re seeing we’re seeing that across the board, not just in your you. Know. Retail commercial type owners, you’re seeing that in governments. You’re seeing that in oil and gas. I mean any sector. They’re in all sectors, are really starting to move over to this idea of interconnected data. And you know more model based data.

Joe Giegerich

Yeah, it’s the classic downward adoption, right, right, right. And, you know, one of the challenges we see out there and Shelley, I hope you win as well, is there are so many apps and solutions available out there that you have to. Down a bring together that information in the context of the project. So there was anything you would add to that.

Shaili Modi-Oza

Yeah, definitely. I guess in terms of so many apps and solutions, we have seen people using different point solutions like there are apps good at different things and which is in a way great that there are so many different options and apps available. But that’s what makes it complicated as well when. On a single project you have so many different term solutions and products. So the data is all over the place, so then the problem becomes to trying to view all of it or get everything in one place and context of the project. But it’s just whatever works best at the time, we’ve seen organizations use a bunch of different point solutions and then it starts getting difficult trying to bring all of that.

Joe Giegerich

Yeah, I personally think that point solutions. We’ll start to go the way of the world, right? Overtime they’ll get acquired and baked into other people’s stacks. You agree with that, Nicholas?

Nicholas Childs

Ohh absolutely. I mean Autodesk, we’ve been acquiring products, new solutions basically since our start of our our big transaction. Let’s call it acquisition cycle was around 20/14/2015 when we acquired PlanGrid Building Connected Pro asked all of those. Solutions that are now what make up the AC so totally integrants and and we’re right in line with with that motion as well.

Joe Giegerich

Yeah. So you know my my thing is there’s a split of the difference, right, between trying to get everything done on one platform regardless of who it is. But then having too many point solutions and there’s some balance they’re in. We think that what we do is we allow primary systems if you. Well, to communicate from the synchronization of workflows, the synchronization of content and documents and that’s where I think you split the difference. You’re going to end up with some major platforms. I personally think the point solutions you really have to give a hard look to these days. And then there’s that incumbency about bringing all those systems together. I mean, it’s never been lost on me. That Autodesk was very early with. George. To say just to recognize that you have to interoperate with platforms that may or may not be competitors. And the reason for that is that’s what your clients are demanding, right? They want that digital delivery of information. Is that fair?

Nicholas Childs

Oh yeah, yeah. And and if you really think about it, it kind of zoom out into the owner space, right, as as much of a big player or a main platform.

Speaker

And.

Nicholas Childs

As we are. To an architect and engineer construction company. When we enter the realm of an owner. We are one of very many tools that that run their business right that help their business. And in that there’s not a lot of, let’s say innate knowledge in this type of of data management. And so that interconnectivity of multiple different databases and tools becomes even more important when we start to look at our large, especially commercial or government owners who are, you know, in some cases I have clients who have over 180. Different types of software that help them run their business right? Day-to-day, that’s every day. Someone is touching 180 pieces of software within their organization that they pay for actively, right, that that data is integral to their bottom line. And so having organizations such as yours to be able to connect that data. And not only bring Autodesk into the fold, but so many others into into their data lakes. And, you know, dashboards is is monumental and it is the way of the future.

Joe Giegerich

Yeah, they have to get it over the finish line, right? All that information and you know, so we have. Plants. A couple of folks that you referred us to, they have to use procore on the other side because that’s what the owner is using or the GC is using. And so we’re just finding this increasing request for what we refer to as work bridge is we do a lot of stuff with that one. Shirley, would you agree that’s the one that seems to be really. Driving things right now.

Shaili Modi-Oza

Yeah, yeah, definitely agreed.

Joe Giegerich

Wine back in history. Though. Because you know, with with half of companies now in the cloud, that leaves the other half that isn’t. And you know what we find when we talk to clients is. First they adopt, then they find the problems of interconnectivity. They take a stab at it, but it’s still not complete. And I I think that a lot of what has to be still addressed is the mindset of on premise. And a lot of investment that went that was made in developing integrations to on Prem. Uh. Right. And then figure out how that’s going to translate back out to the cloud?

Nicholas Childs

Yeah, it’s it’s something we deal with every day. It’s also one of the riskiest parts of of data that I would say I deal with every day, so. You know, when I I think when you know first got into the industry, let’s call it 10 years ago. Every, every office. Had an on Prem solution, right? If you were working in AutoCAD or Revit you were using your Revit server you were sharing, you were collaborating. Now in our new new age, having those on Prem servers is the most risky thing you can do for your business. And the reason is is that is the first area a hacker is going to go after because if they can walk that information up. Then your business cannot move forward at all, right? And So what we’ve seen a lot of. I would say. Maybe not what, but a significant and definitely. Kind of alarming amount of ransomware where organizations their all of their data is being held for ransom until some. You know, magical number is is paid and then that data is then released. You can see this happening in all the way from, you know, Las Vegas, where they shut down the, you know, the the hotels for a few days all the way to government projects. It is definitely one of the. Or just risk? Areas of any business at this moment. And and kind of this data. World that we live in.

Joe Giegerich

Yeah, and and and it kills me because, you know, we work with some groups where, you know, the IT group is happy to move to the cloud and likes the fact that we know a lot of. On Prem and transition and all that other stuff. But man, the number of institutions that you’ll go into with going, we feel much more secure with our network. And I just have a funny feeling that you can buy as many Cisco firewalls as you want. You’re not going to do better than Autodesk. You’re not gonna do better than Microsoft, right? You have a lot. Invested in keeping that stuff clean and locked down.

Nicholas Childs

In the world of AI, where the predictability of your password can be generated basically off of the movements that you do by aggregating all of your Google data and and basically creating passwords right, I can predict your password to within a certain level it is. It is no longer safe. To to think that your, you know, 5 IT people can write enough code to protect your data. You know data system. I mean these attackers are they change every day their their tactics, their methods, their modes. They use different types of computer systems. They use, you know, as we continue to upgrade the the processing power, right, and we approach quantum. Then we’re going to have very large security risks for many different parts of of different sectors. But in first pass, the first people who they’re going to go after are always going to be people who have localized data sitting on their computers or sitting on a server in their office. Where that their the value of their organization is based off of the information that they have on those systems. Right. It’s it’s a pretty, pretty scary world to think about, but it is, it is happening.

Joe Giegerich

Staying on Prem, I is just not an option, right? You, you know, major manufacturers, yourself included, more and more going to go. No, you have to go to the cloud. I’m. I’m waiting for Revit to run entirely in the browser. You know, I’m sure it’s coming at some point. Yeah. And so one of the other challenges that we. We face with these companies is. They’ve built a lot of customizations on. Prem. And So what we try to do is, you know, we’ll chip away. We’re very broad and deep platform now. We’ll find out a use case that we can address. We help you know, migrate and segregate content and data and then kind of roll with it. So they have a chance to catch up and not disrupt the business because I think that’s a big part of their. Rightful concern is business continuity and end users who just don’t. Change. That’s another huge challenge. I just find across the board and the AEC is particularly like that. I don’t know if you have found. That to be the case.

Nicholas Childs

I do one thing that I’m. It’s exciting, but it is definitely something that is changing. Is your traditional IT manager is not the same person. You know, I think that we back in the day, you know, when I wasn’t working at Autodesk. You know our IT manager would always be making sure you know all the licenses on are we complying all of those types of. Issues that they were just constantly trying to make sure that the company wasn’t at risk, right? Now IT managers need some type of programming language. They need some type of, you know, continuous education credit. So that not only are they. They are up to speed with how to move that data and what that data is, but then they’re also able to help their company interact with that data, right? That is going to be the most important piece, right? Because what you all provide is amazing. You can move especially with bridge, right? Moving that. From one area to another and doing that in a way that doesn’t disrupt their downstream systems. But right along those same lines, there’s still that need for, hey, what do we do with that data once we do get it? And then we how do I get it from this to that? Right. And so just seeing that transformation is also very interesting.

Joe Giegerich

As well, yeah, I agree with you on particularly on the skill set, right, your traditional land administrator, if you will, is still obsessed with what I consider to be legacy security concerns like you know, they like your bloody firewall. You’ve encountered companies where you know, particularly like the infosec. Groups and the like. They lock it down so much. That you can’t even communicate adequately between different cloud services. Ignoring recommendations from Autodesk from Microsoft, which I still find kind of astounding. But it’s, you know, have they fully transitioned? Do they understand the world of web services? Do they understand the innate security around like Azure and? You know AWS because the the platforms platform as a service companies. They have a real. Fiduciary responsibility. A real responsibility to their clients, to make sure these things are very, very locked down. And so rather than spend all day and night trying to figure out how you can cripple these products. I agree with you if they could start to have a mindset around the world of web services and encryption and all of that, they would be much better served.

Nicholas Childs

As well as their owners are are requesting that you know.

Joe Giegerich

Uh-huh. Well, that is the other thing that go against, right? You know, we’ve been at this for more than a few years and you know, truthfully when we release. What is ProjectReady today? We are in a beta for release. When we went to AU in 2019 and at first I thought, well, the pandemic really did not help our cause, but it did. It forced a lot of people to go to the cloud because that’s the other thing, right? How do you you’re going to open up huge files or VPN? I mean, people do work remotely. No.

Nicholas Childs

Right. Yeah. Vdis is similar situation where virtual desktops were heavily used and now everything is beyond faster than that old process using cloud based technology so. Yeah, you’re. You’re spot on that you know, the industry has to change as well.

Speaker

Then.

Joe Giegerich

And I assume you see that change in the larger places. First, you know if it’s the owner, then it’s the larger CMS and program management firms next.

Nicholas Childs

You know, I’m seeing it in very so that is a really good question. At first I would say yes, right, big projects can fund new types of technology and new processes, right? That then can be dispersed across the company. That’s usually the case. Right. If companies going to dive into doing technology, they’ll try to pivot it into something big. But because of the way you can create this interconnectivity. It is both used on large projects as well as small projects just a little bit differently, right? So what I’m seeing is I’m seeing smaller organizations being able to compete with the big organizations by being more efficient. And effective with their groups leveraging technology as their backbone. Over labor as their backbone, does that make sense?

Joe Giegerich

Yeah, completely. And you know, as I started to say that, it went, but you know, because we we have some because we do have some very large firms that use the product. But then you, you know, just go a couple layers in and they’re still using spreadsheets to log 1000 documents, right. And then conversely, some of our most. Ardent clients are like, you know, 10 architects who broke off from large firms, didn’t like the inefficiency, the way things were run. And to your point, they’re right up front going. This is a competitive edge for us.

Nicholas Childs

Yeah, the globalization. Globalization and the ability to get.

Speaker

Good.

Nicholas Childs

Skilled labor through different means has really allowed smaller companies to compete. I mean. It’s not just the large GC’s who are winning. A lot of these projects, especially if you go and look in sectors like data centers. Right data centers are are most most of the companies that are building data centers are super technology focused and they’re using all different types of systems and technology because the the owner of that data center. It’s very technology focused, right? So if you look at the the owner of that data center, they really want you know what, what really makes them. A lot of. Money is having things like digital twins, right? Being able to say hey, I have, you know, 15 towers that are available for rent or whatever. However, they price those out, right. And and basically they want to be able to have an integrated system where they can monitor everything. All the way from design into construction and handover, and then once again they’ll probably turn that over to another company in the next 5 to 10 years, right. So. That industry, I mean, I love going into that industry and really looking and and into the players, the people and the technology because that that is probably one of the more advanced industries that them in Healthcare is also starting to get there as well.

Joe Giegerich

Yeah, they were late, but they’re coming to the party pretty hard.

Nicholas Childs

Yeah, we’ve got a. Lot of money.

Joe Giegerich

Yes, for what reason? I don’t know. A lot of the time looking up on medical bills and and to your point, we just signed up a a client yesterday who guess what they do. They manage the build out of data Centers for their clients. And you know, a couple of their companies. One begins with the. Letter M If you will. They have their system. Their GCC’s are using procore. They only want to use Autodesk or sponsor and so it was that management of synchronization of data and workflow that brought them to us. Right? Because the and that’s the other thing. So a friend of mine. Jeff Walter is in charge of digital delivery for the firm. In which he works. And. He was wise, I believe in identifying that digital delivery. So you for the efficiency, labor shortage, all that applies. But when you think about? It. Going into a client and saying you know that data is splattered all over the place and eventually we get to you. What if we could just give it to you in near real time weekly quickly. So it removes the burden on the vendor to have to assemble all this content, especially if you’re a program manager or CM, right? And the owner goes ohh cool. They have a strategy. These people are, you know, hip with the times as the kids would say. But it it is it I I. Ardently argue that this is a competitive advantage for firms that go this route, if nothing else, to deal with their owners.

Nicholas Childs

I 100% agree with you and I can say this from many many owners. That I work with. If if if clients if their clients and and the the people who listen to your podcast. If you aren’t going in to your bid meeting. And and your and expressing your technology advancements and what you can do. Uh. You you’re not getting invited to the table, right? So what’s happening is owners, they’re getting really savvy. They can now see who’s done projects of their shape, size, feel right. They can also see things like. How were those projects delivered? Were they delivered, you know digitally? Was it paper, so on and so forth? What they’re really doing is they’re not even offering projects to companies who aren’t marketing those skills, right. So you’re not the companies that are saying, oh, well, we don’t see anybody asking for that work. It’s because you’re not marketing that work, and they’re not coming to you for that work, right? Because those projects are happening. And from the owner’s perspective, not only do they save money in the long run by achieving things like digital twins. But if you remember on the back end. They’re getting big tax incentives to provide all of this information to the state and local governments, right? So it’s it’s not going anywhere. And if anything, it’s going to like, it’s going to get crazier in the next few years.

Joe Giegerich

Yeah, I had a a friend who was working for a. I guess like 2-3 hundred seat are out in Seattle and you know, to her shock and and and chagrin when the owner sort of rejected a lot of the stuff we recommended, including us was well, we have a girl to go file that. So that was just such a wrong statement on so many levels and their argument. Was we get to charge our clients for all that manual labor. So now you’re not price competitive. I mean, it was just such a retrograde approach and statement. I I I was just kind of shocked honestly.

Nicholas Childs

Yeah. It’s owner. Who are taking that approach? I think they. They are still nervous and I I understand it right because most of the time at the end of the day, who’s going to hold all the rest? It’s going to be the owner, but. The ones the the if you go into you know your your Wall Street Journal, your New York Times, you start looking at the companies. That you’re seeing exponential growth, you’re seeing, you know, large, complex projects getting pulled off under time under budget, right? Those are the companies that are not only just leading the pack, they’re pulling away from everyone because. They are. They’re not only efficiently building, but they’re. They’re doing so without creating a lot of waste, right? So they’re they’re saving so much money, they’re getting things in on time, and they’re getting those tax incentives. It’s kind of a a big win in their book, especially if you look towards like. The commercial sector retail markets.

Joe Giegerich

Yeah, it’s all about automation at that point, right? You know it it, you know, labor shortage, people in spreadsheets, people downloading zip files, this this is good for no one and you’re 100% correct if you can figure out how to automate all the brute force activity that you know persists in the industry, you have a huge advantage. You cut back on rework. You reduce risk because you have accurate information and the other thing to pick up is that you know I I have this adage that a project begins with the RFP. And as I always say on these things, as a New Yorker, we’re a litigious. And as important as the information is, a digital twin is the lineage of approvals, rejections, review cycles, because if anything goes wrong, that’s the part lawyers need to work with, right? Is that information with due diligence on contract.

Nicholas Childs

Right, right. And and the the. Worst way to. Try to to get that information searching through e-mail or some printed copies of e-mail. My water sheets. I went into a.

Joe Giegerich

Printed copies of e-mail, you know, right? Uh-huh.

Nicholas Childs

A shop a a pretty large civil firm down South in Florida and they are amazing people, but they have. A printing room. Of mylar that they are still bringing out to the site and I was just sitting there like man. This is this is this might be a new experience for me.

Joe Giegerich

It’s like back to the future, right? And and talk about not having up to the moment, you know, up-to-the-minute design changes. The downtime of printing and delivering, you know what you could stop working on the model. Now, that’s not good. If you’re gonna continue to work on the model, those things may not. Be accurate, right?

Nicholas Childs

Agreed. And you know, yesterday I had. A really good conversation about this because. I think this is, you know, coming from a model based mindset, right? I think that when when we talk sometimes. We always talk about this metadata, this model, these these objects and so on. But. At the end of the day, these systems have the ability to take a model and make a sheet and create that sheet and associate that sheet to all different types of information, right? And so a lot of the times we miss our clients with oh. Well, this model, well, we don’t use models. The the idea is really around. You have a document that has a drawing on it of a physical location that exists somewhere in the world or will exist somewhere in the world right? And and that idea where everyone gets kind of stuck in this. I need models, I need models. It’s not necessarily you need a model. We just need an asset, a a, a drawing, a a figure, right? That is going to be persistent. So just a little thing on. That.

Joe Giegerich

Yeah, and the audit trail around that, right? Right that that PDF is. Undoubtedly, part of a milestone agreement or delivery and had to get there somehow.

Nicholas Childs

Right.

Joe Giegerich

All right, maybe I’ll turn over to Shelley for a moment here. So as we’ve worked with clients who are largely on Prem, had not gone to the cloud. What are some of the challenges and remediation that you think you know clients can? You know that’s out there for clients.

Shaili Modi-Oza

I think we’ve definitely seen a lot of different cases where there is still a lot of resistance. We’ve been talking about it today, that day, people don’t really have much of A choice in moving to the cloud, but still there are engineers and there are teams who are just so used to working with. File systems and folder systems, and while there are team members that understand the need for the transition, I think still a lot of companies have these internal challenges on. Getting that resistance where people are not just ready to basically move to the cloud, but. On on top of that, I also see that there’s a big problem. There’s years and years worth of data that’s there on these on Prem systems that need to move again depending on what systems they’re using. Combination of Autodesk, Microsoft and depending on what makes the most sense. It’s that planning and that transitioning where all of that on Prem data needs to be mapped properly needs to move to. Places on the cloud where it it makes the most sense as a team to to work on all of these data points and documents now up in the.

Joe Giegerich

Cloud. Yeah. And I I am perennially seeing resistance to formal planet my entire career. Well, we don’t need a plan. We just want to get this one. Based on and then people wonder why they have a fractured enterprise. And it doesn’t have to be two years of planning, but can you at least have some diagram, some road map, some decision tree? As to what goes from 1:00 to the other? And these things are linked at the hip. And but going back, the other thing is how you can assist them. It’s everything in life is about the use case. And so if they have some custom thing where they’re, you know, automating the production of a document and putting it into a a file system, how to assist them to maintain as much of that business process as possible. Co opt and cloud technology, even if it’s building around you know it be spoke systems.

Shaili Modi-Oza

Yeah, I think slow transitions always work. The best way to not completely stop what has been going on for all these years. But having that transition where they still continue to do some of it on Prem while transitioning. To the cloud and then as you said, yeah, there’s plan, a plan needs to be in place that eventually it’s all going to be transitioned. But I think that that slow process of one step at a time and then transitioning through that OK out of these five, these three steps can now be done on the cloud, even though they’re starting on Prem. Kind of a plan needs to be in place.

Joe Giegerich

Yeah, I know. I’m also very big on phased rollouts, right. You know, pick a division, pick a discipline, pick a smaller group, and if nothing else, you get internal advocacy.

Shaili Modi-Oza

Yeah, definitely. That avoids disruptions for sure.

Joe Giegerich

And so, Nicholas, what would you recommend to people who are still in the cloud? What what? What strategic approach would?

Speaker

You.

Joe Giegerich

Recommend.

Nicholas Childs

Yeah. So this is something that. I’ve actually started working on about four years ago when I was in our named account sector or, you know, our major accounts dealing with kind of the largest of Autodesk customers. And what I found and it it’s persistent as we go forward. Is that in order to be successful in the new kind of digital journey world that we’re in, companies really need to to start with a data management strategy. And what I mean by that? Is it’s not just about. Autodesk or ProjectReady or procore or new forma. It’s who touches information. When do they touch it? How do they touch it and where does it go after it goes through them, right? It it. It’s so important because all of these companies such as ours are moving to a platform or have platforms. Right with open API. The idea of of an out-of-the-box solution is gone right and and and I say that cautiously, right. You can you can take our product out-of-the-box and you can use it. But is it going to give you the value that your organization is looking for? Probably not, right and and in order to get that value, you have to build out that solution to make sure that it fits your company’s strategic you know processes. But the issue that I always find is that. Companies will separate, right? They will have their, you know, let’s call it their real estate development division and then they’ll have kind of, you know, production. Hey, this is how we make money over here and. But the the. The problem that I I keep running into and I’ll use like a retail organization is a is a good example. You know, a retail company will start and then do. A site acquisition. OK, so they’re. Looking for a site, they say. Alright, we’re going to build here. Well, there’s all of the financial decision making that goes into that process. And then there’s the actual site acquisition. And then there’s the actual design and construction of the building. And then there’s actually putting people into the building to run the building and then operating that building with supply chains and. All of those different aspects of their business. Well, if you really take that apart and look at where the data goes, right, that site acquisition team is also talking to the peoples team, right? Because as soon as that site is done, we have to staff it. And as soon as that site is done and the testing is done, the HVAC system has to come on before we can snap it, right? So these pieces and parts that you know, you take a large organization and really separate it. Construction design is just as integral to their business as the supply chain in which they’re ordering their. Pieces to sell to their consumers. So they decouple that and that can’t be decoupled when we’re talking about a data management strategy, because that data is still passing through all of those systems. So what I’ve seen is, is, you know, in the best of the best of the organizations is they take a step. Back they look at hey, we have word, we have excel, we have Autodesk. We have ProjectReady. We have you know let’s call it you know box right all of these different pieces they they put all of that on a map and then we start to work through that. Right. And once they get to our section, we help them with our section. Once they get to Microsoft section, right, they come in and they help Microsoft. Section. But companies like ProjectReady where you all can be integral in that discussion right around that data management strategy more so than we can in our kind of our our little code right. That is really, really important that is that I would say that is the number one thing. Between a successful. Company and a non successful company in the in the upcoming and and future world that we live in.

Joe Giegerich

And you, you mentioned the the financials and the legal component. I always thought that was just part of the project as well, right. So what we do is to that point, we usually start the project siphoning the project ID. From the accounting system, because you know all that the to to your point, the people who are working in Oracle, the people who are out there. You know, searching for sites and handling the paperwork, the legal that is as much a part of the project as anything. And what we try to do is pick, you know, a unique ID drive process over the platforms. We don’t store any data or process a platform or business process as a service, right? But but yeah you you, it’s. Absolutely inclusive of all that. And yeah, you need to know where the data is going to sit now later, who’s going to touch it? What are the security, what’s the governance around the movement of data that is really all one built asset at the end of the day.

Nicholas Childs

It’s it’s, it’s. It’s a crazy world.

Joe Giegerich

But but it’s a challenge and it’s a challenge. I really do think you can solve.

Nicholas Childs

Yes.

Joe Giegerich

Right. And so I’ll, I’ll, I’ll you know we’ve been on here for a while. I’ll wrap it up with this. So if you can just discuss with us what Autodesk’s strategy is around anything, right, AI, new API. The general view of the world coming forward.

Nicholas Childs

Yeah, yeah. So I’ve actually had the wonderful experience. You know, most people probably wouldn’t say, like 10 years at a company. I’ve enjoyed it the whole time. I’ve I’ve briefly laughed, but I worked for a integration partner for Autodesk for a few years. But in general, you know, when I look at how the company has transformed in my tenure. When I first started, Autodesk was really looking at the 2D to 3D transformation that organizations were really trying to figure out right is how do I go from AutoCAD to Revit and then once I start to build in 3D what is important? What is the? What is this metadata and and what is parametric modeling right? And we went through years of that trying to figure out you know, what’s the best method and mode to to accomplish designs and projects. And and so on. And then when Autodesk started to do their acquisitions. I I really it’s when I originally came back and I had been a part of the BIM 360 portfolio prior and I saw that most of that portfolio from my perspective had come from more of a design lead, right, design, collaboration and docs. Was really built out of, you know, a design tool. And when I saw the acquisition of plain grid assemble and building connected, it really sparked this kind of passion in me that Autodesk was taking that field first approach. Right. And so I I’ve consistently seen that we are really in the world now, especially in the AEC of of taking these different and kind of separate industries. And really bringing everyone into together to accomplish a holistic and singular project, right? And what I mean by that? Is, you know, you’ve seen tools that we’ve launched like informed design, which is really a tool that is designed to keep the right people in the right places. If you’re a Revit designer, you are. Designing in Revit, if you are a production person running a CAD Cam system, you’re running your system. But the the model is talking to both pieces of software right? And allowing that designer to live in its in his or hers level of detail, and your product manager to live in their level of detail. So this convergence of of different. Industries into our project and bringing them closer together in a in a collaborative space is is one one of the big things. I think the only other side the other side of this is other desk we we build you know best in class tools. Right. But we we stick to our core competencies, right? We said we’re going to go and we’re going construction and we’re doing that. But there are many other tools, so many, many other tools out there, right. And what our position is is we will integrate with those tools. We we want you as the client to be able to. Pull us in and plug us into your workflows your day-to-day. We don’t see it as you need to stop your day-to-day and jump into our. The system. And so. That is really going to be the approach that you’ll see from Autodesk because we’re going to continue to build, you know, open platforms that interconnect with other other systems. And really we’re just going to continue to build what we hear from our customers and make sure that, you know, we keep the market moving.

Joe Giegerich

Yeah. And two amends for that because. For one, when we go and we speak to clients that go with, does everybody have to work in ProjectReady? We go. No. People should be able to live within the system or the tool that they know and that assist their trade. They just shouldn’t be siloed, if you will. Or that information shouldn’t be siloed across stakeholders and the like. Oh, and the other thing. Is. Something that I rail about, I won’t name companies I really dislike. You’re saying you gonna stick to what you know best? It amazes me when I’ll see. I don’t know. An accounting system does not decide. They’re going to have workflows around design and BIM. And you know why they do that? That their their rationale has to be well, we have a rolodex of clients well, upsell. Put up. Sell what? You know it’s it’s like so many of these products. You’re here on the street where they use two features, so why don’t you just focus on the two features and stop selling them stuff? That’s really not that good. So you know, all praise to Autodesk for that and understanding that sticking to your core mission as a platform is much more important than trying to find ways to cannibalize market. Share even if the feature that you just rolled out isn’t that good. All right, I I this was great. I I, I love these podcasts. I love these conversations. So we want to thank everybody who’s listening for coming, listening again with us, and we’ll talk to you. The next time.

Nicholas Childs

Awesome. Thanks everyone.

Joe Giegerich

Thank you.