The Strategic Importance and ROI of Digital Delivery in AEC Projects

Joe Giegerich

Alright everybody, thank you for attending today’s podcast. We’re going to talk about the strategic importance and the ROI of digital delivery and an AEC project. And so today we have two repeat callers, Nicholas Childs and Jeff Walter. Jeff, why don’t you introduce yourself and then Nicholas, please.

Jeff Walter

Thanks, Joe. And yeah, really looking forward to today’s conversation, everyone, my name is Jeff. Walter, I’m representing Acon Canada. I’m a digital transformation leader for the Canada region here, so my role covers a wide range of digital transformation activities and obviously this topic is at the strategic level, very important to me in my heart. So, I’m looking forward to the conversation.

Nicholas Childs

My name is Nicholas Childs. I am what the industry calls a construction account executive, really. But that means I work at, you know, work at Autodesk and really work with teams on. Moving to the digital delivery practice realm as well as you know how to really use Autodesk construction technology to perform work. So, I’m really looking forward to today’s conversation, and this is a topic that’s very close to my heart.

Joe Giegerich

Yeah, I gotta say that, you know, I always look the podcast is one of my favorite things that we do here. But this one I was particularly psyched for, and to get the two of you together because you know, obviously project ready is all about digital delivery. It’s near and dear to all our hearts, right. And so, I thought this is a really great assembly of folks to have. And of course, we always have Shelley Modi Oza, who’s the head of Project readies development, who’s on the call today as well digging into what we’re going to discuss. So digital delivery immediate is in a term set. We watched it evolve. I mean, when did you guys first? You’re the digital delivery title or description.

Jeff Walter

Yeah, I I guess I can jump in here first. Yeah, that’s an interesting question actually. I have kind of just always felt that it was digital delivery from the start of my career in my own mind, I think you know that was where things were kind of moving to. But I think, yeah, I think more recently. You know some of the. The key maybe industry factors that have impacted how we deliver projects, whether they’re large scale, small scale, whatever scale they are, factors like what happened with the pandemic and having to go to a more virtual way of working. That was really one factor and then. Obviously you’re seeing, you know, big kind of disruptions right now around things like artificial intelligence, so. Because of some of these, you know kind of overarching stories, I think, yeah, we’ve seen the emergence of something called digital delivery, which is supporting some of these overarching stories and pushers and kind of catalysts of of change really in the industry. And so I think maybe I’m kind of tying in like. The you know these of the concept of digital delivery and really actually maybe it shifted really during the pandemic to be honest with you. I think there was a lot of focus on a lot of change that happened through that. And I think I’ve seen the terminology digital delivery kind of emerge out of that more than ever, I think.

Joe Giegerich

Yeah, we’ve been saying it for like the last five years, but with growing regularity. And Nicholas, how does that align to where you’ve encountered the term and its rise?

Nicholas Childs

Yeah, I I completely agree with Jeff. Originally I you know, when I was working in BIM 360 back in 2015, the concept was there, but the execution wasn’t. I believe you know, like Jeff said, is that during the pandemic, at least from my perspective working with owners. Lot of owners found out where their issues lied and a lot of that was, hey, we don’t have standards. Hey, we don’t have the actual building footprint models, the the data we need to be efficiently running our our our locations remotely. Right. And and at that time? Time they were losing money faster than they could possibly imagine, and so when they started to make this shift, I think it really hit the market. And the other thing that it did is it it, it made them become smarter and ask for the right things. Well, some of them ask for the right things during at the beginning of the process. Which is is. The most important part of doing a digital delivery.

Nicholas Childs

You know, making sure that owner is asking for the right things, and that’s been fantastically growing.

Joe Giegerich

Two things to pick up on that. One is you do have to start at the beginning after the fact is after the. Fact. And there was a comment you had made when we were speaking, Nicholas, about how to your point, it’s being driven by the owner and how they get that information, which they’re entitled. So maybe, uh, another place to go here is So what was delivery before digital, if that makes any sense? So it’s non digital delivery and it sort of explains why there’s digital delivery now.

Nicholas Childs

You know, I could take that one if or start there. You. Know I think. Post what we used to call it was binder based delivery, right? So at the end of the project, hey, here’s this set of binders that is going to help you run your your property. It was messy, to say the least. And very costly for for the owner.

Jeff Walter

Yeah. And we’ve probably seen evolution here and I remember those days for sure as well because we’ve seen the evolution of digital and software almost like some of the initial platforms that emerged in the industry digital platforms. For. Really bind digital binder based concept. So basically and taking the whole idea of that traditional delivery and you know taking a step into a digital format and now we’ve seen that evolve like you know really binder based delivery doesn’t even exist to some degree anymore because really the. Complexity of projects, in particular some of the larger ones. It’s really just broken down into so many different ways and more agile and all those different elements. So really the whole methodology for delivery has changed, not just the digital component as.

Joe Giegerich

Yeah. And, you know, even where digital delivery sits now or so basically without project ready and I guess like other types, but is digital delivery still for the large? In large measure is OK. We have everything digital. We’re going to download it and upload it and transfer it and I. I think. That still is problematic, and that’s part of the evolution of digital delivery.

Jeff Walter

Yeah. I mean, I think definitely you know the core components of digital delivery you know are related to how information is shared, having that authentic single source of truth and collaboration environments that are supporting. You know, having data and information at the right time at the right place, kind of. Concepts. So yeah, I think you know those are core foundational elements and you know, obviously we’re starting to see. And some compliance requirements around digital delivery now that are based on those principles, foundational principles like ISO 19650 is based on those digital delivery principles around collaboration, coordination, sharing of information into cross disciplinary. Integration those types of things. So yeah, I would say that that’s those are core elements of digital delivery, yeah.

Joe Giegerich

I guess what I’m trying to get at too is it’s continued evolution. So you went from the binder, which actually have one client that’s just moving away from binders. It’s still out there, but not a lot, but. So the next step was OK, so we’ll have everything on you know, a CDE. And I know you all from Autodesk, but in in a project, there’s no one system. And so the evolution of it for our view and what we sort of stake the company on is that OK, you have it all as digital asset. That’s now, but it’s still not a complete picture past, you know, sort of documents and the like. There’s all the history of transactions that go on and that I don’t know if I was an owner and it’s picking up for a conversation with you, Nicholas, if I was an owner, yeah. I don’t want a binder, but I don’t necessarily want to go into an environment and download and upload and rekey information. Is that fair?

Nicholas Childs

Yeah. And and this really speaks to something that we are are really at the very beginning of with. With a lot of our clients, which is rather than making them execution plans right or make one, we’re also talking to owners about an operational execution plan. And why that’s so important is is right on what you said at the end of the day, the person who needs to manage the building. It needs to be at the beginning of the conversation of building that building and what we’ve seen over time is that as this digital delivery practice has grown. The the people who subsequently have to control that digital information are left out of the conversation. And so that’s a whole new area where facilities managers are actually involved at the beginning of a project to actually define what those standards are as they come through. So that they can manage that data more effectively.

Joe Giegerich

Yeah. And in general, I think the industry should adopt A set of rules that even go into the contract at the beginning, personally.

Nicholas Childs

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Jeff Walter

Yeah, I think that’s a really good point, Nicholas, about, you know, and I think we’re all kind of making here, but the importance of having that digital strategy, you know, we’re seeing that definitely more and more both with owners and you know other projects and programs that were involved with and. And really, as you mentioned, you know having. Thing the wide range of stakeholders you know throughout the life cycle, logistics, the supply chain of delivery, all involved with some of the foundational elements there and you know being a part of that almost in the creation kind of concept, I think it’s really important foundation. For that digital delivery concept. So I’m seeing that’s one of the big impacts and I kind of mentioned. The the value of. You know that cross disciplinary integration that’s really across different phases and the life cycle and and and so I think that’s definitely one of the major benefits. Of the digital delivery idea and you know, based on the principles like we’ve been talking about integrated environment, central source of truth, those kind of ideas.

Joe Giegerich

And this brings us back to the title of the podcast right. The strategic importance in ROI. Jeff, what you do is you, you represent clients, digital interests, if you will, right and help them strategize from the beginning to the end. The the movement of data and the platforms there. And in conversations with you, Nicholas, I mean, so for one, the ROI, if you’re paying somebody to, you know do stuff by hand, right, you know download this, put it in Excel sheet, send it to somebody that costs you money, pure and simple. And not getting that information in timely fashion cost the owner money because you know it was the wrong. Information and the strategic element that you had referenced, Nicholas was if you’re the owner and you have two different consultancies and practices coming in to bid on a job, you’re more likely to give that award to somebody goes. Look, I click a button, you get it every week or whatever the term may be versus somebody going, yeah, we’ll figure it out toward the end of the project and get it to you.

Nicholas Childs

Yeah, yeah. I mean that is that is really important. I mean the. The ROI on digital project delivery is really interesting because it affects different departments in many different ways, right? And one of the hard parts about getting to that ROI is who cares about X, right? Whatever. Whatever that problem that we’re solving is. You you really got to bring in those people who can help you. You know, so, you know, get through that problem and it’s it’s it’s it’s been very interesting as this. Industry transforms. I think a lot of what, at least on the software side, we find out new ROI’s every day. I mean, if you go from, you know, like we’re saying a binder based, you know delivery to an actual digital practice delivery system. That’s going to open up, you know, not only just your, your PMS and your regular, you know, construction and operational teams, but now you’re you’ve involved finance, document management, you know all of these other pieces of the puzzle that now we can actually start to look at. Hey, how do we? Inform and keep people in. Performed on a consistent basis without, you know, like you said, having to do this whole hustle and bustle. So if a if a contractor can provide that to an owner, it it it, it really changes that owner from the core right internally.

Jeff Walter

Yeah, I totally agree as well. And I guess you know there are. Yeah, so many different impacts I agree on, especially at the owner level. You know, really infrastructure delivery really does impact so many different businesses these days within organization. But they’re definitely, I think if I was to kind of identify maybe a few overarching stories around O ROI that I’m kind of seeing and really related to kind of the build up of all the, you know, digitalization improvements through a whole digital delivery environment. But really, from an owner perspective, and especially as it relates to the delivery of really the in the in this kind of coming from more of my background, the mega project, the mega program, you know really the big kind of risk oriented projects and programs, right. A lot of the ROI definitely is focused on risk reduction, right. And I think all those elements from information sharing to accuracy to collaboration are all contributors to, you know, the ability to early identify. I think our key ROI drivers around risk. Production right now, the same thing I guess is also scheduled. Joe, you and I have talked about this like. Being key ROI focus for owners like with the scale and the risk associated with some of these large scale projects and programs you know scheduled is is the number one kind of ROI. So if there is opportunity for digital delivery improvements or. Acceleration that’s going to contribute to. Little advantage, that’s a key driver as well. I guess the third thing that we’re kind of seeing is, yeah, I mean, I guess kind of seeding, Nicholas, what you were saying about the overarching long term goals of digital delivery and whether that’s, yeah, being able to hand off the information. I guess that’s kind of a segue into that. Another component here to different phases. Operations maintenance more seamlessly connecting with different business service within owner, organization, decarbonization goals, miles, you know goals around that. So those are all kind of overarching ROI opportunities for investing in digital delivery. Transformation.

Joe Giegerich

Yeah, and economically, what and we’ve seen is is one of the things you had said to me as well is with our construction clients, they’re most profitable and growing practices they have is construction management CM. And in your case it’s program because of ecom size, if you will, in the types of projects. Take on so there’s also not only is there advantage to winning the award, there’s an advantage to developing that practice itself and get ahead of your competitors. Would you agree with that?

Jeff Walter

Yeah, that’s absolutely true. And I think that’s one of the, you know, the outcomes of embracing kind of digital delivery is maintaining. Yeah, you know whether it’s, you know, in a comms world, we’re maintaining competitive advantage, long term, being able to as you. You know, kind of we’re describing, you know, how we present ourselves in bids and how we present ourselves in. And. And and solution making are important competitive advantages. But it’s not just that side of things. I think it’s also getting to a point, yeah, I mean.

Jeff Walter

Just. And just kind of maybe bring in the AI kind of topic here, but you know, digital delivery is leading to those long term outcomes around that. And so I think. If the steps incremental steps around digitalization and digital delivery outcomes you know are going to put. Whether they’re owners or. Design firms or program managers or construction managers in position for those outcomes. Long term, yes.

Joe Giegerich

Yeah. And it goes back to one of our podcasts we had done together, Jeff garbage in, garbage out. You know, AI is, I have colleagues who agree with me it it’s it’s it’s kind of likethe.com bubble, right? It it. It took a long time. Not terribly long. But it took years for the realization of the Internet to really manifest in the way it did. But everybody overhyped. And when we look at AI? Say yes if you have a coherent digital delivery strategy, that would mean that you’d be able to offer a structured database, right? You know, data lakes are all the rage these days, but a data lake, as I like to say, is a great place to drown you, right? You need structured data. So if you have as part of part part and parcel of the digital delivery. Is the ability to connect and to connect means that you have an opportunity to create structured data sets by which you can then apply AI.

Nicholas Childs

I couldn’t agree more. You know from from our perspective. I’ve had a a really amazing opportunity to sit down with the head of AI for.

Nicholas Childs

And also see her present at a few conferences. And here. Here’s the thing. If you do not have a digital strategy.

Speaker

The.

Nicholas Childs

We cannot answer the problem because if you don’t have that structured data, AI doesn’t work right. So the first step is that digitization of your information, and even if we don’t know what we can solve now, at least by having that. We can start to focus on what we can solve in the future and I think you know as much of the. Buzzword as AI is. The first step is I have to get all the documents into a digital format. So something. Can read it.

Joe Giegerich

Correct. And. And that’s a journey that, you know that This is why it’s a bubble in my on my mind because and we’ve talked to clients about you know, Microsoft’s offering. And copilot has some value don’t get me wrong but they started to walk back from it because they went it’s not a magic button and that’s what everybody expects. Sounds like Bugs Bunny there but every everybody expects a magic. Button and there is no magic button. There is just an opportunity as as you sort of intimate there to get your. In order to then get the magic button alright, so if digital delivery you know, obviously we all agree it’s essential for your business. It’s a business of itself to develop. It’s a gateway to getting meaningful AI down the road. Why isn’t everybody doing it? What? What? What? What? What is stopping people from doing this, both in terms of, you know, the tech and and the the culture?

Speaker

Yeah.

Nicholas Childs

That’s a good one.

Joe Giegerich

And one that can get everybody in trouble.

Jeff Walter

I’ll very important topic, very important topic, go ahead.

Nicholas Childs

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I I guess I can take it from, you know, from the software side, what we see is. This fear of losing control of the information that exists within the company, there’s still a lot of security concerns. Bound AI and what it can do. I think we see that the second thing that we see is you know a lot of fear around job security. Hey, you know, if I. If we if. We go into this. Does this change how we? Do our job. And once again, like you said, there is no magic button, right? Really AI is built to be assistive to the current practices that you are doing. And in order to get there, you have to have practices that are standardized and understood by by the the. The entirety, right? So that once you get to a place where you can start to leverage AI, you have to have a discussion about what problem is it solving right. I think to you know, there’s a lot of ways to predict information leveraging AI. Who cares about? Predicting something that isn’t going to help your. Bottom line, right?

Joe Giegerich

Fair enough. But my question is about digital delivery itself. Like why? Why? Because like we’ve I’ll give you examples that I won’t name the the names right, but we’ve had clients go well. This is how we’ve always done business. This is what makes the partners comfort. And I’m sitting there going. Yeah, it’s great. You you’re you’re getting ready to sell out your position and the partnership to the younger people. But that doesn’t. That doesn’t keep making the bread going forward. So that that’s my question is if if digital delivery through our mindsets is pretty evident as being advantageous, being the foundation of the application of AI. Down the road. What is the resistance that you’re seeing from clients and from you know consultants in the industry?

Jeff Walter

I’ll give kind of my perspective. I think it’s maybe a little bit unique my kind of feeling is that the resistance to digital delivery even from the ground up, I’m really and why actually things like BIM for example, Nicholas says you know have taken so long for really the industry. To adopt basic kind of digital digitalization technique, it’s not a technical one. It’s not a, it’s not a technical. Resistance, you know, really. Now the technology is all there, you know, and really the discussion about ROI, I mean it’s all there. I mean automation is automation. You know, there’s very clear ROI. So there’s other factors I think that are influencing change and this is maybe more we get into the topic of like change management than culture change and you know the impact of psychology and mindset. Organizations that you know are going from Binder based to digital to. Delivery and. Really. And then when you’re wanting to make the leap, you know, I’ve seen so much evidence across industry of investing in, you know, the wrong things. And and not understanding how to change. You know, we’ve seen so much really failure across industry and I’m not speaking anything in particular. But in general like we’ve gone through this wave like of early adopter and and kind of going through a cycle of you know hopefully learned lessons as we kind of move. To. A new future here.

Joe Giegerich

Yeah, it’s, it’s it’s in large measure, a big part of it is both complacency, you know, and the bigger the organization sometimes the less sense of urgency and and and I got my job, I don’t care. And then there is the that part where people just. That’s the laziness component. They don’t want to change what they’re doing because as far as they’re concerned, it works for me.

Jeff Walter

And I would always advise an acom. I mean I have to say is really I think standing out and differentiating in these ways is actually having a change management strategy as well as part of your part of the digital strategy. And really, you know, starting from the very beginning, addressing some of those challenges, bigger picture overarching stories and I think that’s where we’re going to find. Hopefully you know, you know the culture component. And I think again, you know, kind of going back to AI again, that could be a big driver of culture change because like. Really, if culture doesn’t change now, like there’s a real risk to organizations future, so, and I guess that’s maybe another topic here is like sometimes things come along. Yeah, which actually force change. Right. So maybe like, yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Joe Giegerich

Right and downward adoption, right. You know, we would argue too. There’s technical barriers, right? Because that’s what we’re here to solve as a company, just to plug for ourselves. But you know, so it’s one of the challenges of even if one product ACC can do a ton of things, it won’t do everything and it won’t be the only product on a project that has multiple stakeholders. People are partisan. The solutions they use and we’re talking about a new customer of ours, 500 users and we’re very friendly chat with their CIO at AU and he said we have 147 applications, 104. 7. So in addition to the cultural change which I, which is very much a big part of the problem, is also the technical challenges of integration. How much do you buy into a single platform? How much do you just recognize that you’re gonna have to interoperate? And how do you go about it? Right. So, you know, we’ve designed a scalable. That produces a highly structured data warehouse. It’s all about automation. It’s a very unique approach to what we do. And then when we go into clients and they’ll go, oh, well, I’ve, you know, I’m using the graph API and just rolling things out in teams. Not only is it a fractured ecosystem, the the approach to integration tends to be fractured and actually maybe this is a good place for. Shelly to weigh in?

Shaili Modi-Oza

Yeah, Joe, definitely I I agree. I think in terms of. The approach, as you mentioned, people have hundreds of systems and not just internally in an organization. But when organizations they deal with external parties, with vendors, they all have their different systems, multiple Autodesk hubs, different other systems that people need to integrate. Into and because of COVID and the push to. The cloud people have started building these fractured solutions where they’re trying to integrate using. Of course API’s are available from Microsoft, from Autodesk and then that makes it harder when there’s not that kind of a planning in place of what the end result needs to be. There are so many half baked solutions out there. Which again doesn’t really solve the problem, but adds to it that there’s there’s one more system that is not completely bringing things together.

Joe Giegerich

Yeah. And that the approach is all right. We have one problem. We’re going to solve the one problem with this one integration that then causes other problems like the overuse of teams, right? If you if you. Teams for you know where you’re going to store documents and everything in a folder. Then you get into governance issues that you then have to unwind. And if you want that to interact with Autodesk. Ohh now I got introduced forge or something else and you know the other thing too I would say is that how can I put it? Companies are not in. You know, the AEC firms are not in the business of software development and I see this in financial services because I have a long career and collaborative technologies and. Like, if you’re not a software company, should you really be taking on those kind of customizations to any large extent? You know? Sure, throwing a power app here there solve problems quickly, low hanging fruit, but an overarching approach to unifying desilo and defragmenting. The various data that exists within an enterprise. I personally I just don’t think it’s the best use of internal resources in most companies at risk of shooting myself in the foot, but I just. It’s what we see all the time.

Nicholas Childs

Yes. I I think this is a one of the topics that I deal with on a very consistent basis and the way that we tackle it is, you know, we are Autodesk and we are a part of a digital delivery strategy. But a lot of the time when I’m talking to owners, you know, subcontractors, general contractors, you know, all of all of our. My first thing that I start with is take a step back, take a step back, go look at how information passes through your systems. Because as much as we can do on our side, we can’t, like you said, solve it all right? And and what it becomes. And where I’ve seen a lot of success, especially on the owner, so. That is, when they step back and they say, OK, once I have this data, who uses it? Where does it go? Who touches it? And when they can really focus in on the data management strategy, it makes that other part of integration and data transmission a lot easier. It’s easier to find the tool that that fits multiple different scenarios. Over. Hey, we have. A problem. Build an integration to that problem.

Joe Giegerich

Yeah, and don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to be dismiss of of the considerable talents of IT groups, right. It’s just. But. But you know, when you think about it, you say, oh, you got to take a step back. You got to look at all the different stakeholders. Both in my custom business, this business that we started a few years ago, we even get resistance on use cases, sometimes less so now. But we’re like, no, it counts. Who’s talking to who? What’s the governance, where you clicking, how you get in there? And I corporate, IT is generally set up to make sure everything is up and running, that you’ve done your due diligence on security, that your up time is maximized, but. The organization that that these groups are part of, I don’t think are culturally designed right to have that kind of comprehensive end to end. While I’m the lead architect. So it’s got to be my way. I’m the only one who cares, right? There’s no way. Do bring those groups together. I generally find there’s a lack of will to do that kind of really in depth exercise, and I think that is one of the challenges is and that’s what leads to the piece meal approach of integration internally. It doesn’t get sufficient support for this personally.

Jeff Walter

I’m gonna just watch what I’m saying here. For sure. It’s not coming from a soft not coming from a software company.

Joe Giegerich

Yeah, me too.

Jeff Walter

But I do see a future. I do see a future where, you know, traditional in-house development has long gone. Like, you know, we’re kind of saying, but I think in the future, like, there’s some kind of hybrid concept. So you’re leveraging, you’re leveraging.

Jeff Walter

Accelerators like and I would definitely say project ready for example, is an accelerator of development and then yeah, like you said, whatever power app or even maybe even a little bit more complicated application development kind of building use cases and domain expertise kind of. Opportunity applications out of kind of those accelerators, but that’s I still think emerging, I still think and I think we’ve just gone through like I was mentioning like there’s been a wave of, yeah, a lot of challenge in in house development and but I also agree Nicholas. The importance of yeah, doing that kind of holistic view of that because yeah, hybrid could mean a lot. Of different things, right? And it could be leveraged either way in terms of the the needs.

Joe Giegerich

Yeah. And to your point, Jeff, I mean what we’ve experienced just so I don’t come off the wrong way is successful with one of our clients anyway they built. So we brought them the foundational components to unify and coordinate data between Pro Core to Pro Core and Autodesk on occasion. They then, from there built power apps around what is now the structured data that we deliver quickly as an accelerant. And so I think that is the hybrid and the perfect marriage because the the business will know what idiosyncrasies have to be addressed. Right. More than an external vendor in certain respects, but the the approach to we’re going to build it all in House. That’s what I think is problematic.

Jeff Walter

And you’ve got A next generation of infrastructure professionals, whether engineers, architectures who who are learning programming from, like a teenage, you know, that kind of level. You’re also dealing with, you know, a kind of code, you know, development kind. Of opportunity so. There’s so much potential, really, like you’re saying. But you know it, I think traditional in house is is. Yeah. Is a dying bro.

Nicholas Childs

Totally agree. Yeah, totally agreed.

Joe Giegerich

And so all right, so I I beat to. Death. My value prop sincerely and you mentioned the cultural things. So how how how do we as a community advance the core of digital delivery, its true intent, how do we overcome some of those obstacles?

Jeff Walter

Yeah. Great question. That’s another big one too. I I can go first, Nicholas. I kind of agree with building off what you’re saying about doing that. Really a big picture process analysis. We do a lot of maturity assessments, gap analysis, that type of work. So really investigating, learning your ecosystem, learning your environment. I think awareness is a really important step. I don’t I think we jump like you were saying Nicholas to the endpoint and not being able to understand the problem. That’s trying to be solved, right? Yeah. I think phase innovation is really important. So it’s agile and like just the complexity of infrastructure, because I know you’re probably maybe seeing the same thing. It’s just like there is no magic button that’s going to create digital delivery. So and really from a culture perspective like it’s really that’s what there’s a comfort level and. Incremental change. So, like, let’s chew off a quality review process and do and digitize that kind of process. So like working incrementally and again that’s a big shift in kind of mentality I think for because it’s more of a software driven agile like you were saying, Joe, like that’s kind of coming from software development maybe approach. But I think the same thing. Kind of maybe applies in terms of digital transformation in the infrastructure? But I think, and I guess the last component of is I think just more conversations like this like podcasts like more I call it friction making more like conversation, more ideas. I think it’s an important time and I think the culture change comes around. You know, conversation and discussion. So like, I know that’s not necessarily technical in a sense or but I think in general I think that’s going to have an impact on culture change. This is like more conversations in industry, but. This.

Joe Giegerich

Yeah, well, you can be candid, but you don’t want to risk being somewhat dismissive. But yes, candor is everything. And you mentioned the sort of Co OPTATION or or similarities of application development. When we go in that with you, we do with all clients, we go in for a high level understanding of what the full process is just to understand what systems are in play and what they’re trying to do. Then we go in and we go, OK, based upon what we do, this is what we think we can assist with and we even on that we chew away in an agile fashion on the different features we have in our stack to solve those problems. And then as part of that process is to identify the gaps that can then be solved with basically in-house and cots development building. Around that larger vision, yeah.

Jeff Walter

I think that’s, I think chewing off incremental like I think it’s worth it. The really only successful way to kind of transform in the industry of this scale and requirements really to change and.

Joe Giegerich

And it helps avoid overreach because we we’ve spoken to folks. If it doesn’t do everything they’ve ever thought of, they’ll they’ll revert to a file system and a download which is silly to my mind, right? So just looking at some notes that we had prior to this and we’ve touched upon pretty much all of it. I mean, so like for instance, project closeout, this is. And just to make sure I’m correct, cause I’m not from the industry proper right? So digital delivery is particularly critical in closeout. Is that true?

Nicholas Childs

Yes, yes. From our perspective, I mean, yes. The the practice of digital delivery right is is to not only keep everyone informed, but for that the you know the end goal is that that owner has a way of being able to manage their asset and it is it is so. Critical. That. These conversations, these incremental changes, these things kind of happen so that everyone is involved when that information is passed over, you know, during the closeout process. And so that information is passed over in a timely fashion during the closeout process. I think we’re going to start seeing projects closing out closer to time, right? Whereas right now on average, you know, I think we see. About, you know, the average project is about 3 months over the you know, allotted time for closeout.

Joe Giegerich

I’ll give ourselves a happy plug here, so we have a new release in Q1 of 2025 called work Bridge transfer and it’s really just designed to do that. What do you want to transfer from your system to somebody else’s system on mass, right. Simple easy click, click, click and go. Because that alone if because that’s why I think it takes such a long time is nobody even wants to do it. Right, you have to figure who’s gonna do it, how long it’s gonna take. You get interrupted as. Part of that process.

Jeff Walter

Yeah. And I guess handover means, I mean there’s the handover from. Example of construction and operations maintenance is a critical handover to kind of asset management. I I do agree, but really there is handover at every stage, every phase of of a of a life cycle of an asset, from planning and design which acom is involved with and how we’re handing off to construction. Do construction and and those types of things. So there’s information flow and like you know, definitely working in the program management world these days, the importance of handing off information. And from, you know those different levels and different phases through that is important critical automation elements there so.

Joe Giegerich

Yeah. We view things with a narrow lens, right? But.

Jeff Walter

And but it’s also, you know it’s the information, but it’s also data flow too, right, between those different elements. So the rollup of information that’s part of the you know kind of information workflow is, is that raw data as well so.

Joe Giegerich

Have any closing comments, anything you guys would like to add?

Nicholas Childs

No, I I think you know I I’m just really thankful to have partners like a ecom and yourselves, you know having these conversations is so important with organizations like you, you both because you know we depend on you to solve the the end problem. Right. I think a lot of organizations come to Autodesk and say, you know, hey, solar problem. Yes, we have a solution that will, you know, support the you know, the solving of those those problems. But companies like AE common that they had a an awesome experience working with them and and their Autodesk account team. I mean they are really pushing the needle on what this practice. And really do. And we are learning every day from organizations such as, you know, a common. Jeff and we’re we’re defining our product based on those things that we’re we’re really, you know learning from the market. So it it is, it is so nice to actually be able to sit down and have these conversations and get this feedback and be able to do this stuff. It’s it’s really, really supporting. You know the the narrative that the that the. Actions and the industry really needs to focus on.

Jeff Walter

Yeah, well, that’s a. It’s a great thing to say. I think it’s healthy in general and and Joe and I talk about this a lot as well is I do think this is part of the culture change like, yeah, I think in the past it has been like you know, honestly like this Autodesk. This is the way it is and like this is how the. The framework that you know, companies have to work in, but now it’s become this. The collaborative ecosystem concept, where everyone’s kind of learning more, having these conversations, more developing together, more partnering together more as opposed to just being traditional than their software relationship. So I think that’s part of the culture change we’re talking about here. Is, you know, the relationships we have with Project ready, for example, are in the same way, Nicholas like they’re deeper and. Built on kind of those learning kind of mindset. So I think that’s part of the future of digital delivery is, you know, adopting as I’m going back to that mindset that kind of cultural, I think a lot of it. Is driven from that. The change and.

Joe Giegerich

I agree 100%. I mean I’ll. I’ll tell people that we have a brilliant product because we work with brilliant people, right? What do I know except what I learned from you, Jeff? And and Nicholas and other people that we speak to. So we learn from the industry and we just try to help solve problems in the puzzle solver, right? But yes. And and that is 100% with it. You know, instead of people being close to the vest, always afraid that they have some secret sauce that they don’t wanna share it it there is no industry like the AEC and it’s absolutely. Good. Core demand to be able to share information and work collaboratively. No other industry for the size and the volume of what you all do from the money that’s involved from the length of the duration, all of it. It’s a multiple stakeholder. And so that means it’s one industry with different components that have to get together and no, and we greatly appreciate. Working with all you guys, right? Because without you, we’re nothing, right? We we have no problem to solve if we don’t understand it in a way that works for you.

Jeff Walter

OK, well, sounds good.

Joe Giegerich

Alright, well, there was a lovely Kumbaya moment.

Jeff Walter

Of truth. Real truth, real truth.

Joe Giegerich

All right. Well, I’ll wrap it up from here, guys. Look, we always appreciate anybody coming out to listen to these podcasts. We do think they’re very informative and we love doing them. We all have a passion, right? Everybody on these podcasts for the industry for solving these problems and trying to get everything to work better and a more coherent fashion. And what you’ll find is across all these. Conversations a whole bunch of recurring themes, right? That you have to get your data right, but they’ll do that. You have to collaborate with the people who are creating that information. And it all has to work together. And that’s the overarching theme. I don’t think you’ll disagree, Jeff, with what we’ve been doing here for a while now on the podcast. So this one was particularly meaningful for me. And I think for you guys as well.

Joe Giegerich

I mean, I learned the whole term set and the whole thing around digital strategy from you, right? So and it just makes everybody stronger. So anyway, I guess I was a bit more Kumbaya. But thank everybody. As I thank everybody as always. And OK next time.

Jeff Walter

Thank you very much.