A New Hope: Using Autodesk to Improve Collaboration for Alliance and Framework Agreements

PAUL RUDDICK: Hi, everybody. Today we're going to talk about the new hope in construction and the utilization of Autodesk to improve collaboration for Alliance and Framework agreements. My name is Paul Ruddick. I'm the Chairman of Reds10.

SCOTT LAIRD: And I'm Scott Laird, the technical director for Reds10.

PAUL RUDDICK: I understand. So who are Reds10? So Reds10 are a new breed of contractor from the United Kingdom. We're vertically integrated, which means we own our own factories and on-site capability. We're setting a new benchmark for quality and safety and well-being. Enjoyment at work. We believe it's important to enjoy work.

We build in a factory. So we are automation and industrialization. But unlike most people who build in a factory, we don't build housing or accommodation. We build schools, prisons, hospitals, and military accommodation. We're focused on the client. We want to understand the client and what they do.

We're a great believer in apprentices and getting youth into construction and developing our youth construction. In the UK, we have an aging workforce, and we're really struggling to get youngsters into the industry and we do that. And we also believe in generating a fair, stable margin. We want to make money because we believe if we make money, we'll invest in R&D, we'll be a more sustainable business, and we can make more apprenticeships on.

So when we talk about what we do, so these are the types of buildings that we've built. These are all 3D volumetric. We've got a school. We've got an apartment block there. We've got an office block. And we've got an activity center as well. But I hope when you look at these pictures, you'd appreciate and say, actually, they don't look like square box buildings volumetric. We like to push the boundaries of what our buildings look like and how they are.

So every single building in our factory starts off as steel square box. So we're a steel frame building in effect. Our buildings are steel framed. And we erect the frame in the factory and then we bolt them all together. And in terms of the factory, this is one of our factories where there's individual units. But it gives you an idea of our scale and size. So we have five factories like this up in East Yorkshire.

But what we're known for in the UK is actually doing more in the factory than anyone else does. So we complete the whole of the internal building, but we finish the externals in the factory as well. So we use either a brick slip system or a true in-panel system or a timber solution. So for us, we've got this internal drive to get more done in the factory because we believe if we can get more done in the factory, it'll improved productivity.

And then again, these are some of the buildings we've built. And we are a full turnkey solution, so we will do all the groundworks. We'll put new substations and things. So we are a new breed of contractor, and we're seeing a bit of disrupter in the marketplace. So that's who we are.

And luckily we've been-- we've been recognized within the UK construction industry for what we do, whether that's been delivering great buildings, delivering great apprenticeships, or actually being involved in the local community and being recognized for it. So we are trying to take volumetric and offsite and industrialized construction into the mainstream.

That's who we are. But today we're going to talk about construction's greatest challenge-- productivity. So productivity in construction industry-- we haven't improved it. And I've yet to go around the world and find a country that's improved productivity in construction. Every other industry, whether it's textiles, it's food, it's manufacturing, it's industrialized. And productivity has gone up and construction has gone down over the years. And why is that? And we want to see that.

So we see productivity. There's three main pillars to productivity and improving it. And we've got the client who need to create the environment where the contractor got a pipeline of work. We've got the contractor who needs to look at their business model and how it works. And then we've got technology. How it can give a platform to enable technology to take place.

So I'm going to take each of those three pillars in place, and myself and Scott are going to talk through that about what clients need to do, what contractors need to do, and what technology needs to do to improve productivity. Because if you improve productivity, it'll bring prices of construction down. We've got a shrinking workforce. But also it might enable us to build more hospitals, more schools, with a limited budget that governments have. And that's really Reds10's drive and what we're trying to achieve.

So one thing in the UK, the UK government is setting up a thing called alliance contracting. And alliance contracting is where basically they try and create a pipeline of work where you've got a secured pipeline of work for the foreseeable future. And it's repeatable products. We don't call our buildings buildings. We call them products. So a school's a product. A prison is a product. A hospital is a product. And those products then can be kind of understood and learned.

And what you do in alliance is basically, you work with like-companies, contractors that are embracing technology and software and the drive to change construction. And you appoint the contractors from the outset onto the design so they work together and put it forward.

So what actually is an alliance? So an alliance is where the government goes out or the client goes out and they choose between three and five contractors to say, listen, we've got a huge pipeline of work, whether it's a school or hospitals. We're going to build 20, 30, or 40 of those over the next five years, and we're going to give you guaranteed work. And in return for that, we want you to work together as contractors. We want you to share IP and lessons learned. We want to share your supply chain, share procurement power, and share innovation in return for giving you a pipeline of work.

And the return back to the client is that they will then get more productivity. And if productivity improves, then the price will come down. But also the quality will go up, and the timeline will reduce as well. So that's the conception of what alliance contracting is. In the UK that's happened. They've done it in the education sector. And now we are involved in the new alliance that's building new defense accommodation for our soldiers across the board.

So if I talk about the alliance in practice-- so this is a single living accommodation for some soldiers in the UK. Now the UK has not invested in accommodation for its military over the last 30 years, and it's got a retention problem. So it recognizes they need to build quality buildings. And this building is a quality building. It's bomb-proof. It's passive house standard. It's like a four or five star hotel. And they've going to have to build 16,000 new places. So it's between a 5 or 6 billion pound program. And we've built the first one, and they've set up the alliance to do that.

And I'm just going to give a quick example about the benefits of an alliance and how it works. So if we take this program here-- so we're now onto our third version of this building across different sites. And if I look at the first building we built, which I just showed you, that took us 21 months to build. And in the first design, we had no testing. We had no standard design. The level of on-site completion was low, and we had no major sub-assembly design. And overall, it took us 21 months.

The second building, which we used at Sandhurst, was the same building, but we built that in 18 months. So we had a standardized design. We tested it. We looked at how the groundworks are built, and we had major practice in sub-assemblies. And actually, from version 1 to version 2, we took 210 lessons learned and we put that back into the process. So you can see that if you're building the same product over and over again with an educated client, the benefits of repeatability, productivity, improve.

And on the third version, which we're building at the moment, we're going to get that down to 12 months in terms of design on site and fitting out on site. So we've gone from 21 months to 12 months for the same building. Now that's nine months less. No, in fact, it's 11. Do my maths here. It's nine months less on times on site. So we have nine months less of prelims, and site teams. They're on military base where it's a secure place. So there's less movements.

So we're really demonstrating that if the client produces a strong pipeline of work, then as contractors, we can then invest in that pipeline of work. And we're sharing our ideas with other contractors. We're not in competition with them. We're all going to get the same pipeline of work, and it's in our interests to deliver as much as possible.

So I've just spoken about how the client has got their piece to [INAUDIBLE] productivity, but what can the contractor do? What can the contractor do to really improve productivity and take advantage of an enlightened client who's going to give you a pipeline of work? Well, there's a few things that a contractor do from the outset. And obviously the key one is-- like any business, is you need to hire and empower the right people. The traditional structure where people have been in place a long time-- we need to make sure that your technical leads and your data leads are front and center of the business, and the engineers and designers are the leaders of the business and not by accountants.

We also need to make right demographic in the business. So we're entering a new technological world. So I mentioned at the start of my presentation where we've got an aging workforce. And unfortunately, the aging workforce doesn't fully embrace technology. So we need to bring youngsters into the future.

You need to invest in platforms. So a platform or product. So we've got a 3D volumetric steel platform. We're continually doing R&D on that process. We've got a single one, and we invest in it. Invest in processes. So it's making sure that when we build a building or when we manufacture a building, we follow the same process and we understand the best process to build that. Now that's an ongoing process, but that is an ongoing exercise where you're continually trying to refine the process. Never sit still. Always be kind looking for that improvement.

Invest in the people. If you're going to use software and technology, make sure everyone can use it, and they're continually trained on it. And make sure everyone across the business uses it as the same as well. And the last one is learn from the building process and the manufacturing process. Have that continually learning point from it as well. So that's what you can do as a business.

But if I take the UK's current construction model-- so we have-- I'm not sure what it is around the rest of the world, but I think it's probably similar. So we have a main contractor who's basically a management contractor. And then we have anything between 30 and 40 subcontractors, designers, specialist contractors then to deliver that project. And those 30 or 40 different organizations usually have never worked before. Usually they're on different technology platforms, and usually their drivers are very different and they're almost looking for faults and design to make their money.

So that's how we build buildings. And when you look at that, you think, well, no wonder we've got no productivity improvements. So if I just challenge you and said, if you had a blank piece of paper, would you follow that organizational setup? And those looking online and those in the room that will present. I can guarantee they're not one of you will say, yeah, that's a really good way to deliver a building. But somehow through repeated behaviors or whatever, that's where we've landed up. And it's really hampering construction.

So what's the solution? Well, at Reds10 we've changed it a little bit. So at Reds10, we're saying vertical integration. We've bought as much as we can in house. So we've got our own factory, we've got our own designers, we've got our own installation team, we've got our own mechanical and electrical team, and that's basically who we've got. So all the background. But we're all completely pointing in the right direction.

We still do have external consultants and contractors, but they're on a partnership agreement where we give them guaranteed work. So their drive is the same as us. So everyone's focused on actually how can we improve productivity? So from the outset, the organization needs to be set up properly. Without that, you've got no chance of improving productivity. And as well as to the client, the benefits of improving productivity is obviously, if you improve productivity, you make more money. You become more profitable when you pick up on it.

And in terms of for us, although we're an off-site contractor, everything starts with design. And if we look at what goes into design, it's a multiple headed beast. So you have the factory floor who give input on productivity. You have the install team who say how we connect the building together. The fit-out team. The cost team. We need to build it within a certain way. Building performance. We need to work with our supply chain and have our windows and doors. It complies with statutory regulations. And then it's federated with the BIM model.

So the design is where everything starts. So if we get the design right, if we design it for the manufacturer, if we design it for installation, if we design it for on-site, then we can go from the 21 months to the 12 months. And that's what Reds10 are looking at the moment. So Scott's just going to talk to you about design and how inefficient design-- we need to eradicate that.

SCOTT LAIRD: Yeah. So thanks a lot, Paul. So some of the key aspects that we get in efficiency and design over the years, the amount of times that we've had designs come to us not fit for purpose, or we have to restart the design because something wasn't done right at the very beginning-- so a couple examples of this. I mean, get this across every sector just now. Incorrect surveys and feasibility studies. We get a survey that comes in. It's incomplete. It doesn't really fit what we need, and we have to go resurvey it.

And then that leads straight into the feasibility study. Feasibility studies will be very high level, and it'll be very difficult to get any real information off it and really start on the front foot. So there's a few things as well. I've got on the right-hand side, some of the softwares that we've been using with Autodesk. So we've got trial with Autodesk Forma just now. So that's helping us to do rapid feasibility analysis. So we're starting to look at how I can get acoustics, floods, design, generative design, all of that great stuff. And I'm starting to see the fruits of that labor. So it's starting to take some of the inefficiencies away from the front end and really starting to use the systems and software to get it going.

And the second one on here, not working to the same standards. As you can see on the image on the left, we're asking for the exact same thing, but I've got two different drawings. So this happens all the time that I've seen in the industry, and it's a real pain. I mean, I still get it on a daily basis just now, but I'm starting to see certain aspects where we can get more control. So one of those is the Content Catalog that I'm waiting for Autodesk to give me some training on, because I see this along with informed design being the benchmark for being able to control information, but also give information to the external parties that is correct. And they're always up to speed on it.

And the last one on here, LOD 500 drawings. So that image on the bottom left, a lot of people have probably seen that. And a lot of people went down the path of going, right, we need LOD 500s straight away. But they killed all of our models. It was too much information in there, and you just couldn't work with it. So we had to scale that back a bit. And you're back at LOD 200, 300.

But the key thing for getting the efficiencies that you saw designed and coordinate properly-- if you look at that image there, the 300 and the 400, well, there's a lot of stuff that can clash in between the two of them. But we don't design to that level. So for us as a business, we're trying to get it so the systems work and they still work at that level information. So as I was saying, informed design and the Content Catalog is a really key aspect for us because we can control the level of detail, but also keep the information flow going.

And on this next slide here, again, early engagement, going back to Paul's slide there. So we've not just built these products instantly. We've been building over the years. We've been testing them. We've been doing R&D and continuous improvement. And you've probably seen quite a lot of these graphs before in your life, but they're true. And I've got the seven stages of what you do in architectural design. And you can see as soon as you get to basically when you're going to start building it-- as soon as you start making changes as you're building it, you're starting to be inefficient. You're starting to cost yourself money.

So the earlier you get information and designs done, the better. The more R&D you do, the more you understand your systems, the better. The more you get consultants and designers designing with high levels of information at an earlier stage so you don't have to go, we're going to use that product or I'm going to use that product, it just takes the inefficiencies out. And ultimately you get more productivity and you get better output at the end.

And some of the softwares, again, that we're using-- I've touched on Forma earlier. But using Forma to link into ACC, to link into Fusions and Tandem is a real step change for me. So Autodesk Construction Cloud for us as a business is the center point of where we have all of our information. It's got an open API. I can link stuff very easily. And if I need to do anything, it's usually on an ACC, and I can go and find it somewhere. Or I can do something with it. And I'm starting to look at pilots as well. And I've got Fusion and Tandem. I'll touch that in a second. But across the whole ecosystem, I can link everything up. And it's a really positive step for us.

So a couple of points down at the bottom here. On that version 1 building that we've done that you saw blast security was a major issue. We had to do months of R&D. We had to get months of sign off and we had to test build and improve it. And that took us several months. But no, I can literally press a button and order that now because I know I've done all the tests. And that's a really key point to all of this.

There's internal, external, you name it. We had multiple manufacturers given multiple different designs. Those designs were pretty much the same, but they would change little things. They'd use different fixings, different beams, different welds, but all in all, we are still getting the exact same product. So basically what we've now started to do is go right, here, manufacturer, we want you to do the work. But we'll do the design for you and give it to you. So we're just taking that efficiency again and getting a consistent product.

PAUL RUDDICK: OK, so we've talked about what the client needs to do. We've talked about what the contractor needs to do. And now we're going to talk about what technology needs to do. Because if we get those three working together, we're going to get that productivity gains, which we're after. So if we go on to the next slide, we'll have a look. Scott's going to talk about the technology and industrialization journey that we're on at the moment.

SCOTT LAIRD: Yeah. Thanks, bro. Yeah, so this image on the right here-- so the [INAUDIBLE] to go to the oldest factory in Birmingham. So this is pretty much like for like photo that I saw in the factory. And this is a access machine with multiple processes all going at once. When you think of industrialization, a lot of people instantly think of this. We need robots. We need to get technology in there, we need to do x, y, and z.

So a couple of these ones I'm going to talk about are industrialization as well. So slightly different to what you're thinking there. And when we're talking about industrialization as a business, we're trying to get a lean process across all the sectors. So again, being vertically integrated helps us massively because we can get in about the different companies. The different areas we can-- site manager, project manager, factory and link them all up. So it's a really important thing to have in there.

And again, the first point there, pre-construction design. It's the catalyst for everything that we do. If we get that wrong, we're going to be inefficient all the way through. So again, having products and the accessibility to our products to the consultants is really important. And structured data. So again, starting at the very beginning. So the government was really good at in the UK at forcing us to basically do ISO 9652 or three years ago. Took a bit of time to get up and running.

But it was for me-- I clicked about maybe six months to a year ago why this is so important. So there's a slide. I'll touch on that in a second. Automation design-- again, instead of automating our factories, our sites, or whatnot, we've started automating our designs and starting to see the efficiencies in there. Getting supply chain involved as well. So we get a lot of innovation from our supply chain. So again, going back to that earlier engagement, the framework alignment that we've got, the supply chain is key to us progressing.

The continuous improvement. You probably heard this. Any manufacturer will talk about continuous improvement, but you need to get your culture and your business all singing off the same hymn sheet. So you can't just do continuous improvement in one area. You need to go do it across the whole entire site.

And lastly, as I was saying, everyone dives to that photo of the robot as the first bit of industrialization. So manufacturing-- we're slowly getting to the manufacturing, the industrialization. We're on a path there. So the biggest gain that we see the efficiencies being is from site. So we're at 10% of the way there. We've got so much to get out there. So if we can get some of the principles we've got on the factory into site, we're going to see massive step changes in efficiencies across the business.

As I was talking about earlier on, structured data is one of our key aspects in delivering efficiency. So on this slide here, you can see some of the Dynamo scripts that we've been starting to build as a business. The Dynamo scripts are-- we're getting more and more involved in this. We're starting to get other team members to get involved in the Dynamo scripts, and we're just seeing a culture of getting more efficiency by using the scripting.

So when we started using these scripts, we started to see we get high level consistency of naming of our assets. When I'm talking about assets, I'm talking about our module is an asset. Steels is an asset. M&E. Doors. They're all assets. So I'm trying to drive consistent data into these assets so we can use that in the future.

And what we can do by using this script here-- we can standardize all of these sub-assets, but we can uniquely identify them in each of the spaces. So going back to the ISO 19650, this is a great tool for us to really leverage exactly where we're putting our data. And when we start doing all of that, what we start to see is we start to get real scalability on this. And when we start to industrialize in our factory, the scalability is key for us. So I know exactly what our sub-assets are into the main assets. We can start doing our quality control based off this. We can start doing payments off it. So it's a really important part for us to get right.

Automated designed. As I say, we've been the other way around. Instead of automating the factory, we've been automating our designs in the front end. So I've got endless amount of scenarios that I've had with this, but there is a great one that happened not so long ago. This is a school for the D of E. We've got a reputation of cladding. The purple section you can see in there. And originally, Steve [INAUDIBLE], one of our designers-- took him six weeks-- probably longer, actually. Probably eight weeks, to be honest. But what we were just seeing, he was literally clicking loads of buttons and loads of buttons doing repetitive tasks over repetitive tasks.

So again, I gave [INAUDIBLE], one of our guys who helps us set up this Dynamo script, and I said, surely there's a way we can get rid of this repetitive tasks. And lo and behold, a couple of months later [INAUDIBLE] we had a script that really, really detailed. And it literally took us two to three minutes to rerun it on that same project. And again, what that was doing for us-- we were getting consistent information going back to that structured data. And we knew exactly where that cladding panel was in any of those sub-assets. So I knew exactly where everything is, and it's a key aspect to it.

And point 4 and 5 here are really crucial to this as well. In that minutes to run, I've got a full set of drawings, I've got full set of BOMs, and I know exactly what is getting done. So the image down in the bottom right, that was generated by Dynamo. Obviously it took us a while to do that. And that was for the second iteration of this. So you can see we've got quite irregular patterns of cladding in there. So if you can build the script and you can refine it and make it more efficient, you can do stuff like this. And this is only one example. There could be a hundred examples. I could go on about this.

So technology-- going back to it. So obviously I've got three stacks here. The routine daily technology that we use. So pretty much driven by Autodesk products across the business. And we use this in our daily business, and we use this for consultants or subcontractors and anyone that's involved in the business. So really important to the core of what we do.

And then integration. So again, if I was to talk about integrations two years ago, I think this slide would be very, very different. So there's been a massive step change in basically-- opened up the APIs across all of these bits of software. So a couple of examples in integrations. I've got OpenSpace. I think we're one of the first main users or kind of power users for OpenSpace. We were linking that straight into Autodesk Construction Cloud. And we started doing that primarily through the pandemic. I couldn't get to the site. Clients can't get to the the site. So we were looking for a way that we could open that up. So OpenSpace was one of them.

And there's a couple of good ones on here. Fastenal is a great one. So this is an American company. We start to talk about inventory. So we're starting to link our inventory into our designs. So going back to that structured data that I was talking about earlier, our structured data can flow straight into Fastenal. And it can go back and forth so we can get stock control that's driven by design. So it's a really important part for us.

And lastly, on the pilots that we've got here-- so I've got a lot of R&D projects going on all at once because I'm intrigued how we can solve this issue with inefficiencies. So some of the ones I'm piloting down the right here are key to-- I see the future of construction and being able to be efficient. Informed Design both across Revit and Inventor-- a real key. Again saying, I want LOD 500 drones, but I want to be able to use them in 1 or 200 drones.

I want to control the CNC quality design so I can go straight to manufacturer, but I also want to give enough detailed information I know is right to the front end. So whether it's my designers or consultants or whoever, I want a central point of real controlled information. Autodesk Forma. I've touched on that.

And the last three here are, I think, some of the future that we can see happening. So Autodesk Tandem. So Paul touched on it earlier. We're a vertically integrated company, so we've got our own BMS company. We've got our own M&E company. And the great thing about that as well, we do designs across both of those companies as well. So when we started looking at all this stuff, we were building a system potentially that Autodesk are already building as well.

So we're now starting to look at the focus on what we do there. We're starting to the bits that Autodesk don't do. But the bit they do, we can see happening really well. They've linked Autodesk Tandem straight into ECC. So all the visualization, the 3D aspects, the linking up the APIs-- doing that, and we're harnessing it. So in the future, we should be able to drop a model-- if we've done it in [INAUDIBLE] and we structure all our data, we should be able to drop it straight into Tandem and get operational and hard O&M maintenance information in there. So it's a really positive step change.

And again, if you control the design, this is easy to switch over in my eyes. You structure the data, you get the benefits of all the software in the future. And the possibilities when you think about AI and stuff and machine learning, all that kind of good stuff, without structured data, you not be able to do any of this.

And Fusion operations-- this is another one we're starting to link into productivity. So primarily, this is a manufacturing piece of software, so we'll know exactly where our module is in our factory at any given time. So that's great in a manufacturing facility. But what about the site, and how do you link the two? So again, hopefully I've got a trial just starting in a few weeks' time that is literally-- it's going to hopefully change the perceptions of what you do on site.

So we'll be process- and task-driven on site like we are in the factory. We'll have the QA both in the factory and site all linked up. So all talking to each other. So a lot of these integrations across the business might look like a lot of software use, but it's done specifically with specific people that are all leading into Autodesk Construction Cloud. And having those APIs and be able to talk to each other really well in the future-- we've not nailed it yet, but in the future I can see this opening up a lot of possibilities.

PAUL RUDDICK: Thank you, Scott. So that's the end of our presentation today. But we hope we have given you a new hope in terms of the future for construction. I think if you've got an enlightened client who understands the benefits of having a pipeline of work and working in partnership with a contractor, if you've got a contractor who's willing to change the current model of construction and look at it and understand what needs to be done and who wants to own the design, who wants to own the supply chain, who wants to really push forward, that's what you can achieve. And obviously, if you've a technology partner who's trying to bring everything together, which Scott just outlined there.

So I hope you've enjoyed our presentation, and I hope you've given some food for thought. But we do think the future is bright, and there's great opportunity moving forward. So thank you very much, and thanks for listening.

SCOTT LAIRD: Thanks a lot.

PAUL RUDDICK: Thank you.