BIM and GIS Cloud Collaboration Panel: Actionable, Connected Data Environments

CLAY STARR: Hey, thanks for coming out, the last day of AU. I don't know what your weeks have looked like, your days and nights. I've tried to take it really, really easy, these last few days, now preparing for this. So thank you for coming.

Today's session is going to be real informal. While it is a panel discussion, and we've got some questions prepared, we really want to hear from you guys. We've got our lovely assistant down here in the front, the handheld mic. We'll open up for questions, and just kind of have a dialogue. But we'll kind of get kicked off.

Today, we're going to be talking about BIM and GIS cloud collaboration, right? The focus of a lot of the attention this year at AU has been around how do we collaborate across disciplines, how do we get more people involved, and more stakeholder engagement. So I've invited to our panel today, Darren Welch from HNTB, Jeroen Tishauser from Volkerwessels, Cameron Schaefer from HDR, and Francois Appere from Arcadis.

And I'll give them an opportunity to introduce themselves here in a moment. So continuing on, there's not a lot of slides. We may have some examples, as needed. But really it's designed to be an introduction. So a little bit about me, I work for Esri. I'm part of our global accounts team. I've been in the BIM world for most of my career. It started-- oh sorry, I thought that was-- we're competing. I thought I had a video playing.

So I've been in the BIM world for a long time. I think I calculated, is part of my 16th Autodesk University, a lot of great conversations, a lot of the same conversations. But they've evolved really well over the years. My specialty within the accounts team is to grow our customers, and make sure they are successful. I asked all of the guys to prepare like a little fun note about them. So my fun note is I actually play five musical instruments. I'm a musician. I'm not a professional at any of them. But it is something I do enjoy to do.

So these guys will get a chance to introduce themselves in a moment. But I want to set the stage. Like, why are we here? Why did we come to Autodesk University? Why do we go to conferences and talk to each other about what it is we do? Yes, it's fun to learn about new tech. Yes, just it's fun to learn about roadmaps and understanding where the industry is going.

I like to talk about productivity. I like to get to the why, the root cause of why it matters that our technologies work together, and why we're teaching people how to use them better. Some stats that have been thrown around for a while now that I've kind of latched onto, is really around productivity, specifically around waste. At the moment, in the AEC industry, 30% of all materials that wind up on site, they wind up in a landfill.

And there are a myriad of reasons. We've all heard why that happens. But that's a significant number. 30% of our projects are over budget. Now again, there's reasons why that might exist. Perhaps the budgeting process is archaic or broken, or maybe we're just bad at our jobs, right? And there's a spectrum of that. There's lots of reasons as to why-- communication breakdown, data transfers, et cetera. But we do find ourselves in a situation where we are not only over budget, but 40% of the work we're doing is rework.

These are errors, omissions, things that sort of pop up in our day-to-day lives. And we all find ourselves trying to make better, right, through our technology, hoping that sometimes our tools will mitigate some of those risks. But the truth is 90% of our projects are late as well. So when it comes to defining what it means for a BIM process and/or a GIS process, or a holistic design process to improve we have to make sure we're addressing these issues.

To put it bluntly, for every three buildings we build, we throw an entire one away. That's how much waste that's being generated. So when we talk about BIM and GIS integration, we talk about the design process, and improving it. These are the goals we're trying to achieve. Yes, we want to be profitable. Yes, we want to reinvest our time into other things, perhaps, rather than just all the rework and re-budgeting of our projects.

But I want to start with the why. So I've been at the Esri booth for the last couple of days. And I've fielded some interesting questions around the feasibility and just ultimately what is GIS. So real, real high level overview, some of you guys may be, some not. But we like to look at GIS through the lens of three very specific channels.

One is GIS is a system of insight, right? We get in early. There are feasibility studies. We're talking business analysis, spatial analysis, these sorts of things that help us determine whether this project is feasible. We talk about a system of record where things like our imagery that we're collecting, or site information gets collected, and maybe it's shared amongst the team to make sure that we're making the right decisions. And we can always go back to this common data environment that says, OK, where is the thing that I need and when is it important?

And then lastly we talk about GIS as a system of engagement. You can see along the spectrum trying to align a lot of our project timelines against that, and the system of engagement is, how am I engaging my stakeholders. How is it changing the role of the design professional or the field professional? How are they influencing or otherwise consuming the information that has been created? How is it being maintained beyond occupancy or beyond handoff?

We could talk more about GIS specifically later. But I do want to get to the value propositions. I'm going to skip right through these. On the left, is what we're all sort of experiencing in the industry, right? We're all talking digital transformation. But what does that really mean to the industry? I think what it means in my 20-plus years in industry is we're trying to digitize our domain knowledge. We're trying to find ways to automate and expedite decision making processes.

Those processes we're creating are often bespoke, right? They're often one-offs. They sit in silos, maybe inside of our organization. When we're really looking to scale solutions, we're trying to find ways to get these productivity gains outside of our little team. We lean on custom development. Maybe it's full stack. Maybe it's little apps here and there. But you know we're looking as an industry for out-of-the-box solutions. Like what can we do now?

No, there's no magic button. No, there's no digital twin button that's going to ever appear in anybody's software ever. But we're looking for these managed opportunities for us to just get our work done. And lastly, we have this disparate technology that we're desperately trying to aggregate. And we come up with really creative ways to do that. And we lean on our vendors. We lean on our technology leaders to help us do that.

But what we're really looking for is innovation that is based on data, and that data that we're pulling together helps us make decisions, helps drive the actions. So our guys here on stage that I've invited are all representing some of the best work that's being done in the industry around BIM and GIS, and just overall design development of their process, trying to overcome the things on the left and really pushing toward the columns on the right.

So with that, this is not about me. I invited a panel. I'm not a panel. I'm a person. So with that, these guys are mic'ed up. They're ready for your questions. But I do want to give them an opportunity to introduce themselves. So I'll first hand it off to Cameron Schaefer. You're the first one on my list, so--

CAMERON SCHAEFER: Awesome, thank you.

CLAY STARR: --introduce yourself.

CAMERON SCHAEFER: Thank you. So glad to be here. I'm Cameron Schaefer. I'm with HDR. I'm out of Southern California, in Irvine. I'm our transportation data acquisition director. So in that role, I oversee our reality capture program and digital delivery, how we can better integrate technology into the work that we do.

When we look at HDR, we are an architecture, engineering, environmental, and construction services firm. 11,000 employees worldwide, 200 offices around the globe, 14 different countries that we work in, with 16 different key markets, everything from transportation, water, resources, and so on.

Fun fact about me is I only play one instrument, with the guitar unfortunately. But I'm a self prescribed tech nerd. So I get to do that for my job, and I love it.

CLAY STARR: Nice. All right, thanks. Yeah, one instrument is not as cool as five, but that's great. Oh, Jeroen, please. You're up.

JEROEN TISHAUSER: Hi, everyone. My name is Jeroen Tishauser. I work for Volkerwessels, which is a general contractor in Holland. My background is in civil engineering. I'm a road designer by trade, most of the bigger infrastructure projects. Background in IT consulting, and support, training, giving training to people. And currently my role is information management. So I'm taking care of the business, getting information from the site, putting it out to the client, and handover, and commissioning states.

Fun fact about me, I do martial arts, and brown band in both of the jujitsu and judo. So hopefully, I'm getting my way around New Orleans. Anyway, and photography is a key point in my career. Volkerwessels is known by one brand, not only one brand. We have different markets. It's also based in the US, although small, Canada in major maintenance contracts.

We have 25,000 projects a year, big companies, and some interesting numbers if you are a financial director. But anyway, I'm from Holland, from infrastructure department and we also have a building department coming up. So, thanks.

CLAY STARR: If you're coming to the AU party tonight there will be a corner in which you Jeroen will demonstrate some martial arts, self-defense techniques for us. Francois?

FRANCOIS APPERE: Hi, everyone. My name is Francois Appere. I'm the Autodesk contract manager for Arcadis globally. I joined Arcadis a bit more than 10 years ago, and I started as a bridge designer. So I come from the business, from the design side. I led the BIM implementation for Arcadis France for a bit more than three years before moving to the US, and lead the BIM push for Arcadis North America for again three to four years, and leading the contract we have with Autodesk globally nowadays.

So a lot of involved into change management, into people management when it comes to technology and digital. My passion, fun fact, I love being in nature, and exploring different ways of moving in nature. And the last two years I've been learning how to fly a paraglider. So if you want to know more about that, reach out.

Arcadis, I've got a few slides about the company, for those who do not know us. So we are-- actually those numbers need to be updated, because we just acquired the IBI Group. That was announced two days ago. So we are now more than 30,000 people around the world, working in a design engineering and consultancy field for natural and built assets.

We have a global footprint, and we recently updated our strategy, which is based on the megatrends that you have seen many times I think during over the past two days-- urbanization, climate change, digitalization, and social expectations-- which have led us to reorganize ourselves around three main business areas which are resiliency, places, and mobility. And the digital solutions are really a way for us to innovate and come up with better outcomes for our clients in those three business areas. So that's it.

CLAY STARR: Yeah. Thank you. Don't talk to Francois about hiking. He doesn't hike. I think you sprint mountains now. You're just running.

FRANCOIS APPERE: I run, yeah. I don't hike.

CLAY STARR: Yeah, that's good. Yeah, that's amazing. Thank you. All right, Darin, thank you.

DARIN WELCH: Great. Good to see everyone today. I am Darin Welch with HNTB. HNTB is a US-based transportation firm. We are about 5,000, 5,500 employees now, I think, about 70 offices nationwide. And we specifically focus on transportation, so DOTs, transit agencies, airports. And that's where a lot of our bread and butter is.

The group I'm in within HTNB is strictly focused on digital innovation services. So we're not a skunkworks group. We actually provide digital innovation as a profit center, partnering with our offices around the country that are serving our clients more directly. So out of the 70 or so digital innovators in the group I'm in, I oversee about 25 of those who are focused on geospatial community and design innovation.

And that's where really a focus of our discussion I think today will be is, how are we taking elements that have been really strong in GIS, especially in planning and community engagement traditionally, and how do we blend that in a really valuable way with a lot of the design, both horizontal and vertical that we're seeing.

Some fun facts about me, I also play guitar and sing, so we've got the makings of a band here. I've also-- my wife and family and I have gotten really into small-scale farming in recent years, trying to be a little more self resilient. So I have about 100 baby chicks at home right now that my family's taking care of. And because I also love technology, they've got it under control, but I'm still checking the live chick cam quite often while I'm here, just to make sure everything's OK.

CLAY STARR: Thanks, Darin. I thought you were going to say that you've chipped all your chickens, and they're all on some tracking device. Maybe that's--

DARIN WELCH: That's the next step of evolution.

CLAY STARR: That's the next step, yeah. OK, now let's get to the meat of the discussion, right? This is now about asking these guys-- I've got a couple of questions started. But like I said, if you have questions that you want answered, and you don't feel like we're getting to it please, please interrupt. Raise your hand. Jeff here will bring you a microphone.

So I'm going to start. And I'm going to start with Darin, because you did bring up specifically stakeholder management. And I want to just talk really broadly, and I'll give you guys all the chance to answer this question. But how has the integration, have you seen that change the way you engage with stakeholders, when you do integrate your GIS and your BIM worlds?

DARIN WELCH: Yeah, I'm going to I'm going to break stakeholders kind of into two categories as well, because we've got stakeholders that are more our project team, and our clients that we serve. And then public-facing stakeholders, the general public, or advisory groups, or regional partners that may be aiding our clients.

So the project team, I really feel like the combination or integration of GIS and BIM have specifically allowed the breaking down of silos. We like to use that term, because everybody likes to stay within their own kingdoms at times. But opening up the ability for especially Autodesk and Esri's technologies and platforms to integrate, especially in a web-based setting, has allowed our teams at all levels, all the way from down in the weeds doers, designers even, all the way up to project leadership.

They can now access and get answers. They can ask questions of the data, especially in 3D, with tools like GeoBIM that's available from Esri now. They can see that at all levels. And really where we're trying to head with this type of engagement is integration without translation that we have on the slide here. So that is a really foundational concept that is important to us as our GIS and BIM integration strategy.

Autodesk and Esri have done a really fantastic job of being able to, no matter what platform you're working in, in terms of authoritative data management, whether it's in ACC, BIM 360, or whether it's in ArcGIS Enterprise, or ArcGIS online-- you can integrate, directly connect across multiple platforms, especially on the desktop. And now what we're seeing with GeoBIM, which I think is approaching about a year old now, still a baby, but what we're seeing is now on the web, that's allowing us to expand to anyone on the project team with ease of entry.

You don't have to know Civil 3D. You don't have to know ArcGIS Pro. You can be a casual user, which a lot of our project leadership is, right? They just need to quickly open an app, ask some questions, maybe do some filters, visualize it and get the answers they need, whether that's about construction phasing or design conflicts that may be underground. Let's shift that though to then public-facing stakeholders.

And I think our or planning twin is an area where I can kind of touch on that. So this is a conceptual example of where we are trying to take the concept of digital twins, which by the way I would argue that digital twin is not a deliverable, right? It's a strategy. It's an approach. So what we're trying to do is say, where are you at in your project with a digital twin strategy, and what's important as a part of that strategy with what you need to share to your stakeholders.

So this is an example of these integrated elements, some data coming from Autodesk Construction Cloud, some data coming from our enterprise GIS, whether it's environmental layers, or as we're showing here feedback from stakeholders on the project. We can bring all of those elements together. And in this case, we're actually sharing in an immersive 3D way through an Esri story map, hey, here is what we're evaluating on the project. We want to be open and transparent with you, the general public. We want to share these design ideas, maybe alternatives, and we want your feedback to progress those alternatives forward through the rest of our design project.

So I think the integration of these areas have really open up and expanded, and really streamlined decision making through our project teams at all levels and to the public in general.

CLAY STARR: Thank you, Darin. Francois, do you [INAUDIBLE]?

FRANCOIS APPERE: Sure. I mean I 100% agree with what's presented here by Darin. And when we speak with the teams, they already tell us that being able to combine that design data we generate in a BIM environment together with GIS really improves the storytelling of our projects. And yeah, we can use that video. Maybe you have to click on play, to run it.

But in fact, that's interesting how in the BIM environment you're all talking about federated models where we combine a lot of different data sources. But it's still hard for non-technical users to access this federated model, because you need a specific desktop tool, or it has been a switch to the cloud of course. But the cloud solutions that we see purely in the BIM environment sometimes are not super user friendly.

And what we find here with combining that with GIS is that you can use, in fact, a cloud based GIS environment to replace that need for a federated model. And here, the example is the remediation of a long stretch of river we are doing in North America. And you see here that that bridge has been loaded in Revit. And you actually access the data, which is in Revit. So it's not just a 3D model. That's a building information model, and that's using that GIS environment was a way for us to provide and give the people who are in charge and who want to take decisions the data they need.

And so that's really the primary use case for us when it comes to BIM GIS connectivity. It's to be able to provide, again, the non-technical people access to technical data, and the right tool to federate point clouds, BIM models, CAD information, federated in one place.

CLAY STARR: Cameron, what about HDR's engagement? Have you seen an increase of the kind of management you're doing with your stakeholders?

CAMERON SCHAEFER: Yeah, no absolutely. And I think one of the things on our end, and I completely agreed with everything just said. But where I think this really helps is stakeholder engagement, similar to what Darin was saying, with our own internal team, and then our external partners or clients.

The simple beauty of it is we have all of this information. We've had information for a long time. That hasn't been the problem coming up with more information. It's been how do we use that information. And how do we store that information? How do we make it available?

And so prior to us integrating our BIM world with the GIS world, getting that information to the project managers, to the client, to the public was a function of us doing that work ourselves, us coming up with the $5,000 laptop, having the horsepower and the hard drive capacity to show all of this information together, and cut the sections and know how to use these tools. Which is great, right? We have the information. We can do that.

But just a couple of slides here showing one of our examples, and I think there's a couple of videos that I'll play as well. What we now have the ability to do is on one project bring in well over 500 models that live on BIM 360 or ACC, which are the actual design models. These are the design models that we're progressing. That's accurate information, and we're able to bring that into an environment that is now accessible and easy to use.

And I think that's a very simple statement, but it's very powerful. Right? Because this information that is so valuable is being used by people who didn't previously use it, who weren't previously able to use it. And what that does is that enables the digital transformation that we all want right. That helps that to progress. That gets people involved. It gets people asking questions.

And then I think the second key thing about it is data accuracy. Right? It's one thing to throw models up on a hub, and information up on a hub. But if you start showing outdated information, you're almost going backwards now. Right? You're losing trust in the tool. And that's where some of the integrations that have been coming out, being able to update these models on a real time basis, are incredibly powerful. Because if that information can be trusted, then it's used even to that next level.

And then the last thing is a simple example. We're seeing some examples of point clouds and reality mesh information, right? This one project here, we've got 10 terabytes of point cloud information. 5, 10 years ago, you're never going to have a project manager who's looking through 10 terabytes of information. But you can do that now, right? And that's a very powerful tool.

CLAY STARR: So Jeroen, I want to ask you maybe a follow-up question to this. When it comes to the kinds of stakeholder management we're hearing about, there's obviously some planning that has to go on. You've got to prepare the data in a certain way. You've got to make sure the folks have the right kind of access. I guess my question, when it comes to your project implementation strategy, when Volkerwessels kicks off a project and you've got these endgame kind of uses in mind, are you including this in your strategy?

JEROEN TISHAUSER: Yeah, so what we basically do is for each and every project we are starting, we give the people on the project internally, but also external stakeholders, the ability to open up their projects from a single source of entry. And that's the GIS entry. So being able to show, and you've seen that in the last couple of videos as well, that we allow people to actually open up a site. It's free to all, if you have the link and the rights. And you can see certain aspects of your sites. But you can zoom into any particular area.

You can also see the planning life. So we have a lot of stakeholders that do planning, active. They want to see how the routes are diverting, what are we going to do next week. So allowing also to integrate planning systems is very important for us. And that's also like the point clouds, and like the models, it's live, right? So if they update the planning on a Microsoft project's online environment, or a P6, it is getting filled here. So you can be able to draw to the project lifecycle.

And as Cameron also said, or Francois, you can highlight in OpX just to collect and see the properties of it. So it really allows people to see the information, both internal and external. And this is a real project we did. And we did a lot of real projects in the last couple of years. And they really had a strong idea, of especially like sectioning.

This is, again, like five years ago, it was hard to do this. And we can show-- maybe you can show the point clouds as well, just to elaborate a little bit on what you have said. So we're allowing point clouds, for instance, to stream live from Azure, or our point clouds that are stored in Azure. This is, let's say, standard Esri stuff. So you see a BIM web scene from a station that is being redone or renovated. We can also section to a rapid model, which is residing on BIM 360, with a point cloud that's stored in Azure.

Again, five years ago, no way you could do this. But it really allows us to do class analysis, to look at visually interfaces that might appear. Where you say, OK, we can solve this in a early stage of the project. So it really allows us to communicate easily.

CLAY STARR: Wonderful. Darin, at HNTB, the planning process to make sure this all comes together, there's obviously lots of tech that exists out. You've got lots of training. When you kick off a project, what are you guys walking through to prepare not only the project teams, but the folks who are going to be consuming this and utilizing it.

DARIN WELCH: Yeah, I think we've shifted our thinking from-- and I want to touch on I think a key word or two words in your question, which is geospatial intelligence. Right? So what is That What is geospatial intelligence? And we've shifted our thinking, regardless of what phase of work we're on-- design planning, design build, construction, O&M-- we've shifted that to an approach that says, location is important.

And that includes everything from making sure that you're not designing at 0, 0 anymore, to being able to use location as a critical element in the knowledge. You're able to ascertain from all of this data, especially in an integrated way, and in a way that can be visualized, but using location as your ally to make better decisions.

Construction, the construction phasing twin, thank you. This is an example where we had lots of data, and what good is data if we can't turn that into knowledge and we can't actually make decisions from it? So this is an example project where we had lots of great 3D design data coming from multiple platforms. We had heavy Civil 3D from the vertical side. We had some DGN data, but we also had a lot of scheduling data actively changing all the time. And we had cost related data.

And we needed to bring all that together, because we needed a way to visualize the construction phasing of this project. I'm sorry I should have mentioned, this is Jamaica Station phase two improvements in Long Island, New York. And the team just needed a way to visualize all this together to make sure that the construction phasing and from all these different disciplines that included schedule and cost estimation, made sense.

And what we found was using geospatial intelligence to bring all this together, it's not just a pretty picture, right? It's a way to say, well let's play that construction scenario through, and see where we have conflicts, or see where we have busts in the way we were thinking of it, maybe just through the schedule lens. And let's look at it through the full integrated and location lens.

We also found that this was a really important way to streamline our quality control, because not only could we review schedule scenarios really effectively and refine our schedule, we found that because everyone was working toward an integrated approach like this, that it allowed us to really quickly see issues with maybe our quality where things weren't fitting together or able to be integrated together, and address those more quickly. And not having to wait till the 11th hour before we were delivering a 30% or 60% planned submittal.

CLAY STARR: Thank you. I do want to touch on something. We keep hearing about all these benefits. There's all these improvements. It's quality. It's time. It's all these things that we're saving. And I'm curious, Francois, when it comes to planning for these improvements, or what are you doing with this new level of information and access that you and your stakeholders have? What improvements have you seen?

FRANCOIS APPERE: Yeah, I mean, I think that the context and the past pandemic we had played a role into that cloud collaboration, I mean on both sides within the Autodesk ecosystem, with the use of BIM 360 and ACC. I mean it became a kind of a mandate for us to work remotely, and hopefully that technology here was here and ready to let us continue work across the world, and in areas like North America, where people are spread out across different time zones.

And I think that was the key for us to be able to continue to be in business, having that cloud collaboration available. And again, as we said, having those tools which are web based, provides way more access to way more people. I mean we can engage with many more stakeholders.

I just wanted to highlight one thing here. On all those projects we have highlighted, we see that we are dealing with tons of data, I mean a lot of data. And that's great. We have a lot of data in the BIM world. We have a lot of geographical data in the GIS world. And it's very important for that cloud collaboration to be successful, to have a proper plan in place. Because if you are just opening a GIS map, and creating tons of models in the BIM environment and try to make them match, that will not work.

And in a BIM environment, we used to talk about BIM execution planning, especially with the ISO 19650 requirements, we need to have proper planning in place. And that's the same in the GIS environment. And I think that we need to stop talking about BIM and GIS, but in information management, digital engineering, and whatever other type of information. And it doesn't really matter based on the use case, and what you want to achieve.

And it's important for those two teams of people who used to be in those silos that we are breaking things to technology, which is amazing, to sit together and talk to understand what we want to achieve using that technology. And without that agreement, without going through the use cases and what do we want to do, the cloud collaboration won't be successful for sure. And, again, those projects are big. We are talking about large scheme infrastructure, mobility, water projects, and there is no way we'll be able to get value without proper planning and for future execution.

CLAY STARR: So I'm going to ask Cameron, just one last question, so I want you guys to start thinking about a question. Jeff's got the mic, hopefully unmuted. Cameron, I want to take this question and turn it around just a little bit. Improvements, they seem sort of natural.

CAMERON SCHAEFER: Yeah.

CLAY STARR: More open access, more transparency, more availability of large data sets. But what kind of disruptions has this level of collaboration caused at HDR? And maybe it's slight. Maybe it's a reskilling or retooling. But can you talk a little bit about how this has impacted your business, negatives and negative words. So let's talk about disruption.

CAMERON SCHAEFER: Yeah, disruption, so I think it's interesting. Because any time there's something new, you also have to consider the risks of it as well, right? And so having more information isn't always a good thing. And going back to something we were just talking about with the geolocation or geospatial information, absolutely critical. Right? But what I've noticed is there's a tendency, I see information, therefore it is accurate. Therefore it is spatially located, and it's trusted just as much as everything else.

So when you bring all of that together, I think not only do you have to define your geospatial information within your plan. It's also the accuracy to which it can be trusted. Right? So there is a tendency to over-trust the information sometimes. And I think it's important to clearly educate the teams of how much you can trust it. Right?

So for a simple example, a low level of planning detail, reality mesh might not be as accurate as terrestrial LiDAR scanning information. Right? One does not equal the other. But I think from the other perspective when we look at some of the disruptions, it's again, a simple concept. But it's a disruption in the way that we communicate together, and that we work together. Whereas previously, send me that plan set, or email me that latest version of that file, and is that the latest. And who knows?

CLAY STARR: Well, it's called Final_2, so it's definitely--

CAMERON SCHAEFER: Yeah. Yeah, Final_2-CameronSchaefer. Yeah. But now, there's conversations around a single source of truth. And I like to think of our GIS hubs as Windows into all of our information, as Windows into the BIM data, as Windows into the reality capture data, as Windows into the connected GIS data sets, with the key being, with the key thing being, there's only one place this information resides, and there's multiple windows into it.

But from a disruption standpoint, I think, again, there's education that comes with new technology always. You need to understand how you can use it, why you're using it, and what can it inform.

CLAY STARR: Before we open up to the audience, the other three guys, I'll let you choose. Talk about maybe some other disruptions, things you've seen, the challenges, et cetera. Darin, you've got something.

DARIN WELCH: Yeah, I think there is still a tendency, so I'll classify this as a disruption. But I think there's still a tendency to think, wow, that seems difficult. Wow, what you're showing me is great. I love it. But I don't know if that makes sense for my project, and I'm not sure how that works. And I think it's safe to say every example we have here today is using pretty heavily off-the-shelf solutions. There's very little like custom development in a lot of this, right?

So what we're trying to make the point is, and every team needs to hear this that this is possible today. It's proven. And Esri and Autodesk are giving us the tools and the frameworks to make it happen in a relatively simple, streamlined, repeatable way. And it's scalable, right? So don't let a disruption occur out of a tendency to think that looks too much for me, or too much for my project, and I'm not sure it's the right fit.

It is the right fit. And it's scalable. And it's possible on every project. And if we're going to be able to adapt to the infrastructure challenges in the US and the world, we have to change our traditional approach to design and the integration of other solutions like GIS. I would also argue we need to think of this, we've talked a lot about digital delivery. We've touched on it a little bit today. We really shouldn't just be saying GIS and BIM integration. We should be saying document management integration, asset management, maintenance work order systems. All of that has to be a part of the more complete picture of our digital delivery.

CLAY STARR: Francois, did you say you had a--

FRANCOIS APPERE: Yeah I mean want--

CLAY STARR: Let me, yeah, if you guys have a question, go ahead and get your hand up, so Jeff can prepare you, when Francois finishes up.

FRANCOIS APPERE: Yeah, I just wanted to build on what you said around the education. Because there are many things that we don't know what we don't know. And sometimes we see those examples. That seems scary, because of that technology set is brand new. But at the same time not customized much. I mean in those examples, we are not using for the Autodesk platform services now to do anything. And yet, you can play that video to illustrate the fact that I think it's important to remind, to keep in mind that Esri, Autodesk are investing a lot of money into technology development.

We need, consulting companies and even the owners, we need to invest in our people to show them that it's not so complex. But there is, of course, that base training you need to have at least to be aware of what you can do. And if you do not reach that base level, you will always see that as scary and unreachable, where maybe it is. So while the technology providers and developers invest millions of dollars into technology improvement, we need to invest millions of dollars into our people to train them.

Because having a good computer and a brand new license of GeoBIM and ACC won't make anything without having a good operator behind the computer, or a good engineer and designer able to use it the right way, use the technology the way it has been designed.

CLAY STARR: I like the way Arcadis has approached their digital transformation. They have this very great hiking analogy, right? Let's get everybody to base camp. Some people are still down in the village buying snowshoes. Like, let's get everybody to base camp. Because we've got a mountain to climb.

So we do have a question here. If you'll stand up, and I guess address it to whomever you want, or you guys jump in, as you see fit. Thank you.

AUDIENCE: Yeah, I don't have anyone in particular. But I was just thinking of some notes on beyond the tools that is used to break down our data silos, what's been your biggest obstacle in reorganizing your groups or managing your teams that do your data management on your digital transformation journey? And how did you overcome them?

CLAY STARR: Do you want me to answer that? Jeroen, you have an answer?

JEROEN TISHAUSER: Yeah, well what we basically do is we-- well, what I highlighted already is that we make GIS in general a standard. There's always a GIS dispersion in the team. So we have a GIS or what we call locate, or an environment where you can just ask for a map. But we made it automatic as well.

So as long as when you're starting a project, you need an EAP project number, and you need all your people aligned, and all that sort of thing. But you also need an automatic way of organizing your GIS maps. It's automatic, out of the fly, you get a guy there or a girl to make your maps normally. But it has an automatic process you can set in as well. So it's really easy to set a new project on site, but also be sure that you organize a GIS team inside of your projects to help for the first burden.

And as Francois says, it's all about the team management around it. So we adopted a change methodology adoption framework to help identify what's in it for me. So people need to be aware is what is the, let's say, their gain in using this, and also make it not too hard, and they have all these tools available, and they are overwhelmed, too much overwhelmed.

So make sure they have a single entry point, where they see the information they need, and in what time frame. So that's hopefully answering a bit of your question. Anything to add to it?

DARIN WELCH: Yeah, and I'll build on that a little bit. I think that's really important, and a common obstacle that I think we share. The lack of standards for digital delivery that takes this more comprehensive and integrated approach, I think was our initial obstacle. I wouldn't say we've completely solved it, because a lot of this is still emerging, right?

But we're working towards what some of our teams maybe used to consider as just, I got to have a BIM execution plan. And we're changing that dialogue to say, well, what you really need is a digital twin, or digital delivery governance plan. That includes BIM, CAD, GIS standards, maybe field survey work, reality capture, right? It needs to be comprehensive in what those full digital delivery standards are, and how those integrate together. How you're going to not just manage and store and deliver them, but how they work together, how they're managed separately, how they integrate together across platforms.

So I think that's been one of our biggest challenges, in addition to just the culture shift. But if you can give teams at least the confidence that we have the tools, we have the processes or standards, people is now the piece that we need to enable and educate, right? Then that's a recipe for success.

CLAY STARR: Yeah. Does anyone have a funny question? We can compete.

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

Yeah, now there was a question up here up front. Yes, sir?

AUDIENCE: So this is going to be a follow up on what you were talking about, about the integration between different data sources that we have and the GIS platform. How dynamic is the current integration? Are we there that we can say that, oh, we can have a real time integration, because we have these data sources coming from maybe BIM 360. You talked about a point cloud coming from Azure. Are we there yet? How smooth is that integration?

CLAY STARR: Do you want me to answer this? I'll take a first-- I can. But yeah, there's some honesty in this. I think we need to get into. Go ahead.

CAMERON SCHAEFER: Yeah, I'll say it's in my opinion it's getting there. It's getting a lot better. And a perfect example and this led to the education piece and one of the challenges and obstacles we learned with the silos of people. Right? People need to now come together, different disciplines with our traditional GIS and BIM teams.

But for example, bringing our BIM 360 models into a live time environment is much easier now than it was a year ago. And that continues to improve. That continues to get better, being able to bring not only Revit models, but Civil 3D models, right? So these are all improvements that have been made over the last year, and it wasn't always easy. It was a lot more work a year ago than it was now. And some of the risks that presented itself was you might have old data in there, right? And I mentioned that earlier.