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Practice Applications Training: Overcoming a Lack of Training for a 500-Plus-Person Firm

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Description

We need more training! This is a statement that many a design apps manager or principal has made. We sign up for useful tools like Lynda.com or hire a firm to teach us Revit software, and these are great tools when provided to the correct staff. They’re asked to learn the tool on their own time. A Google search for “Revit training” yields 1.2 million hits! The final training strategy is on the job. Trial by fire will yield advancements in knowledge, but users are applying old habits in a new environment. Corgan has created an applications training strategy that addresses these issues, bringing consistency across our 6 offices and our realignment to market-sector studios. Our approach focuses on the practice of architecture using Revit as the tool. We weave in external resources and make this information manageable and searchable in our IT service platform. These principals are baked into a university-type platform. This includes lectures, labs, homework, and textbooks. It is repeatable, consistent, and intense.

Key Learnings

  • Learn how to identify the root issues of what needs to be taught beyond just the tools
  • Understand the commitments to a training initiative within your firm
  • Discover the resources that are available within the firm, and ones that need to be created to support a firm-wide training initiative
  • Understand how to assess, maintain, and measure successes and failures of training for ultimate longevity and implementation

Speaker

  • Chad Speas
    Chad Speas is the Design Applications Manager for Corgan Associates Inc., a leading architecture and design firm with deep technical expertise and a reputation for great service. Consistently ranked as one of the top 10 architecture firms in the United States, we listen to our clients and transform their insights into structures and spaces that inspire, inform, and innovate. He received his bachelor’s degree in Environmental Design from Texas A&M University. He is a registered architect in Texas and Arizona and has been practicing architecture for nearly 17 years. Chad’s primary focus at Corgan is development and implementation of the education and training program for design applications, as well as providing BIM related expertise to projects across the firm. He is a Certified Revit Professional and has been using Autodesk, Inc., products for well over a decade, most recently overseeing the firm’s transition of project work to A360 Team and Collaboration for Revit.
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      Transcript

      CHAD SPEAS: All right, well, I've got to 2:30 on my time in my watch here, so I'm going to go ahead and get started. We have plenty of awesome stuff to chat about this morning. So just to make sure that you guys are in the Practice Applications Training: Overcoming Lack of Training for a 500-Plus-Person Firm where we're pushing the limits of actually 700, so about 550 technical staff to share some internal information with you guys.

      As you go through this, if there's, like I was saying earlier, kind of alluding to, there's tons of great classes out there. I think Marcella's got a class-- I think a bunch of people at this time slot. If this is not for you guys, you're not offending me or hurting my feelings if you want to step out, excuse yourself. By all means-- I don't want to listen to myself talk for an hour, sometimes, so you're welcome to depart out at anytime. So you're not hurting my feelings at all.

      Just a little bit about myself, Chad Speas, Practice Technology-- it's actually just changed recently-- Practice Technology Manager with Corgan. You can kind of see I love travel. I get to travel with the firm quite a bit. I'm managing all of our offices, all of our Autodesk assets, quite a bit of our workflows-- anything BIM Revit, Navisworks, Newforma-- anything that has to do with the production of our documentation is where I kind of fit into the firm.

      Two kind of really important points that I love to make and to give you my perspective in where I've established myself-- I'm a registered architect. I went to architecture school, got my Texas registration, moved to Phoenix in 2006, have my Phoenix and my Arizona registration as well. And I think that's important to kind of understand where I'm coming from, that I'm grounded in the profession.

      I will always maintain my registrations. I will always be an architect. And I have conversations with people a lot that are about, well, you're not an architect, you're on IT. No, I'm probably-- I feel like that I'm more of an architect than I was even before because there's more projects I'm involved and more things I'm influencing. So I think that's kind of a really, really important point to kind of share.

      But the biggest thing I want to share there is about consensus building. It's about conversation and discussion. It's about getting people on board with the things that you're going to, from a training perspective, from a class perspective today, you're really trying to build conspiracies, build groups of ground swell, get people interested in sharing the same passion that you have.

      Passion is sometimes a very hard thing to teach, but I love Revit. I love AU. I love training, and I want to share that with you guys. I'll talk a little bit about that in the presentation today. It just takes that kind of champion to really, really move things forward.

      Just a little bit about Corgan, our leading architecture and design firm. We've got offices all across the country. So again, that get to travel part, I'm in the Empire State Building when I'm in New York. We're out in LAX and in Playa Vista, and just about to open a new office in L.A. We're based out of Dallas. We're in Houston, chasing work in Chicago.

      So I'm all over the country all the time. So it's really kind of a fun place to work. Short history, the company is 80 years old. I've been with them, technically, 15, but I started back in '99. So I took little bit of hiatus and then came back in my current role.

      And you can kind of see the market sectors that we're working with-- critical facilities, health care, aviation, commercial. So we're dealing with a lot of different-- this also kind of puts our training into perspective. We've got small projects three or four days, couple thousand square feet up to billion dollar programs that, and, as an example, out at LAX. So the project types that we're covering are just huge.

      So I want to learn a little bit about you guys, so I took a little survey beforehand-- first time AU folks. Again, I think a quite a few people walked in. That's a big number. It's pretty cool.

      I love this week. My wife hates this week. We got two kids back at home, and it's an interesting conversation the week before AU. You're leaving when? Monday morning. You're coming back when? Friday afternoon.

      [SIGHS]

      So it's a big sigh. But who works for architect? Who's an architect that works for architecture firms? So quite a good mix, which is great. Consulting firms? Engineers? OK, we're about, we're 50%, 30% there. Construction? We won't talk too bad about you guys. We'll try to keep it on the up and up.

      Owners, any owners, owners reps? OK. I'd love to get some of your opinions and your feedback on some of this conversation as we go, maybe, what you're seeing from the design profession and can add to it. Anybody else that I forgot? Non-Design? facility management, maybe? Operations?

      AUDIENCE: Utility.

      CHAD SPEAS: Utility? OK, interesting.

      AUDIENCE: Utility.

      CHAD SPEAS: Utility, OK, interesting. So are you guys-- just real quick-- are you guys looking at training this software as well in the companies that you guys are working at? Or trying to figure out how to use it, what you're using for? OK. So again, like I said, I just kind of want to go over the learning points. I kind of take a lot of pride to make sure that what the class title is and what we're talking about is actually what we cover today.

      So just to go over the learning points on why you guys are here, learning how to identify the root issues. Kind of my perspective of why does training fail? And what are we struggling with? Or what do we have to overcome to really kind of take root, if you will?

      Understand the commitments through a training initiative within your firm. So we'll talk a lot about the framework at Corgan, what we did. It's a really good kind of case study, just a general, overall. And then discover the resources that are available within your firm, outside of your firm. That's a really big thing to me is this kind of-- I think I had to put it in perspective-- I want my cake, and I want to eat it too.

      We've got professionals, internally. We've got dedicated staff like myself. And I'll talk about my team here today. But lean on Autodesk, lean on your reseller, lean on the network that you've created around these tools.

      Nobody knows the architecture tools-- Revit, specifically, or Navisworks-- better than the developers, better than the Autodesk team. So reach out to those folks that are in the exhibit hall, on the forums, everywhere. Any way that you can get a name-- Kyle Bernhardt, Chris Aquino, your reseller, your territory manager. Find out who those people are and get to know them so that when you have a problem, you know who to go to.

      And then, finally, understanding how to assess, to maintain measure, to understand the successes, the failures. How do you know your training is working? And so we'll talk about a few of the highlights at Corgan that we just say, we're training-- great. Why are we spending all this time doing it?

      So let's talk about the problems. So I've got kind of four or five big points about what we're really trying to overcome in the issues. And I want to start with where we manage in a way that I think most folks will understand. How we manage our media, how we manage our social network, our group of people, and the people that we work with-- probably a generational thing.

      I handle Facebook and LinkedIn. I am not a Twitter, tweeter, Twitterer guy. Snapchat is utterly foreign to me. I don't understand it at all. I think I have a Snapchat account for when my girls grow up, but I don't know what it's about. So I kind of base this opinion on there's really you only manage kind of two networks, simultaneously.

      You can get into three and four and if you're good at multitasking. But Facebook is friends and family, neighborhood events, sharing pictures of the girls with my mom and all of our relatives. And then LinkedIn is my professional network. That's kind of the same situation that we're talking about when we're looking at the profession itself.

      We really can't manage all of these ways of how our data is going. So when we talk about our framework, we really try to focus it into what are the core pieces of software that we're using? What are the kind of the pinnacle, the highest things that we're trying to produce?

      For an architecture firm, it's modeling, construction documents, managing construction when it's passed the RFIs, and submittals, and the PYM environment. What's our management software? If you can keep this the focus there, then you don't have all these other-- we know there's hundreds of softwares all coming out. The exhibit hall's a really good example. There's hundreds of companies out there that we don't know about that are trying to get our business, but you kind of have to keep blinders on just a little bit.

      This second important point is how do you set your plate? How do you set your table for the day? What are you working on during that day? So I kind of put it in this perspective-- first thing we do, we sit down. We open Outlook.

      Then you open Revit because you got a pile of red lines that you need to pick up. Skype is automatically open, so you're doing your one-off, your IM, and your conversations. And then your manager comes over and goes, oh, hey, let's talk about the Bluebeam session, that use studio, the session that we have open. And go open some PDFs, and let's look at some things.

      So then you kind of put those to the side. And then you have to jump over into Windows Explorer, and then you have to jump over into the Bluebeam. And then there's an Excel spreadsheet that we have to look at. So now, you got Revit opening. You got Excel open, things are getting buried on top of each other.

      And then, oh, let's throw our PYM tool on top of that. Now, I've got-- now I'm trying to get them to use Newforma, to oversee what Windows Explorer can do. Where are my files? Where's everything located?

      And then throw on top of it the advanced programs. You've got Navisworks, and 3 Studio Max, and then all the other hundreds of things that we do. So that is chaotic, at best. So how do you kind of narrow that focus down of what we're actually here to talk about?

      This one always gets chuckles. I love this. To be really candid, this is kind of one of those I don't care responses. But it's I don't care with a big asterisk. It's kind of like you're not at the firm that you were at previously.

      We have our standards. Welcome to Corgan. Come on board. But you can kind of read this in two ways. You can kind of read it as maybe they're there because they don't want to-- something bad happened, previously.

      But I think there's also a learning perspective from the company that they're coming into. We do-- and we'll talk about this in the framework proper-- we do best practices because it's something that somebody's always done. Or you do best practices because somebody finally stood up and said, hey, this is the best way to do something. But best is always subjective.

      How do we challenge against best? How do you improve best? How do you get better? We hire people coming into the firm because they have a skill set that we don't have. Maybe, it's just a warm body, and we need more people.

      OK, that's a skill set. But there's things we can learn from them, from a company. So don't take this as just a negative. And they don't get on board with the "we" very well. My old firm, I used to do this, over there, we did it this way.

      You're not there. Come on board with us. Let's learn from what they have to offer.

      And then I'll just kind of talk about this when I-- this will come up in our conversation a lot, but executive buy-in for us was extremely important. I left the firm in 2011. I came back in 2014. And I had a really great opportunity for about six to seven months from when I came back.

      All I focused on was training within the firm. And the framework that came out that we'll describe here and in a couple of slides, this is all I worked on. And then, come fall of 2012, I was able to get up in front of our shareholders at our shareholder's conference. I came back into the firm as a shareholder and present this to them.

      And through the research that I've done, through just kind of understanding how technical training should be approached, how we need to manage people and learning avenues, and all these concepts, everybody was nodding their heads saying yes, we need to do that. So I'm going to say I was pretty lucky in the opportunity that I had to do this, to set up this training, but I think that's kind of the feedback to everybody in the room is if you're really struggling with not getting this executive buy-in, find the one person at the executive level or management level and show them and prove to them that this is working. Use us as an example. Use other firms that you've worked with as an example. But executive buy-in is really, really crucial and really, really critical.

      [COUGHS]

      Excuse me.

      So then, kind of to the final point I want to make on the problems and things that we're trying to overcome when it comes to training, this goes back to one of our first points. Revit, Newforma, Max, Bluebeam, not one of them look the same. So all of a sudden, I have a-- one of my soapboxes are big things to overcome just when it comes to any training at all because familiarity with the software. If you don't know where buttons are, you're just not going to do it. Or if you're transitioning from AutoCAD over to Revit, you're a keyboard shortcut person in AutoCAD, but you're a button person in Revit, how do you overcome that?

      Things are just not in the-- so the deck's almost stacked against us a little bit in that Max incredibly complicated menu system, right click mouse buttons, a lot of in your face kind of user interface things. Bluebeam's very button based. Newforma's just its own animal. I don't even-- we won't even talk too much about that. But again, kind of overcoming just all the UI and all the navigation that if we can set the baseline for how software and programs are navigable, I think people have a better opportunity and chance to overcome those issues.

      So that kind of defines the problem. So we're going to take the next two sections here and really talk about what we're trying to overcome when it came to culture. So we kind of talked about-- and we're looking at this more on a national level than anything-- but most of the offices have grown rather organically from over the many years, the 80 years we've been in business.

      New York's been there about 30 years. We've had an office there for about 30 years. Monica, L.A. Is 10 years? 12 years? 10, 12, maybe, not even that long? So, but, yeah, we're almost at 10 years. So you're dealing with this different concept-- regionalism, how L.A. is super chill, laid back, Phoenix, kind of the same way.

      The New York minute is a real thing. When I'm up there, it's super fast and hectic. And then, Dallas, where our headquarters are, it's just the way it's been. So we're dealing with this issue of these different styles and different cultural and customs just like maybe tribes would be across the country. But the important thing that we wanted to keep in mind when we were presenting this is our approach is not about the loss of identity, but the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.

      We're still one company. Our owners are expecting consistency. They're expecting the information to be in the same spot from sheet-to-sheet-to-sheet.

      You have different contractors or even the same contractors. They're working with different offices that we have. They come to expect a specific-type style of Corgan way of doing things that we needed to make sure that the Corgan way was what we were teaching and kind of overcoming the nuances of that.

      Going back to the executive buy-in component, what do we want to accomplish? So we made this list of about eight or nine items, but really, we needed to kind of shorten that list down. So we started with reduction of risk. Our legal was happy we put that on there. Our COO was super happy we put that on there.

      But also, it's about improving efficiency, consistency, just like I talked about. And we wanted to get and stay ahead of the subject. So again, I've been back to Corgan for about four years. So with 75 plus years, we've never really had a training program, but we've been successful. And we've been able to grow and prosper in a couple of different kind of up and down markets.

      How can we just put a line in the sand and say, here's where we need to be, or here's where we are? And then let's advance and move forward and get us trained up. A lot of times, I think we get bogged down in the behind the eight ball, if you will, of-- well, none of these programs have ever worked. We've never been able to move training forward-- doesn't matter. Let's just get everybody trained and set a baseline and start moving forward from there.

      And so one thing we did do is we did take a look at the successful programs at Corgan and kind of what's working, what's not working. How does that work into the framework that we're about to talk about here in a second? So first off, we have a system in place. And I'm sure a lot of companies have something similar to this, but a Corgan College.

      We've had this for 13, 14, 15 years. Well, it's been established for a very long time. And it focused on design and leadership. It didn't focus on anything technical-- so how to teach, rather, how to teach Newforma, et cetera. These are four short focus topics.

      We're trying to pull people's extra time, their spare time, if you will, to teach classes, get the staff involved. It's been successful because it's been maintained, but it's not really covering. But I think our 60 to 80 kind of person attendance level is about where we're at. So we're not even at a 10% or 12% attendance there.

      We've had Lunch and Learns Wednesdays-- standard Wednesday Dallas Lunch and Learns for as long as I can remember, 20 plus years. These are fine. You bribe people to come down for lunch, but what's the topic? The topic is we got a roofing company to come in, and we're talking roofing details today. And then next week, we've got a furniture vendor coming in to talk about some new furniture concept, and a lighting vendor.

      And it was just inconsistent. It's just from week-to-week-to-week. It's just whoever wanted to come in and do a sales pitch, they bought lunch. And then we've talked a lot about outside opportunities. And when we get into the kind of the framework if you've looked at the handout.

      There's conferences. There's teaching from other design partners. Our consultants coming in, contractors coming in.

      We're trying-- and these are just kind of one off-- we have a topic. Somebody wants to talk about something. Come on in, have a talk. Again, inconsistent, just not really there.

      So let's talk about the framework. What did we actually do? What did we put-- let's get into the meat of the conversation. What do we actually do to increase our training initiatives?

      So this was a great quote. Doug Lipp, Disney U: How Disney University Develops the World's Most Engaged, Loyal, and Customer-Centric Employees. A fantastic book. It's a quick read on Amazon. Definitely, check it out. I love what Disney does when they talk about training.

      It's about experience. It's about Spirit. It's about passion. It's about just a couple things even today-- if you guys didn't notice-- having sound on, maybe music or classical music, maybe without words or a podcast or something.

      When you come in, you're kind of setting the table for training-- meet and greet out in the front. One of those specific things that I remember in the book is when they took breaks, the instructors would rearrange the room, reestablish, move chairs, kind of clean everything up. Then when the students came back, and the new employees came back, they were ready to learn again. They didn't have to fuss with their chair and move things around.

      So you're kind of setting that table and creating that emotional connection. I love training. I love the tools. I want you guys to feel that same thing. So what do I need to overcome to get you guys passionate about that as well?

      So we looked at this, and I'll run through this kind of quickly just to make sure that we get to some of the case studies at the end. But we looked at this four important things. People learn in four ways-- classroom settings, the small group, one-on-one, and on demand.

      So you really have to be prepared for different styles of-- but my hope in even in this room is you guys get one nugget, one piece of information out of this conversation, but you can-- somebody in here is definitely a video watcher and wants to go back and watch the videos on the back end, we need to be prepared for that. We need to make sure that information sticks. You've got you've got to understand how people learn.

      From those four main points, there's kind of two points of departure. There's the curated materials up at the top. So I'm coming into a class. I'm creating my hand out. I've got my slide deck.

      I'm going to share that with everybody. But then, also, we understand-- and I kind of jumped over it a little bit-- but there's a little kind of person symbol up here. And what this represents is really anybody that's getting on or off the carousel or on and off the skating rink, as you see, when it's finished to talk about. And this could be a new hire. This could be a new topic or subject.

      This symbol can represent somebody coming onto a new project. It's really just saying, here's where you start. You hop on. You kind of surf through the figure 8 when you see when it's finished up, and then you can bring people on. So you always have a kind of a point of-- a place to start.

      The left side of this is really more focused on the job training. What are we actually working and creating in the real world? The right side's going to be more under classroom training. What do the sessions look like? Some of the technicalities behind them.

      And then also on the job is much more practical. It's more about the practice. It's drawing the lines and clicking the buttons and the point and clicks.

      And then the classroom training is more theoretical. It's more your university-style setting. It's more lecture based. It's a little more you get people thinking about it, not actually doing a lot of it.

      So when we kind of take a spin around the left side of the diagram, we have first half-- and this goes back to the, well, at my old firm we used to do it this way. I think this is a really important thing to understand is we are all going to get something different, even out of this conversation today. And I think what's important about it is we know that we have all of these resources available.

      We're reading trade magazines. Were reading white papers. Were on Lynda.com. We have our own training, internally. A big part of focus we'll talk about this here is our service center and our ticketing system here in a few minutes. But we have to respect that everybody's coming into the conversation with different perspectives on what they're doing and how they're doing it.

      I'm at AU. I go back into the office next week or the week after Thanksgiving, and I say, hey, I learned this really cool thing. I'm going to start doing this thing every single day. So now I'm putting what I've learned on my resources actually into practice. And so I'm jumping on board and then maybe getting a few people to also see the benefit from it in doing those things. Now, all of a sudden, it becomes a best practice.

      OK, that's a really efficient way. Thanks for bringing it. We're going to document it, and we're going to write it down. I think that's kind one of the things that gets lost a lot is I have my best ways of doing things, but I don't document anything. Then if I don't document it, then you don't know it exists. So I'm not sharing those tales in those stories.

      So we develop our list of best practices. And then those best practices then become courses that you develop for your more technical or classroom training, the classroom training approach. So now, those become the curated materials for all of your sessions. This is a really-- again, I kind of mentioned it at the beginning, but I this is just a really good internal conversation to have with your firms and with the folks is what are the core softwares that we need to be training to?

      We can't train everything. There's just too much stuff out there. There's kind of smaller ways that we do things. There's workflows that we've developed, and then we know how each of our firms kind of runs a project from start to finish. But let's just make a statement that these are the core softwares.

      And what we looked at is design authoring, information management, markup collaboration, and visualization. And even that 3D Studio Max has kind of fallen off, there's Lumion and Twinmotion and Enscape and quicker visualization tools that we have out there, but we've just said these are the things we're going to focus on. And everything else is going to come a little more naturally, a little more open open-minded, open sourced, if you will.

      We then looked at these core softwares, and we said, OK, we were challenged. What is it going to take to get that done? So we'll use Revit. And I've got case studies on Revit and an Enscape here in a little while that we'll share. We'll get into some of the nitty-gritty.

      But you took those course softwares, and we said, what is it going to take to teach Revit internally and in the firm? We whittled it down-- and everybody that's in Revit, to 24 classes. And I'm seeing a couple of chuckles. We left a lot of stuff out, and it was-- but it was kind of eye opening, and it's kind of important to go back to the management and say, it's going to take this kind of investment if we really want to get to where we're going.

      And then they still bought off on it, which was really great. Maybe, something like Newforma we can do in a different session. And like I said, the case studies, we'll really get into how we've of managed each of these different class setups.

      And then most importantly, and I'll be the first to admit, this is probably the one thing that we're not quite there with yet because there's a whole different set of investment when you're talking about how do I set up a class? And how do I put all the information in place? But that assessment and measurement, I think, is really, really important.

      So we've kind of stayed more towards the assessment side, which is, is this still the best practice? Is this still what we want to teach? Or are we still-- is this still in line with what we've set out to do from a training perspective? And then the measurement is that are you guys using any knowledge smart or any e-learning tools that are measuring some of the technical aspects of there's one over here? Are you guys seeing that's helpful?

      Because we get kind of differing opinions of some people just don't want to know. And some people don't want to take the time to know kind of thing.

      AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

      CHAD SPEAS: Well, that's good. I'd like that, yeah. Over here.

      AUDIENCE: You were [INAUDIBLE].

      CHAD SPEAS: The short-- focus on the shortcomings, OK, yeah, that's really good to know. Because like I said, I think a lot of people want to know how good or bad their teams are, and they see it. They see a document come out that's missing information, or Revit models are bloated or errors and warnings and such. But we don't oftentimes take the time to say OK, why? What's the why behind it?

      And then I feel really important on the building on the resources that you have internally already developed, I think, is super important. Don't scrap anything that you already have created. It can be manipulated and mended and continued and updated quite a bit. But there's things that you can-- because the word I'm looking for. I can't really think of right now-- but there's ways to take new information and kind of dovetail it into some of the resources that you already have.

      So we have a-- sorry, I kind of jumped ahead just a little bit-- but our core good practice manual here. We have a Wiki blog on how to use Revit and just some of our Corgan ways of doing things. But really importantly, I think, is the external resources.

      Yes, they're heavy, and there's a lot of information, but I there's some really important things that you can take out of them. And I'll talk in a couple of slides about our team, and how really I kind of challenge my then, team to not necessarily know what the answer is, but know where to get the answer. I think that's kind of the important thing.

      So use Newforma customer community. Use the Au learning portal. There's a lot of different places and ways to get a lot of-- your reseller has a ton of support.

      So anyway, internally, we still had to create some quick start guides. What is it? When a person comes on a project, when a person comes into the firm, what is it they just need to know?

      I think there's a reality that we've all faced that you can't just take a new hire and train them for five days, and then hope on day six, that they can actually do anything and be productive. We also just have tons of work to do, so that day one, we want them as productive as possible. It's kind of a little bit of an oxymoron, kind of a challenge that we're seeing, but we just can't sit anybody really in a classroom for three days, the first three days. So we need that something that they can take and work through.

      We record all of our sessions. So we're using-- and we just switched over to Office 365 earlier this year-- so we're the video channels. We're transitioning over to stream. We're working with LinkedIn to get some of those videos actually imported and integrated with those cloud-based services.

      This is more of a kind of one of my dreams and goals. It hasn't happened yet, but a consolidated resource, either an iBook or a PDF or something that can-- right now, it's our knowledge base. We'll talk about here in a second-- but thinking about how university functions, you still buy textbooks, probably what the professor is selling, and what they wrote.

      But it's still this lecture base with a text book, so there's written in even-- Even AU's a really good example. There's a hand out. There's a PDF. There's my conversation, things to add.

      We want people to learn in the best way that they learn. Some people can read a Revit book and learn Revit. Some people actually need to make mistakes and get in there and picks and clicks. So we want to give them all those resources.

      About 2 and 1/2, three years ago, we implemented Servicenow within our firm, so we've dubbed it, Corgan Ask-- kind of jumping ahead there real quick. Well, we have a knowledge base.

      We submit articles. We review articles on a yearly basis. We update them from-- luckily, Revit's on a pretty good cycle now, so we know when 19.1 and 19.2 are all going to come out. So we actually take the time to look at the articles and understand what needs to be updated, changed, modified, et cetera.

      And then through the Corgan Ask, people put in tickets, and we manage those tickets. And we kind of look over all that all that information on a pretty regular basis to see what are the problems. How can we change our training to accommodate those things?

      So really, what we're trying to look for are support synergies between the framework that we've put in place, and how people are actually using the tool. So that's kind of an important thing. We're at halfway so I'll pause for second. Any questions so far? Yes, sir.

      AUDIENCE: The Corgan Ask, do you [INAUDIBLE]?

      CHAD SPEAS: We're using the Servicenow platform. I think it's like Salesforce in some ways where you can-- it's a full ticketing incident system based on ITIL standards.

      AUDIENCE: Can you clear all your training systems? Or is it [INAUDIBLE]?

      CHAD SPEAS: It's mostly problems, questions, issues that they have. My Revit's broken. I've got too many warnings. What's going on? And I'll talk about that here and a little bit, just how we're measuring the success of our training program and then kind of jump ahead to that punch line real quick-- is we've seen the intelligence of tickets continue to rise.

      At first, it was, my mouse doesn't work. My menus are disappearing. Why is my project browser frozen?

      Now, we get tickets like, hey, I've got five members of our team working across multiple offices. What is our execution plan supposed to look like when I'm collaborating and sharing in the cloud? Like that's starting to get to really high-level of stuff for us. So it's good to see, kind of measure that kind of intangible measurements of it started off really minimal and now we're getting really advanced conversation topics within the system. Yes, sir.

      AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

      CHAD SPEAS: Yeah, we're not quite to the forum-based troubleshooting yet. There's a little bit of cultural kind of challenges that we're dealing with. There's technical challenges of is it Microsoft teams or groups? Like I said, we just moved over to Office 365.

      Is it just a bulletin board system where people are just posting anything? But we have seen that we need to introduce something like that and almost put it as a kind of technical services zero, kind of a zero layer crowdsourcing troubleshooting because we are getting a lot of common problems. And if team A doesn't know that team B is also having the same problem, they can't coordinate and talk. So I'm answering two questions simultaneously. That's not very efficient.

      AUDIENCE: You have [INAUDIBLE].

      CHAD SPEAS: The intent is that they're going to be talking to each other and connecting. We've kind of gotten the service desk taking care of, rolling out Office 365, and then how we actually use the tool, the internet-based tool. So the goal is that they're all talking to each other, asking a question in one.

      It kicks you over to the other one. So it's really where the data silos are hosting the information, but how do they talk back and forth to each other? We're still trying to figure out some of the nuances to it, but that's kind of the goal.

      AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

      CHAD SPEAS: Let's segue into this. I saw there's a question over here. Let me answer this one here real quick and go through a couple of slides, and I'll jump back. Is it--

      AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

      CHAD SPEAS: Oh, perfect. OK, cool. So we are extremely lucky. And this is one that I don't to put too fine a point on, but I also think it's really important to drive to your management, to your firm, to your team you can't be 50% of everything. You can't be 50% vinmanager, 50% IT, 50% project architect, 50% of something else. It's just not enough time.

      So I'm incredibly lucky to have a team of folks. And then I'll give props here to Chuck here. He's been with the firm as long as, if not, a couple of years longer than I have, and has built up the IT group as a whole.

      They started-- Stacy's been here for five years-- Matt and Adam, kind of the same way. Matt's here in Vegas this week, so if you want to chat with him and have some conversation, he's a really good Dynamo and Revit person as well. But I'm lucky enough to have a team of dedicated people that have no e-rate. So it's kind of I'm released from billable time.

      I'm an expense to the company. I don't take that for granted either. I know that if and when the market comes down, I'm the first person they're going to look at and say, no, you're too expensive. You've probably got to go. I'm hoping that's not the case, but at least, that kind of sits in the back of my mind that that's a potential if this doesn't work out, this group is overhead and expensive.

      But we also feel that we saved the company a lot of money. And we can also see it when we're talking about revenue per technical staff. And we're talking about some of our internal metrics and measurements that we know that we're making the company more money and more profitable, more efficient, more proficient and kind of keeping people moving forward. So it's a good place to be. And I'll be the first to admit that.

      But what's really-- the other thing that's really important to this is there's kind of two axes to this diagram. There's the siloed component, the columns here where we look at everybody in kind of a subject matter expert role. So you can see Matt and Adam, our business specialists, each of them have complementary skill sets that they kind of work together pretty closely. They're our level 1 design apps technical support.

      Stacey kicks in from a visualization deployments, helping out with just the real issues. She has an incredibly technical brain. I fall in that middle ground where I'm talking to more process. I'm talking to PMs, PAs, just kind of some more advanced project coordination. Chuck, as Director of Practice, he understands the infrastructure side. We actually have four groups in our IT-- infrastructure, service desk, practice apps and-- or sorry, practice technology, and business application. But he's kind of the conduit between all four of our groups.

      And then Bob Rae is our CIO, is our management level-- kind of understands where the whole firm wants to go and where the whole direction of everybody is. So not only are we subject matter, but we're also from a shareholder perspective. We have representation at every level in the firm, which I think is really important.

      Stacy's an associate. I'm a senior associate. Chuck's a VP, and Bob's a C-level staff.

      So we understand that there's-- and I use staff in a really weird way. We understand that there needs to be different silos for the different types of work that we're doing, but we also have to have representation across all of the shareholders. Did that answer your question well enough?

      AUDIENCE: So just for clarity, so usually these people have people working under them, or do you also click on the Service desk and use a vendor [INAUDIBLE]?

      CHAD SPEAS: More the latter. So Stacy, Matt, and Adam work for me. I work far more for them. They make me look really great. And then I take Chuck's role when it comes to the practice technology and kind of his sounding board from that perspective. So we are dedicated practice technology group within the entire firm.

      We also lean quite a bit on our other liaisons in teams and people within the firm. So we have a Design Applications Committee that meets once a month where we're talking about struggles, problems, new opportunities, new workflows. I buy lunch. We bring everybody in. We have all of our offices represented.

      So really, the important thing about this Design Applications Committee is it's about a conduit and a sounding board. I can't really just say within a firm of this size that this is the way we're going to do things. I try to, but I get a lot of pushback. But I want that pushback because I want to be serving the people.

      The entire firm and the staff they're my-- they're basically, who I work for. They're my clients. And so if you kind of think about it from that perspective, I do deal with, work with and deal with clients from a project perspective. But really, my primary clients are the people within the firm. And so I kind of keep that in really important perspective.

      Well, we'll will jump through some of these really quickly, just kind of, again, how we have to focus on software-- sorry, jumping too far, too quick-- focus on core softwares. Don't try to teach everything to everybody. Make sure I get to some of the case studies in here.

      Set expectations, so this is now getting into training and how we're actually performing the classes. This is my first series of slides whenever we do the intro to whatever we're training. I talk about being flexible, sharing, be constructive, be disruptive, have more dialogue and conversation-- I think that's how people actually learn in kind of retain information-- be advocates, spread the knowledge.

      That's a really important thing. If you're going to participate in the class, then you have to help us get that message out because I can't. We're trying to get to everybody in the firm and teach all of these topics and subjects. It's just a reality that we just don't have time. And we just keep growing as we're trying to just even develop this information.

      We took a broadcast approach from some of our standards really early on. It was really important to say the same message at the same time and have everybody hear it. So we do-- and you'll see it in the couple of case studies that I'll show here in a minute-- we do road trips. And we do go out and if there's something one-off, or we just rolled out some new 3D printing and new 3D printers in our New York office.

      That's an important-- you have to be in that office and in a conference room or what have you and talk about the 3D printer. You can't do that over video chat. But if we're talking Revit, picks and clicks, webinar-based topics, a broadcast approach is really important. And with my schedule and my team schedule, going to conferences and visiting different offices, it helped us get that message out. So I could be in any office on any day and just jump on our GoToMeeting or Skype meetings and perform these classes whenever I needed to, so it was super flexible.

      Record everything. Again, it's about getting that information to the people that can't attend. They miss something. I tend to talk fast. I want to get a lot of information out. How can they go back and get all that info?

      But I think this is really kind of why the broadcast approach really worked is we had not only the time commitment from our executive staff, but we also had this broadcast approach that we said we're not doing this during lunch. We're doing it simultaneously across all of the offices. It made for some really early 8 o'clock presentations that ended up being later in the morning for the New York folks, or we asked New York to stay a little bit later if we were doing an afternoon session for the West coast.

      But I think, again, this is making a commitment to the firm and to the people of the firm that we're not asking you to give up an hour of your lunch. We're not asking you to stay late or come in early. We're going to provide this hour in the work day and put it to your training approach, put it to your training time.

      And it's that important to us that you fit in class and you focus, and you're not distracted by food, or you're too tired or something else going on. So it's been really rather successful from that perspective. Any questions on those items. Yes.

      AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

      CHAD SPEAS: We put-- so good segue. We're going to talk about a little bit of that here to answer kind of the first part of the question. It's more of a seminar-based approach just because how much we struggle with GoToMeeting and any kind of conference calling and presentations is getting engagement when the person on the other end is talking into a phone is a little bit difficult.

      We don't have that eye-to-eye contact. We try to get all the videos up. We have class monitors, and we've assigned a person in each office to make sure that they GoToMeetings set up and people are engaged. But if I'm doing the training and I'm in the room, it's kind of hard to say, hey, turn off your email. Hey, let's get into Revit and do this thing with us.

      That, we kind of really struggled with that. And that's some feedback that we got. We'll kind of talk about the second part of our Revit case study here in a second of what we're changing moving into the future. But it's kind of difficult. It's one of big things we're trying to overcome. Yes.

      AUDIENCE:

      CHAD SPEAS: So my goal is to have everybody trained in the firm. And that's including shared services, accounting, all of our IT folks. I think it's really important for even shared services to understand what the business of architecture and design is about. Now, they don't need to sit in every-- the Enscape training or Visualization.

      I want them to understand the concept of it, so we have important milestone classes that are more conceptual-based and not picks and clicks. So I want them at least kind of engaged in those classes, but really, my goal is everybody. We started at our VP level to produce, basically produce the class lists who needs training? Are they new hires?

      I mean, we want a mix of people because I think it's also important if you've got a senior associate or an associate in the class, it shows that the firm is committed, and that person might not really need the training, but they're at least participating and joining. So now, they're now they become a mentor within the session, itself. So our goal is really to train everybody. And I'll give you some numbers here in just a second about how successful we've been over the past three years with this.

      So we've got about 15 minutes-- perfect. So I might run through these a little quickly there. They are in the handout. And if follow up, any questions and what not, we'll definitely go through this. So I'm just kind of going to start at the conversation a little bit.

      Here's our race track again. We're talking about Revit training as a case study, specifically. Again, just some realities. There's AU. There's BILT. There's Conferences. There's BIMthoughts and podcasts, Lynda.com.

      We have our DAC for our best practices, our Office 365 for distribution of all of our resources. So that just kind of shows that the framework really-- in reality, it really does work and function. So we started off with Revit, and we call it RITA-- our Revit Intensive Training Approach. Six months, 24 topics, one hour classes per week, you guys can quickly do the math. And that's a lot of training.

      We really looked at focusing on foundational concepts. So again, Revit is a very robust-- I think Paul Aubin's got a 2 and 1/2 inch book on Revit essentials or master class, or his Lynda.com is 18 hours or 12 hours of training. We knew that that's not really a reality, and it gets far into the details of what we doing.

      So we wanted to marry the picks and clicks with the process. So that's really important. How does Corgan do it? What do we do with Revit? What's our project startup look like? What are the tools we actually use within Revit without teaching you all the details and getting into some of the things that we just don't do?

      Again, overcoming the navigation, so we actually spend two sessions at the beginning just about navigation. Maybe, a little bit overkill, but I think it's that important. And then we talked about teaching that Corgan way. We also base our-- I've got a much longer conversation around this and then happy to share some of this stuff-- but we also base our training around this BIM equation that we have, internally.

      So instead of saying-- I hear this all the time. This would've been a great little quote slide-- but just make some plans and put them on a sheet and go ahead and print it for me, and now, we're going to start our design process. That's really not the goal of BIM and not the goal of what we're trying to accomplish. So if we can switch that around, starting with an execution plan, which we actually do start with as in many cases as we can, it's about collaboration, modeling, and analysis.

      And so force equals mass times acceleration, kind of the same concept. If you collaborate, less, model less, and analyze less, your documentations are worse than they could be, or they're not where they probably-- they're not potentially where they can be. So the more we collaborate model-- CMA equals D-- the more we collaborate model and analyze, the better our documentation can become.

      We set all of our training up around that kind of approach. So we have classes on collaboration, on modeling, and analysis, et cetera. So this is in the handout. So you don't have to go over too much of it, but these are the 24 topics that we had, who's teaching them.

      We kind of quickly realized as we went through that when we got over here to kind of the 13th, we were into month three of three or four of this whole thing. I was tired of talking. Stacey was tired of talking. So then, we started thinking about, well, how can we bring in guest speakers? Because they've heard from us for 12 weeks.

      What can we do with guest speaker? And who are the experts within our firm? And who can also teach some of those topics as well? So we brought in somebody from our health care group to talk about code. Emily's on our interiors group. We brought her to talk about restroom plans and detailing.

      And then, Femi's really good format person in conceptual design. So we brought him in towards the end. And then you can also see the colors kind of match with the CMAD colors. So we're starting to get some themes and some concepts working through there.

      So we did this for three sessions, 2 and 1/2 sessions, quickly realized this is not sustainable, I'll be the first person to admit. I thought six months, one hour classes-- hey, we're going to kind of weasel through this and get through it. We did push 135, so I think somebody was asking me about how many folks we've had trained so far.

      [COUGHS]

      Excuse me. We did get 135 students through the long version of the class. We've since then-- and just looking at it from time frame perspective in 2015 we did, we developed the framework. We did round one, round two, round three. We then right around in this kind of earlier last year, late last year, we said, OK, we need to rethink this.

      So we put out some surveys. We got some really great feedback. So I'll run through some of these slides here real quick. Sent out 165 surveys-- 76 responses, so we're getting about a 50% response rate. I'm pretty happy with that, I'll be honest.

      A 75% average success rate, I think that's pretty good. I'm not a statistical guy. And how people train and learn, maybe there's some somebody from Eagle Point or e-learning or somebody in here, but I'm happy with that. It can be improved.

      And you also kind of saw 62% in the first round jump to 86%. So we did some improvements there. It wasn't stagnant. 77% is right on average.

      So again, I'm pretty happy with that response. But with all the feedback, what is it really? Of the classes, which ones were good and which ones were bad? You would always get stuff like this, well, creating Revit families was really beneficial. Eh, it wasn't really beneficial.

      [LAUGHS]

      That's kind of some interesting perspectives on some of these things. But it also showed now what are the things that we can do better at. What can we improve on? Again, there's some of the least beneficial stuff. You kind of get the same mix of things.

      What did you improve? Did you like live classes versus independent training? I think that one's pretty-- everybody wants to live seminar, live class. We get the extremely basic, it's too hard, more foundational content was covered. So that was kind of a theme of some of the stuff was still too foundational, which is always that fine line of what works and what doesn't.

      People lost interest. I mean, that's just kind of a-- I kind of got to suck it up to, we tried. We could do better. How can we make this better? They lost interest, too busy.

      Six months on any project, just that kind of one more point for point on this one. People change projects in our firm on like a monthly or two month, every two months almost kind of basis. So one week, they have a construction meeting, and then next week, they don't. So it can be really kind of all over the place.

      My market sector does things differently. So we really tried to attack it from an overall Corgan perspective, but you saw all the market sectors that we had. So it's really difficult to even match Corgan way versus market-specifics. So I think that's something we can learn from.

      And then interiors does it different than architecture. So that's a really interesting dilemma that we're struggling with. And I'll show you our solution here in the second is that, again, architecture projects that can be 10 year programs. They can be five year programs. They can be two years.

      Interiors can be five days. They're start and they stop. They go, they get on board, and they get off, and they get paid. So we really needed to take that one to heart and understand that.

      So this is what we're in the process of developing. We're going to push this out first quarter of next year, and this is the new approach. So we've got approval to take that six months, jam it into four days-- morning session, afternoon session-- and really push the people through the program.

      So again, kind of going back to even the one of things I'm contradicting a few minutes ago is we don't have time to take people offline for three days, but the management saw what we were doing, and that wasn't sustainable, so it rolled them back. So that maybe there's a good takeaway there that they say they can't handle it. Let's do it that way, the way you want to do it, and then prove that it really needs to be done this way. Yes.

      AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] for both and one of the some and after about two or three hours, [INAUDIBLE].

      CHAD SPEAS: That's about where I feel that the two hour mark, even 90 minute mark is a bit much. I think I've researched some stuff that said like 20 minutes-- people have a 20 minute attention span. So I've lost you guys like, 35 minutes ago already, which is fine.

      So if you can kind of chunk those up a little bit better and then have a lot of breaks. And so that's what we're trying to do here is really be clear on-- this is three hours and 15 minutes. Maybe a 20 minute breaks not enough, but that's where we're going to start with. So it's kind of two 1 and 1/2 hour sessions, one hour 40 minutes or so of sessions. But then keep these components shorter and more manageable and a little bit more approach. Yeah.

      AUDIENCE: How can you go through the process assuming you're [INAUDIBLE]?

      CHAD SPEAS: So our target for this one, we're not into some of the details of how and when exactly we're going to roll this out, but we could see this being either quarterly, three times a year, or twice a year, and catch that April new hire stint. And then do a summer-- or sorry-- do a winter session as well. So we're probably honestly looking at January, June kind of frame with all the other stuff that we have going on as well. So it's kind of-- I don't know yet. I don't know yet. I think I'm getting my five minute-- Perfect, OK, great.

      And then we just really took an honest to goodness look at interiors is different than architecture. We wanted them to be the same. We were forcing them, round peg in a square hole-- square peg in round hole. It just wasn't working, so we took an honest look back. And I think that's kind of a takeaway if you're not in interior and design, or you have different disciplines, internally, have this conversation with yourself and with your teams that you just gotta kind of do things a little differently between each of the studio types.

      So just in summary, two foundational, we feel like our new approach addresses that. So they're shorter topics, a little bit more focus. We're not 24 individual topics anymore. Lost interest, too busy. We're doing it over four days instead of six months. It's not applicable to my market sector.

      I don't care. It's Corgan's way of doing things. Again, kind of that candid approach. And then interiors is really different in architecture-- super cool. We'll give you-- then, sorry, I kind of skipped over it-- a little quickly here.

      There are topics. And those are the ones that are underlined that do balance between or bounce back and forth between architecture and interior design. So we're not duplicating all of the conversation because we do integrated projects quite a bit, and we still feel they need to understand how each of the two disciplines work.

      Again, this other stuff is in the handout. So that I apologize. I've got one on Newforma, one maybe-- I'll ask the question here. I've got a Newforma, Enscape, and then sustainability as a topic. Is there any one that you guys-- by a show of hands. Newforma, who cares? Nobody? Cool, all right.

      So let me jump ahead to-- Is anybody interested in Enscape, kind of how we trained and Enscape? OK, I can touch on this one for about a minute or two. This one was really kind of interesting because we really took a completely different approach to how we train to this one

      This is where we really leaned on the professionals. So you'll see here, we brought Phil in for an hour-long webinar. And we said we're going to kind of study the webinar, the seminar, and the lab and how we want to train this approach. So we brought Phil in for an hour-long webinar.

      Here's the introduction. Here's what I can do. Here's all the cool stuff. I came in from a modeling and craftsmanship perspective. If you have holes in your building, and you model it incorrectly, it's not going to show up in landscape properly.

      Stacey and her expertise from a lighting composition and materials perspective. So we ended up splitting those into a couple different sessions, and then closed out on the input/output techniques. And not-- we didn't want that to get muddied in and get lost into the other portions of it. So this was the approach that we took for Enscape.

      We did our surveys. We got some really, really positive responses back. So again, kind of the comparison we have about how you teach Revit-- something that's very technical, very picks and clicks, almost very hands on, versus something that's a little bit more subjective. And you kind of have to understand nuances of detailing and modeling and lighting.

      We had a really-- so we did-- it came back, our surveys came back a really successful on that program. And then I'll just kind of leave you with how we did sustainability-- kind of very similar. So this is a good example of taking a topic, not a tool, not a piece of software, and how does that apply to the framework? Because that's ultimately what we want.

      We want even our soft skills to be applied to the same framework so we're all learning in the same style. So this is still in a little bit of development, but we brought a consultant, Ambient Energy, in to do some one-day workshop. Some longer, more detailed picks and clicks information that we really split this up into practice concepts and tool application.

      So what's a PEU? What are the different codes? What are the different big concepts when it comes to sustainability? And then how to use IES? How do you use INSITE? How to use-- how do you apply those with the tools at hand?

      And so that's kind of what our-- so 12 concept courses and then six tool courses this is really what we're trying to develop there. So kind of a, again, frameworks still applies, just a little bit different on the approach. So 30 seconds to conclude.

      Again, we kind of went over the concepts, so understanding that commitment to training. You have to understand how people learn. You have to get that executive buy-in, I think, unless you have those two things, you're really not going to be successful. Root issues, how we onboard folks? What are the core softwares we're training to? And respecting what others have already learned.

      Again, I've worked at that firm before. Discover the resources, understanding the case studies that I provided-- Revit, Newforma, Sustainability, and Enscape. And then, finally, understanding how to assess, maintain, and measure success.

      As I didn't, I usually get this question. How do we measure the success of these programs? We talked about it from a knowledge base perspective and a question perspective, but this revenue-generated per technical staff, I think, is a really interesting one. We get quarterly reports being the shareholder on where our finances are and where our profitability is and such.

      This number, and I don't know-- unfortunately, don't know what the previous five years were, but I've seen this tick up quarter over quarter every single time. And I think that could be a product that we just have too many work and not enough people to do it. I'm not going to say that's the reason, but I really do think it's part of the training.

      I think we're getting better at the tools we're using. We're getting more efficient, more proficient with the ways that we're working. And it's showing in the amount of revenue.

      And with that, I'm Chad Speas. That's how to get a hold of me. I don't have any business cards, I apologize, but I'm on LinkedIn. I think most of you guys got an email from me a week or two ago, I started a little conversation, a little article, and I appreciate there were about five or six people that participated in that.

      So I appreciate the commentary on there. I'm going to respond to everybody. I think it's a great conversation. I love teaching and training. And I want to continue the conversation, so reach out. Thank you.

      [APPLAUSE]

      ______
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      We use Khoros to collect data about your behavior on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, your IP address or device ID, and your Autodesk ID. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our features. We also use advanced analytics methods to optimize your experience with email, customer support, and sales. Khoros Privacy Policy
      Launch Darkly
      We use Launch Darkly to collect data about your behavior on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, your IP address or device ID, and your Autodesk ID. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our features. We also use advanced analytics methods to optimize your experience with email, customer support, and sales. Launch Darkly Privacy Policy
      New Relic
      We use New Relic to collect data about your behavior on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, your IP address or device ID, and your Autodesk ID. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our features. We also use advanced analytics methods to optimize your experience with email, customer support, and sales. New Relic Privacy Policy
      Salesforce Live Agent
      We use Salesforce Live Agent to collect data about your behavior on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, your IP address or device ID, and your Autodesk ID. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our features. We also use advanced analytics methods to optimize your experience with email, customer support, and sales. Salesforce Live Agent Privacy Policy
      Wistia
      We use Wistia to collect data about your behavior on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, your IP address or device ID, and your Autodesk ID. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our features. We also use advanced analytics methods to optimize your experience with email, customer support, and sales. Wistia Privacy Policy
      Tealium
      We use Tealium to collect data about your behavior on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our features. We also use advanced analytics methods to optimize your experience with email, customer support, and sales. Tealium Privacy Policy
      Upsellit
      We use Upsellit to collect data about your behavior on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our features. We also use advanced analytics methods to optimize your experience with email, customer support, and sales. Upsellit Privacy Policy
      CJ Affiliates
      We use CJ Affiliates to collect data about your behavior on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our features. We also use advanced analytics methods to optimize your experience with email, customer support, and sales. CJ Affiliates Privacy Policy
      Commission Factory
      We use Commission Factory to collect data about your behavior on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our features. We also use advanced analytics methods to optimize your experience with email, customer support, and sales. Commission Factory Privacy Policy
      Google Analytics (Strictly Necessary)
      We use Google Analytics (Strictly Necessary) to collect data about your behavior on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, your IP address or device ID, and your Autodesk ID. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our features. We also use advanced analytics methods to optimize your experience with email, customer support, and sales. Google Analytics (Strictly Necessary) Privacy Policy
      Typepad Stats
      We use Typepad Stats to collect data about your behaviour on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our platform to provide the most relevant content. This allows us to enhance your overall user experience. Typepad Stats Privacy Policy
      Geo Targetly
      We use Geo Targetly to direct website visitors to the most appropriate web page and/or serve tailored content based on their location. Geo Targetly uses the IP address of a website visitor to determine the approximate location of the visitor’s device. This helps ensure that the visitor views content in their (most likely) local language.Geo Targetly Privacy Policy
      SpeedCurve
      We use SpeedCurve to monitor and measure the performance of your website experience by measuring web page load times as well as the responsiveness of subsequent elements such as images, scripts, and text.SpeedCurve Privacy Policy
      Qualified
      Qualified is the Autodesk Live Chat agent platform. This platform provides services to allow our customers to communicate in real-time with Autodesk support. We may collect unique ID for specific browser sessions during a chat. Qualified Privacy Policy

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      Improve your experience – allows us to show you what is relevant to you

      Google Optimize
      We use Google Optimize to test new features on our sites and customize your experience of these features. To do this, we collect behavioral data while you’re on our sites. This data may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, your IP address or device ID, your Autodesk ID, and others. You may experience a different version of our sites based on feature testing, or view personalized content based on your visitor attributes. Google Optimize Privacy Policy
      ClickTale
      We use ClickTale to better understand where you may encounter difficulties with our sites. We use session recording to help us see how you interact with our sites, including any elements on our pages. Your Personally Identifiable Information is masked and is not collected. ClickTale Privacy Policy
      OneSignal
      We use OneSignal to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by OneSignal. Ads are based on both OneSignal data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that OneSignal has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to OneSignal to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. OneSignal Privacy Policy
      Optimizely
      We use Optimizely to test new features on our sites and customize your experience of these features. To do this, we collect behavioral data while you’re on our sites. This data may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, your IP address or device ID, your Autodesk ID, and others. You may experience a different version of our sites based on feature testing, or view personalized content based on your visitor attributes. Optimizely Privacy Policy
      Amplitude
      We use Amplitude to test new features on our sites and customize your experience of these features. To do this, we collect behavioral data while you’re on our sites. This data may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, your IP address or device ID, your Autodesk ID, and others. You may experience a different version of our sites based on feature testing, or view personalized content based on your visitor attributes. Amplitude Privacy Policy
      Snowplow
      We use Snowplow to collect data about your behavior on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, your IP address or device ID, and your Autodesk ID. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our features. We also use advanced analytics methods to optimize your experience with email, customer support, and sales. Snowplow Privacy Policy
      UserVoice
      We use UserVoice to collect data about your behaviour on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our platform to provide the most relevant content. This allows us to enhance your overall user experience. UserVoice Privacy Policy
      Clearbit
      Clearbit allows real-time data enrichment to provide a personalized and relevant experience to our customers. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID.Clearbit Privacy Policy
      YouTube
      YouTube is a video sharing platform which allows users to view and share embedded videos on our websites. YouTube provides viewership metrics on video performance. YouTube Privacy Policy

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      Customize your advertising – permits us to offer targeted advertising to you

      Adobe Analytics
      We use Adobe Analytics to collect data about your behavior on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, your IP address or device ID, and your Autodesk ID. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our features. We also use advanced analytics methods to optimize your experience with email, customer support, and sales. Adobe Analytics Privacy Policy
      Google Analytics (Web Analytics)
      We use Google Analytics (Web Analytics) to collect data about your behavior on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our features. We also use advanced analytics methods to optimize your experience with email, customer support, and sales. Google Analytics (Web Analytics) Privacy Policy
      AdWords
      We use AdWords to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by AdWords. Ads are based on both AdWords data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that AdWords has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to AdWords to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. AdWords Privacy Policy
      Marketo
      We use Marketo to send you more timely and relevant email content. To do this, we collect data about your online behavior and your interaction with the emails we send. Data collected may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, your IP address or device ID, email open rates, links clicked, and others. We may combine this data with data collected from other sources to offer you improved sales or customer service experiences, as well as more relevant content based on advanced analytics processing. Marketo Privacy Policy
      Doubleclick
      We use Doubleclick to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by Doubleclick. Ads are based on both Doubleclick data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that Doubleclick has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to Doubleclick to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. Doubleclick Privacy Policy
      HubSpot
      We use HubSpot to send you more timely and relevant email content. To do this, we collect data about your online behavior and your interaction with the emails we send. Data collected may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, your IP address or device ID, email open rates, links clicked, and others. HubSpot Privacy Policy
      Twitter
      We use Twitter to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by Twitter. Ads are based on both Twitter data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that Twitter has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to Twitter to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. Twitter Privacy Policy
      Facebook
      We use Facebook to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by Facebook. Ads are based on both Facebook data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that Facebook has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to Facebook to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. Facebook Privacy Policy
      LinkedIn
      We use LinkedIn to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by LinkedIn. Ads are based on both LinkedIn data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that LinkedIn has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to LinkedIn to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. LinkedIn Privacy Policy
      Yahoo! Japan
      We use Yahoo! Japan to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by Yahoo! Japan. Ads are based on both Yahoo! Japan data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that Yahoo! Japan has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to Yahoo! Japan to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. Yahoo! Japan Privacy Policy
      Naver
      We use Naver to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by Naver. Ads are based on both Naver data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that Naver has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to Naver to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. Naver Privacy Policy
      Quantcast
      We use Quantcast to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by Quantcast. Ads are based on both Quantcast data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that Quantcast has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to Quantcast to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. Quantcast Privacy Policy
      Call Tracking
      We use Call Tracking to provide customized phone numbers for our campaigns. This gives you faster access to our agents and helps us more accurately evaluate our performance. We may collect data about your behavior on our sites based on the phone number provided. Call Tracking Privacy Policy
      Wunderkind
      We use Wunderkind to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by Wunderkind. Ads are based on both Wunderkind data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that Wunderkind has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to Wunderkind to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. Wunderkind Privacy Policy
      ADC Media
      We use ADC Media to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by ADC Media. Ads are based on both ADC Media data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that ADC Media has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to ADC Media to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. ADC Media Privacy Policy
      AgrantSEM
      We use AgrantSEM to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by AgrantSEM. Ads are based on both AgrantSEM data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that AgrantSEM has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to AgrantSEM to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. AgrantSEM Privacy Policy
      Bidtellect
      We use Bidtellect to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by Bidtellect. Ads are based on both Bidtellect data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that Bidtellect has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to Bidtellect to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. Bidtellect Privacy Policy
      Bing
      We use Bing to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by Bing. Ads are based on both Bing data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that Bing has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to Bing to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. Bing Privacy Policy
      G2Crowd
      We use G2Crowd to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by G2Crowd. Ads are based on both G2Crowd data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that G2Crowd has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to G2Crowd to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. G2Crowd Privacy Policy
      NMPI Display
      We use NMPI Display to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by NMPI Display. Ads are based on both NMPI Display data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that NMPI Display has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to NMPI Display to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. NMPI Display Privacy Policy
      VK
      We use VK to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by VK. Ads are based on both VK data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that VK has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to VK to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. VK Privacy Policy
      Adobe Target
      We use Adobe Target to test new features on our sites and customize your experience of these features. To do this, we collect behavioral data while you’re on our sites. This data may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, your IP address or device ID, your Autodesk ID, and others. You may experience a different version of our sites based on feature testing, or view personalized content based on your visitor attributes. Adobe Target Privacy Policy
      Google Analytics (Advertising)
      We use Google Analytics (Advertising) to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by Google Analytics (Advertising). Ads are based on both Google Analytics (Advertising) data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that Google Analytics (Advertising) has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to Google Analytics (Advertising) to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. Google Analytics (Advertising) Privacy Policy
      Trendkite
      We use Trendkite to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by Trendkite. Ads are based on both Trendkite data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that Trendkite has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to Trendkite to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. Trendkite Privacy Policy
      Hotjar
      We use Hotjar to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by Hotjar. Ads are based on both Hotjar data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that Hotjar has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to Hotjar to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. Hotjar Privacy Policy
      6 Sense
      We use 6 Sense to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by 6 Sense. Ads are based on both 6 Sense data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that 6 Sense has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to 6 Sense to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. 6 Sense Privacy Policy
      Terminus
      We use Terminus to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by Terminus. Ads are based on both Terminus data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that Terminus has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to Terminus to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. Terminus Privacy Policy
      StackAdapt
      We use StackAdapt to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by StackAdapt. Ads are based on both StackAdapt data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that StackAdapt has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to StackAdapt to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. StackAdapt Privacy Policy
      The Trade Desk
      We use The Trade Desk to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by The Trade Desk. Ads are based on both The Trade Desk data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that The Trade Desk has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to The Trade Desk to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. The Trade Desk Privacy Policy
      RollWorks
      We use RollWorks to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by RollWorks. Ads are based on both RollWorks data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that RollWorks has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to RollWorks to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. RollWorks Privacy Policy

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      We can access your data only if you select "yes" for the categories on the previous screen. This lets us tailor our marketing so that it's more relevant for you. You can change your settings at any time by visiting our privacy statement

      Your experience. Your choice.

      We care about your privacy. The data we collect helps us understand how you use our products, what information you might be interested in, and what we can improve to make your engagement with Autodesk more rewarding.

      May we collect and use your data to tailor your experience?

      Explore the benefits of a customized experience by managing your privacy settings for this site or visit our Privacy Statement to learn more about your options.