XR in Design: How Perkins+Will Uses XR to Complement the Design Process Globally

IFFAT MAI: We can go ahead and get started. Well welcome everybody. This is "XR in Design," and today, we'll be sharing with you on how we, Perkins+Will, has implemented XR in our firm. But before we get started, like I mentioned earlier, we have a QR code that takes you to our Perkins+Will VX app that's in the IOS store. We will have a--

DAVE SEWELL: We'll have a treasure hunt. The questions will come later. So we're advising you hang around for these. And you can win stuff. You can win hugely expensive-- I mean there are glasses, chocolate all the way from the UK. Somebody told me that the Cadbury chocolate in the US is not as tasty as the UK. Someone told me. And it was American.

AUDIENCE: It's true.

DAVE SEWELL: It's true? It's true. Cool, cool, cool. We got loads of this stuff hanging around.

[LAUGHTER]

IFFAT MAI: All right. So before we get started, we will introduce ourselves. My name is Iffat Mai, and I'm with the digital practice group at Perkins+Will. I'm based in New York City, but I really operate on a firm-wide level, primarily responsible for leading the effort in terms of development for custom tools and design application, like Revit, as well as other XR tools for VR, AR, and MR. So today I'll be sharing with you XR in design, how we implemented it through our firm, and offering from a firm-wide perspective.

DAVE SEWELL: And I'm Dave Sewell. I'm a design application manager from the London office of Perkins+Will. And part of my role is to implement new technology and workflows to allow us to provide better efficiency and richer outputs. And my aspect today is about XR in a local office environment.

IFFAT MAI: All right. So digital practice group at Perkins+Will is really a network of people. And we have a firm-wide group that is central that deals with all the technology issues around the firm. But we really collaborate and work together in a much larger group. We tap into-- we have 25 offices around the world and we have experts within each office. And we really collaborate on a daily basis together and in terms of achieving our technology efforts.

DAVE SEWELL: Yeah I think this is kind of important. Although it's myself and Iffat that are up here talking about XR, this is sort of a big collaborative effort. So you're getting information from experts all around our offices. So we're just doing the sales.

So what is XR? XR is the collective term for immersive technology. So we have VR at the [? N-tier, ?] the single user totally virtual experience. The AR, where we're merging the physical and the virtual worlds. And then MR, mixed reality, a term phrased by Microsoft, I believe, which is really AR in a headset.

IFFAT MAI: OK. So anybody seen this curve chart? Yeah? OK. This is the emerging technology hype curve, and it's generated by the Gartner research group. So according to the Gartner research group, that for most emerging technology, they kind of have to go through this curve for the hype. And typically a technology will emerge into the market through a technology innovation trigger. And then it'll climb up to the peak of inflated expectation and then drop sharply down into the trough of disillusionment. Until eventually, some of them will climb out through the slope of enlightenment and reach some sort of a plateau of productivity.

So where does MR, AR, and VR stand? Well VR has been around for quite a while, and we'll go through the hype, and now it's reaching the plateau. AR is gradually climbing up through the slope. And MR is still kind of struggling to get out of the deep trough of disillusionment. So that also summarizes how XR and we implemented XR in the Perkins+Will and the example that we'll be showing you. So there's a lot more VR that's very protective, some of the AR, and few of the MR.

DAVE SEWELL: OK. This next slide shows some stats, I guess we should say, of XR use around the firm, some more important than others. But certainly in London, all of our projects now XR technology of some description. We have fixed VR or XR setups-- so fixed points that are bookable, just like any other meeting room. This has become so popular that we have to reserve these now. We have some of our clients. There's a mirror in our setups-- they're seeing what we're doing locally with work on their projects. They want to see this as well, so we were talking to each other in a mixed environment. And we also have projects that are used in VR for early design team collaboration and coordination. We'll touch on that later.

But I guess the facts of all these digital blindfolds and wires trailing everywhere, so far in a couple of years, we've had zero hospital visits. And we want to continue that today.

IFFAT MAI: So what we hope from this class that you can take away with you is that XR is more than just visualization. It's not just a gimmick. It's not just a fad. But it really can be integrated into design workflow. And that there is great value of XR that which we will show you in our examples. And what better way to express and describe XR to you than through some demo-- live demo-- and examples.

DAVE SEWELL: [INAUDIBLE]

IFFAT MAI: We will cross our fingers and we hope the live demo will work, and so we'll see. The bottom line is, XR is for everyone, not just so for the select few experts that does the VR and AR in your office. But rather XR is for everybody across the field in all the offices.

DAVE SEWELL: Yeah, I think that's important. This is not a class that's going to teach you the complexities of Unreal Engine or Unity. We're passionate about this. So we really believe that using these tools really does help your design process and communication.

So first of all, I know it's early. I get that. But we'll run-- a little survey for you guys in the room. Could you please raise your hand if you've tried XR of any description-- includes Pokemon Go. Loads of you. Fantastic. Fantastic. What about using XR as part of your job? Still got loads. Cool. Finally, using XR as part of your typical day to day workflow-- everyday you'll using this. I'm getting still quite a few. Excellent. Awesome.

So just as an example here. This is Abi on the left-hand side. Abby came to us about a year ago-- a new employee. And part of the induction is a bit of Revit training. And in the end the Revit training, we put the model that's been developed into a VR environment. Abi's done this and Abi's blown away-- she's, wow, god I can't believe this. Dave, Dave, I've got to tell my mum. I've got to tell my mum. So I suppose the next final question will be, raise your hand if you've told your mum you've ever used XR.

IFFAT MAI: Got a few. Cool. Awesome. OK. So at Perkins+Will we truly believe in the value of VR. And what we did was we wanted to have a campaign to promote VR across the firm. So the first thing we wanted to do-- well there's basically three steps. Number one is to identify the VR champion in each local office. That VR champion could be an expert, could be a digital design application managers. But basically that VR champion will be the local expert that handles everything VR. The second thing we found that they needed hardware and software to show off, right? So if they did not have a headset, did not have a VR-ready laptop-- we have a go-to travel kit that we ship from office to office. And last but not least, we wanted to hold all series of VR show and tell events within each local office so that all the employees had an opportunity to really experience the VR themselves and firsthand. And we spread the word through, not just the designers, but everywhere from through the project managers all the way up to the principal level.

So the XR journey that we've taken is really an evolutionary one. We started with very simple 360 panoramas and went all the way up through the gamut of different kind of headsets to very immersive headsets with fancy controllers and scanners. So here's a history of how we started. The very, very beginning, we decided to say, oh, let's try a 360 panorama, because, definitely. A 360 picture tells much better than a static photo. So we also come up with branded Google Cardboard as well as those little Homido glasses that we passed out a little bit earlier. You want to pass me that one?

DAVE SEWELL: Yeah.

IFFAT MAI: Yep. So those goes very well with these panoramas.

DAVE SEWELL: And then we moved on to what is early social VR. We came across a company called InsiteVR and they enabled us to push out images and lightweight models to a cloud solution. So you can see there, these guys looking at the same model in the same environment. There's rudimentary mock up tools and lasers being pointed. So it's making this more social. And this was really nice for a while. But people started coming to conferences like this, and they started seeing what else was possible-- fully immersive environments. And they come back and say, Dave we want more of this. We want more of Angela's doing. Which is kind of cool, but it comes with its challenges-- cost and time and that kind of thing. And in fact, we'll explain some more.

IFFAT MAI: Yes. So to jump from the panoramas and simple thing to these immersive headsets was quite a challenge. Number one is the cost of the headsets. When it first came out, it was quite expensive. Not only do you need the headsets, you need the tripods, all kinds of stuff to go along with it. As well as a laptop or desktop that is VR-ready, which is not necessarily what everybody has. A lot of the gaming machines that's on the market, those are the kind of the VR-ready machine that you need. And that's just the hardware.

On the software side, in order to create the content, we discover that we need to take our model from Revit, SketchUp, Rhino and bring it into a gaming platform, such as Unity or Unreal Engine. And that takes skills and learning curve, not to mention coding skills, right? Just to create your interactive environment for the immersive VR experiences. And all this takes time, effort. That is quite a challenge.

DAVE SEWELL: And then came the breakthrough, really, for us. It was this kit of parts. The hardware itself was dropping in price. It's become more available. But more so the software. Startup companies were providing these add-ins straight into our authoring tools like, Rhino and Revit, Enscape, IrisVR, InsiteVR, Revitzo. So all doing something slightly different, but all really complementing the process and all, pretty much, with a touch of a button. So this really was the breakthrough. And this is where we felt, this is time to replicate Angela Lansbury's setup.

IFFAT MAI: So with all these changes-- the hardware and software-- we believe that the adoption rate should really skyrocket linearly, and everybody will be using VR. But what we discovered was that adoption is sputtering. People are very excited, very interested, but nobody's using it, right? And we're wondering, what do we need to happen right there to change its trajectory and change the adoption rate of VR across the office?

So what we discovered was, the pivot point is really getting an aha moment. By that we mean that we need a successful implementation of a VR pilot project-- a VR project where that VR is integrated into the workflow, where VR is used on a daily basis, where VR is brought to the meetings, and the client goes aha! Now I finally understand what you're talking about. I've been looking at these drawings and plan and section, and with the VR, now I see and I can give you my feedback. Where the project manager sees the client's reactions like, aha, we really need this. VR is really very helpful in terms of getting the approvals and sign off. And last but not least, our senior management says, aha! Wow, you know these VR is really helping our project moving faster and being signed off faster, so I'm going to sign off those checks and then continue the investment and bringing hardware and software into the firm.

DAVE SEWELL: I love Iffat's ahas. I could listen to them all day. So there's a local implementation challenge also. Iffat mentioned the project leaders. The project leaders care about time and effort and money. And these guys weren't really that interested. And I'm kind of wondering why. And you go and ask them and they say, look we haven't got time to materialize all of our models. We can't do that. How much is it going to cost? If I go and speak to my client, he's going to expect this all the time. It's just not really available to us. It's not possible at all.

So we needed to answer these kind of questions and these problems with these practical terms. We come up with this lightweight, kind of very, very simple way of VR menu, of explaining what was possible. And this is it, really. We have the fast food, the burger, the fast VR, which is literally press a button, a white card model appears. The classic maybe your steak or your chicken from the grill-- this is the white card model with the materials embedded onto it, using Enscape in our place. And finally, the lobster lunch, the a la carte, the fully rendered, full CGI. And this was the misinterpretation-- this is what everyone thought VR was about. And it really wasn't.

And project leaders, certainly in our office, are very wary of opening Revit. They think they're going to crash the project. So we say to them, don't worry, come into Revit, push a button-- you can go and see what your team are doing. And all right, this is kind of cool. And there's a focus on this white card. And the same with our designers-- we'd wander around the office and say to them, hey, have you seen this in VR? No, no, I haven't finished it yet. There's no way I can show it. Well, you're doing the staircase. Do you care about the furniture? Not so much. That's the challenge.

IFFAT MAI: Whoops. All right, sorry.

DAVE SEWELL: Oh. We've had one laptop go blue screen already. So yeah. So we get the guys to put it on. And they go, all right, this is cool. So they're sort of designing with it as well. And this moment of realization, this white card is the actual focus rather than the fully rendered, was the reason why we do this with the use case.

More implementation, again. Getting it on people's heads. People don't want to look stupid, especially if they've got good hair. We've got one guy-- one guy, in particular, he's got some really great hair. He refused to put it over his head. So he's walking around like this, trying to control stuff. All these challenges you're not really expecting-- a fixed location of your setup. Very, very important. When we first started, we'd have an area where the VR was set up again and then taken down again-- a 20 minute process. People just couldn't be bothered. So we ended up taking the actual-- all the equipment into a fixed location that was available from-- you could see it from reception, the cafe area, it was on the route around the circulation of the office. People started taking note. People started using it.

And then finally, we have relaxed office events. So those people that weren't about the hair and how cool do I not look anymore? They have a couple of glasses wine. Do not try this on? No, no, no. Have another class of wine? Yeah. Then give me a go, give me a go. Suddenly they're in this, they're loving it. They're kind of, yeah this this cool. So we've worked out that although we can't drink and drive, we can certainly drink and VIVE.

[LAUGHTER]

IFFAT MAI: Absolutely. We not only can drink and VIVE, we can drink and Rift. And drink and do some Odyssey, as well as drink and go. So in addition to the VR menu that we offered our project teams, is we also have tested all these different hardwares, headsets and offered to all our officers, so that they can have on the far end with the VIVE and the Oculus Rift, where there is a more extensive setup. And you have their lobster lunch, high-quality rendering VR experience. We give you the room scale immersive experience. And then you would go with something like that, where you can have a VR corner or VR room set up so that you don't have to set it up and take it down every day. So those are excellent.

For the cheaper version, we have the new mixed reality Odyssey-- Samsung Odyssey. These are just two cables and it's a lot easier to set up. But it still needs a laptop. However, if you are going on a project meetings and you wanted to travel, you want to go lightweight, portable, Oculus Go, which is really the easiest and convenient headsets. The quality definitely is not as good as the other ones, but definitely it offers you all types of convenience.

So with all these hardware, software improvement and all these successful implementation of these aha moments and projects, what we discovered was a drastic improvement of VR adoption across all the offices. So--

DAVE SEWELL: And why was this? What was this rapid adoption? Why did they suddenly want to put a headset on? I think we've explained that it wasn't as we first thought, the replacement for traditional visualization. It was this unreal need for clear and accurate communication. As designers-- many architects in the room-- you're describing your designs with words and flat images, 2D images. And like it or not, I think there's this client misinterpretation. They've still got to work out what you're trying to say and how it works. And we've seen so many cases where clients have actually put this on and gone, oh that's what you meant. I get it. And our project leaders are seeing this, they're coming back to office and going, we need to do this because this is really helping us get sign off. So it was this unrealized need for accurate communication that wasn't available before.

And this is a jittery video, but this is an example of one of our clients. We took the equipment out to Budapest-- this is where this project was. And it was a typical design presentation. At the back end of it, I suggested that maybe we can show the client around the design. So the meeting went ahead. We have 30 minutes at the end of the meeting where-- oh, don't look at that-- whereby the client puts it on and she really understands the design. She thinks-- She's asking really good questions, providing really good feedback-- very, very successful. What was strange, or kind of cool, was she went back into a meeting room and emailed the rest of the guys sitting in the office and said, this is a concept design. If you want to go and see your new office where we're going to be moving to, come and have a look. So I'm sort of packing away.

We then got 20 guys turn up and they all want to put this thing on. And we spent two hours going through this. I was asking them, how would you normally be communicated? What do you normally see about your new office? They said a couple of images, maybe a narrative PowerPoint presentation, or something like that. So again, it's that a bit of change management comes into play here and it was a very successful trip. And these guys in particular are quite loud in our office and they come back and sell the success. So again, it helps implementation.

IFFAT MAI: So this was an example of a successful implementation of a project where it started off with white models. As the project developed they added materialization, lightings. And then eventually, they went for the lobster lunch and did a full CGI, high-end rendering. And as you can see, the quality is so great that you can hardly tell the difference between the VR versus the photograph of the actual build site.

DAVE SEWELL: I think what's important also about this is we're working with our consultants and we are doing fully immersive environments now. So this isn't just a single image or a collection of five still images. We can take this from wherever we want. And it's very, very cost effective and much more fluid way of working.

IFFAT MAI: So as we expected, the VR brought us a lot of success. And it improved our design communication. It helps us win more work and definitely improved the design process and the workflow. And the clients were signing off much faster than it would have taken using the traditional methods. However, we also--

DAVE SEWELL: We also found some unexpected successes. Now don't kill yourself looking at this diagram. You can see it's complicated. But what we're trying to say is that this is the use cases that's gone all the way through from design to what we would say is design hand over. The top section-- this is in handout, right-- but the top section is more about the client use cases. And the bottom are internal PWs. A lot of these we really didn't expect. I've highlighted in red some of things we're going to briefly talk about to show you guys how this actually did work.

So this is Eric. Eric says, don't do it. And this turned into Eric's change management road trip. So I mentioned to Eric the success of the project in Budapest, where we got people out of the office, they put it on, they give us some really cool feedback. Eric said, yeah I'm going to tell my client that-- my client that as well. So he goes and tells Paula, who's a really nice lady. And he's expecting this two hour kind of session. Paula goes, no, no, no, no, no. We've got something better than that, Eric. We've got a two-week road trip for you over three office locations and you've got to meet 18 head of departments for one hour each.

And this is Eric wandering around the London Underground-- I don't know if you know it-- but it is a very quiet day. He's got these samples in his bag. He didn't talk to me for a couple of weeks after this. It's a stupid idea, Dave. But when he calmed down, he had a cup of coffee, and that sort of thing. He said, look, without VR, we would probably have much more pushback on the layouts and the design. Every time he showed the static drawing, they told him it was too tight. But with 18 department heads all trying this on, it turned out that it wasn't too tight, and the design was OK. So real good use case.

IFFAT MAI: So other unexpected success was really integrating the old technology with new technologies. Our QR codes were heavily used by our design teams where they integrated into all kinds of floor plans designs and placing QR codes so that people can instantly get linked to the panoramas of the view from the-- for example, here are the view from the corridor down. And they can see it on their iPhone, see it on their iPad, and turn around and really appreciate the design intent. And what impresses me even more is this is a construction document. Our project team that are in the field, they are heavily using these QR codes and working with the subs and showing them as they're building these spaces out. Say, hey, you know, take out your phone. Whip it out. Open your camera. Look at the QR codes. Boom. And it pulls up these amazing panoramas that they can really appreciate the design intent as they're building it.

Other success in using the VR is for a virtual mockup. So as we work with our clients through from white models, the materialized models, all the way to fully rendered models, the clients are like, well we need to do physical mockup. But instead of physical, we say, let's try virtual. right? The virtual mockup offers you things that the physical mockup doesn't do. For example, it offers you an option to show different material finishes. So a physical mockup typically are cardboards. It gives you the physical dimension, but not necessarily the finishes, and the lighting, and the environment. And physical mockup doesn't do two-story lobbies, right? Sot it's really costly or impossible to do something like that. We've done virtual mockup with full finish as well as interactivity. So the client can walk through the space and interact with the objects in the rooms, like the chairs and the tables, and that exam table, actually, can adjust up and down. So that is fully interactive. And they can really get the feel of the space.

Another example of VR success was combining drone photography with VR experience. So our client, a developer, is really concerned about having the views-- prime views-- being implemented from different right spot. So what we did was we'd send a drone out to the site where the project is to be built, and took a 360 panorama photography at each floor level, and then combine that with our VR model. So the client can kind of walk through the VR and go to any window, any balcony, and look out and get the view of the sites around it so that they can really fully appreciate that.

So we've talked a lot about VR. So what about the other Rs? AR and MR. So augmented reality and mixed reality, the strength of it is really combining the virtual and the physical. It does not replace VR. But here's an example of the Boston office where the designers wanted to see three designs of reception desk on the site for their project. So what they did was, they brought in the virtual models into the HoloLens. Do we have the HoloLens? Yeah.

DAVE SEWELL: We have HoloLens.

IFFAT MAI: --into the HoloLens with the developing app so that they can appreciate the virtual model on site as they walk around. So this is not just a photograph or one single view, but rather, it is a 3D model virtually placed, to scale, on site, in location, right? So the designers can actually go through and walk around the design and really appreciate the scale, as well as the materials, and the lighting, the conditions. And as they walk behind objects, it actually obscure the person as well. So you can see and really fully appreciate how your design fits in on site. And that's really the strength of the mixed reality, There's another one.

DAVE SEWELL: But this is not near future. So this is here future. But the problem we have with this is It's not the click of a button that we have with the VR tools. To get your design into a mixed reality, we have to go from something like Rhino or Revit, export to OBJ, open up in Unity or Unreal, push the Visual Studio, and then back to HoloLens. So it's not impossible to ask, but it's certainly not a task that your run-- your general designer is going to be able to do. We're hoping that once this is much easier, then this will become more and more day to day use case.

Talking of which, this is a real world application. We have a project in the London office. It's based in London, a place called Shoreditch. And as part of the archaeological dig, they came across the remains of a theater-- a Shakespearean theater. And it turns out that this was where, it is believed, that the first production of Romeo and Juliet came out of. So the project is now called The Stage. It's got this huge historical significance to it. And the client wants to make something out of this, right? Make it as a visitor center or an attraction that people could come and see. But the problem is, we cannot just rebuild, physically, the stage. We have planning constraints. We have a low ceiling height.

Now if anyone has tried HoloLens-- you can later. But when you put this on, you can see straight through ceilings. So the idea is that we'll use some of this technology to complete the jigsaw between the physical and the digital, perhaps. And people will be able to come along, and put these headsets on, and maybe watch a play of Romeo and Juliet in the place where it first ever took place. So it's kind of interesting really because we're being asked to design something that will never actually be built. So it's digital architecture. So we're really hoping that something comes of this, and it'll be a really cool thing that we can do.

IFFAT MAI: So exciting. Other examples of augmented reality. So we mentioned, we had the VX app for Perkins+Will. This is an AR app, and the QR code is on the upper right corner. If you wanted to download that you can also do that. I apologize for the video being a little jittery. For some reason when we project it, it does that. It doesn't do that on the laptop.

So this is an augmented AX app and it allows you-- we have preloaded samples of models. And as you use the app, you can place the model onto any surfaces. And you can zoom in, you can rotate it, you can walk through it. And it also offers you the ability to add traditional medium like photographs and text as well. And this is a great way of promoting and marketing your models as well as for project team where they just want to bring a model and show it to the client. Instead of having to bring a big model they can just pull up their phone and show them the app this way. Also it's a great leave behind. So the client themselves can download these apps and then show it to all their colleagues in their offices as well. OK.

So you're probably saying, oh, this is great. You guys are a big firm. You can build your iOS apps. So what does that have to do with me? Well if you are interested in doing your own AR app, there are quite a few applications out there. Here's just one example of-- Entity is one of the apps that has-- you can get a minimum fee for a subscription. You can upload a target image and then you can upload your model and place it on top, and you too can have an app that utilizes AR capability.

DAVE SEWELL: OK so with our last few slides, I'm going to focus on some of the efficiencies that we've found by using this technology. And there's a common theme along the bottom here of time and effort and turnaround.

So first of all this is internal design review and material sign off-- so client material sign off. And you see, the old way of working was use your authoring software, you print out a series of views and sheets, you book a meeting room, and you go and spend hours putting these in the right order. And I've seen this with me own eyes. You then wait for your peers to turn up and your seniors. They've obviously got red pen in their hand and they start marking up. So we're going from this 3D to a 2D environment. You roll your drawings up, you wander back to your Revit model and start making the changes.

The same with material sign off as well. Again visualizations, renders will be placed on the wall that everyone can see, the client can see that. I would also have some physical samples in the room as well. So the client can touch and feel the physical samples. And again, you know, they then have to interpret what that might look like in their across their own projects. So quite a lot of time and effort, and it's a sort of snail-pace-like turnaround for this.

The new way of working-- we basically keep everything in a 3D environment. So Revit. We use Iris often for internal design review and Enscape for materialization. So it's just-- don't get me wrong, there is still some time to materialize a Revit model fully. However once you've got it, once you've done that, the effort of getting it into a VR environment everywhere that people can see is really, really, really quite simple-- just a push of a button. And the good thing is, again, the client still has these physical materials in the room that they can touch and feel. But they can put this headset on, they can look around, and they can see the whole of their project, fully materialized. So again, they haven't got to interpret anything anymore. It's just right there for them to look at.

And here's a couple of pictures of that. Just a little bit of proof, I guess. This is our London office, and this is Siobhan. She's having the internal design review meeting with some of the guys in her team. And this headset gets passed around, they make comments, they write these down, they go back, and they change. But it's very, very-- it's much more fluid. And it's always in a 3D world rather than 2D paper. And again, with the material sign off, this is just an example of a full material board there. Again, touch and feel them at samples, come and put the headset on, this is what it will look like. And this has really proved really beneficial for our clients. And we get much quicker sign off by working like this.

So another great use case. This is early stage design coordination. I say early because this is not a replacement for Navisworks and all the great things that that does with automated clashes. But the workflow for this early design stage really is pulling together a lot of Revit models into Navisworks, the environment. Someone has to do that with those skills. We then create a series of viewpoints, put them into reports that gets circulated to a design team. We have to arrange a meeting, whether by Skype, or physical, or in some cases people need to get on a plane to attend this meeting. And we sit around the meeting table discussing these issues, assigning an issue to a particular party. And it's this whole iterative process. Again lots of time and lots of effort, especially if you need to get on a plane. It's kind of quite a slow turnaround.

So for early stage coordination, we've tried to make this a bit better. And again, we've found this-- some tools. Insite, in particular, has been really useful. The models were all linked already in a Revit environment. So literally at a push of a button, exporting to a cloud-based place. And we've got Angel and Bob and Charlie here. They're putting the headsets on and they can see the same information at exactly the same time. They can talk to each other via the microphones in their headsets, and they can make mockups, just as we did previously in a Navisworks environment. And the nice thing about this is that they don't all have to be there at the same time. If we have different time zones, Angel could be in New York, Bob could be in London-- you can still go in and make these markups and these markups are visible to everybody in the model.

So on the very far right hand side there-- for you guys, yeah-- there's a speech-to-text tool in this, like a little Alexa or Siri. You find the clash, it records your voice, and then gives you an annotation that you can input onto a clashing, a clash that you've identified. And then after that you can then export a report, just like the Navisworks example of before. And this report can be circulated at a push of a button and gives you a PDF printout of all the clashes that people have made. Very, very little time, less effort, and this fast turnaround that everyone's desiring of the minute.

So maybe crazily, we're going to try to demo this. We're going to meet in VR. We're going to identify coordination issue. We're going to use speech-to-text to record this issue. And then take the model and create a report. Now we're doing this off of my mobile phone. We're going to have-- Iffat is going to host the meeting. So this is how we'd work in London. We'd have somebody hosting it. We'd have other people come in and do this stuff, right? And at the end, we'd hopefully be able to show you a report that that's been created. So I'm going to put a headset on, right. So remember the no hospital visits. I'm up on the stage here, two-foot drop. Mess my hair up.

IFFAT MAI: Should we invite somebody from the audience?

DAVE SEWELL: Yes. How about-- how about Angel?

IFFAT MAI: Would you like to come up?

AUDIENCE: Sure.

DAVE SEWELL: Right, Iffat.

IFFAT MAI: So we'll have you stand over here [INAUDIBLE]. It's going to be Angel.

DAVE SEWELL: Are you going to flip the screen?

IFFAT MAI: So I'm going to switch over. Our meeting. So this is the VR meeting, and we have Angel, which is over their. And I turn around.

DAVE SEWELL: Hey.

IFFAT MAI: And wave.

DAVE SEWELL: Angel, Iffat, hi. You good?

IFFAT MAI: [INAUDIBLE] All right, so what we're going to do is we are going to, firstly, want to mute everybody, right. Everybody's muted. Perfect. And then what we want to do is we want to take you to some of the sites. So a good site is on the rooftop. So I'm going to jump to the rooftop first. And then what I'm going to do, I'm going to gather all my followers so they don't have to find their way up there. And I'm going to gather all to me. Let me know if you're there.

DAVE SEWELL: We are here.

IFFAT MAI: All right.

DAVE SEWELL: Angel, you're here?

AUDIENCE: Yeah.

DAVE SEWELL: Cool.

IFFAT MAI: All right. So I'm going to turn around. And you can see-- oh, Charlie Sheen. And Angel.

DAVE SEWELL: OK. So I'm guessing you guys can see-- Hi guys. Find the potential issues-- is that right?

IFFAT MAI: Yeah.

DAVE SEWELL: Yeah, cool. Oh awesome. So we're going to do what I explained earlier. We can see a potential issue right-- well I can anyway-- right in front of me, here. We have this beam going straight through a staircase. So I'm going to make a markup of this. I'm going to choose "Annotation Tool." I'm going to create a new annotation. And I'm going to start recording my voice, and hopefully, it understands my London accent. Beam clash with staircase. Beam clash with staircase. And it enables me to place this annotation.

IFFAT MAI: There we go.

DAVE SEWELL: See that, guys?

IFFAT MAI: Yep.

DAVE SEWELL: Is everyone still here?

IFFAT MAI: Yes.

DAVE SEWELL: Cool. Cool.

IFFAT MAI: All right.

DAVE SEWELL: OK so that's one potential issue we found.

IFFAT MAI: So let's go and jump on to the second location. And that's over here. And I'm going to say "gather all to me."

DAVE SEWELL: So this "gather all" is kind of useful, Because otherwise people wander around with these models and you totally get lost. OK, so I can see an issue of these bike racks that are floating in the air. So again, I'm going to make a markup. Annotation. Start recording, Floating bike rack. Annotation.

IFFAT MAI: Yeah.

DAVE SEWELL: Is that right?

IFFAT MAI: What you're seeing on the screen is actually from the laptop view. So you can see Charlie Sheen is really David. And Angel over there there. If you see little panel in front of them, it's just the menu. And through the menu they're selecting the different options and placing the comments. So we're going to go ahead and turn around and see some of the comments they have placed. All right.

AUDIENCE: As the host, do you have any ability to switch to what they're seeing?

IFFAT MAI: No. Because they could be anywhere, and we don't-- we're a third camera, basically.

DAVE SEWELL: But you can gather everyone to you, right?

IFFAT MAI: Mhm. Yeah. We can gather everybody to us.

DAVE SEWELL: OK, I'm done with my annotation on the floating bike rack. Angel, you good?

AUDIENCE: Yeah.

IFFAT MAI: Yeah. All right, let's move on to the third location. And here we have some beams intersecting into our MEP.

DAVE SEWELL: Gather.

IFFAT MAI: Oh. Sorry. I'm going to gather you. Are you here?

DAVE SEWELL: Wow, I'm here. OK. Another annotation. Plants clash with steel. [LAUGHS] Have a read of this, guys. See that?

IFFAT MAI: Sorry, I'm going to turn around.

DAVE SEWELL: I'm done.

IFFAT MAI: You're done?

DAVE SEWELL: I have clowns. Clowns clash--

IFFAT MAI: Clowns clash with steel.

DAVE SEWELL: I told you, you need to be from the US. No, you don't, you don't, you don't. Two out of three isn't bad.

[LAUGHTER]

DAVE SEWELL: And you can edit these very simply after.

IFFAT MAI: Yeah. So we can go look at the annotation. All right. So we done?

DAVE SEWELL: We're done. I'm done.

IFFAT MAI: We're done

DAVE SEWELL: Angel?

IFFAT MAI: Angel, you're good?

AUDIENCE: I'm going to fix the Revit model.

[LAUGHTER]

IFFAT MAI: All right. So now, to wrap up the meeting, I go to my PDF button. I click "Download." And it will generate the PDF report automatically, taking all the images that they have, where they were and all the comments, annotation that they have placed. And there it is. Here's my PDF. And as you can see--

DAVE SEWELL: Charlie Sheen. He probably would do that-- clowns?

IFFAT MAI: Huh? Yeah, we have clowns on the rooftop. All right. As you can see, it takes-- puts all the images, added by who, and the comments they have and has a snapshot of that. I didn't mention, but you also have the ability from the host screen to add in any snapshot. So I can click here and get a snapshot added. Right. Oh, I think I just went down. Sorry. I clicked the wrong spot. All right, let me go back up to my location.

DAVE SEWELL: But I think the point of this is, we've used this with our architects who aren't-- if I'm honest, we always say that we're going to do Navisworks coordination all the way through the projects. But unless we have the skills in the team, this is kind of a challenge for us. And when I showed the guys this, early stage, they're loving it. They're going, this is so simple. They're creating the report that takes quite a lot of time to do, normally, in Navisworks environment, and nobody kind of like it. So it's something that we're embedding on lots of our projects with design team coordination.

IFFAT MAI: Yeah.

DAVE SEWELL: And there's other tools. And then you can measure and all sorts of stuff.

IFFAT MAI: OK. Well thank you, Angel, for participating.

DAVE SEWELL: Yes. Wonderful.

IFFAT MAI: All right. So I'll go back to our--

DAVE SEWELL: Back to PowerPoint.

IFFAT MAI: Back to our PowerPoint. All right.

DAVE SEWELL: Can you believe that worked?

IFFAT MAI: I know. We didn't think it would work. We came in this morning and my laptop that which was supposed to be our hotspot went blue screen of death. So we're like, oh no. Anyhow. And so we prepared a video demo for you in case it failed. But we don't need to show that now. Go ahead.

So we mentioned earlier that we have a VX app that's in the iOS store. So if you hadn't had a chance to download it, you can just use the QR code to download it. Or go to the iOS store and search "Perkins+Will VX." So what we're going to do is show how that VX works. So the VX app is a great tool that we showcase all our projects. And within the projects, we can have different mediums-- photographs, text, as well as VR panoramas. And we also include models and even AR models as well. So the client can very easily go and access the information from anywhere and show it to anybody. We also have the ability to have custom passcode. So that if we have project that are ongoing, that are sensitive, we can also encrypt it with a passcode, and only the clients given the password can access it as well.