Exploring the New Energy Landscape

MELISSA DOCHTER: Good afternoon, Autodesk University!

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Welcome to the Exploring the New Energy Landscape. I'm Melissa Dochter. And yes, if I was a doctor, I'd be Dr. Dochter. Let's get that out of the way now because I know you guys are going to ask that later.

I'm so excited to be here today. I work for Schneider Electric. I'm a product launch leader. And this is my first time at Autodesk University. And I have to say it's awesome.

And it's so great to be back in person again and seeing all your lovely faces. And I'm so excited to have with me today Autodesk Marta Bouchard, who is the sustainability leader for Autodesk University. And we're so lucky to have her. And I'd love for you to say a few words, Marta.

MARTA BOUCHARD: OK, I'll do a short intro. I'm a surprise guest. I was not listed on your program. But here I am.

Because as you maybe heard, maybe didn't, we had a big announcement yesterday, which is our partnership. So it was all part of the cameo experience. And today, we're going to integrate the sustainability story because that's what I come from. And I'm going to talk a little bit about Autodesk View on this and our product solutions group and why we're here on this flat stage together.

Just a little bit more about me, since you had no idea I was going to be here. I sit in our impact team. And that's essentially another word for sustainability, but we have a foundation arm and we have a sustainability strategy solutions team, which means I'm really thinking about how our product solutions can influence sustainable outcomes by all the customers that are using our solutions. So as you'll hopefully hear today with our conversation, this is yet another way we're bringing sustainability into our toolscape. Thanks, Melissa, for that invite.

MELISSA DOCHTER: Yeah, and again, my name is Melissa Dochter. And I like to say, darn it, Jim, I'm a doctor and an engineer. I have an industrial engineering degree from Penn State.

I've been with Schneider Electric for 11 years in various roles. And we're really excited to talk about the new energy landscape. It's something that, at Schneider, we've been talking about energy management sustainability for years. But now everyone's talking about it. And everybody's ready to go for it. And it's just such an exciting time. So we really can't wait to show you some new and cool things.

We do have some housekeeping items that I'm sure you guys are familiar with by now. So we'll go through them really quickly. First, the learning objectives. So we're going to identify the need for accelerated digital transformation within the AEC industry. You're going to learn how industrialization brought prosperity but also energy challenges.

We're going to discover the partnership between Autodesk and Schneider Electric, how did this happen, how did the number three and number four most sustainable companies in the world form an alliance, and then explain what the new energy landscape is. You might be wondering, what is that, what does it mean. So we're going to learn today. We do have a couple of statements that I'm sure you're familiar with by now too. But we do have to review them.

MARTA BOUCHARD: I'll just quickly touch on this. You've seen it before. But we just have to highlight Safe Harbor Statement. We're going to talk about some future forward ambitions that we're intending to. Please don't make any purchasing decisions or investment decisions based on that. Thank you.

MELISSA DOCHTER: And I'd like to say ditto to what Marta just said. All right, OK, so we have a quick video to keep with the momentum.

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So what do you guys think so far? So last year, Schneider was the number one most sustainable company. And this year, we're number four and Autodesk is number three. And it's just a testament to the work that we're trying to do. But it's not just at a company level.

I can say, and you guys can meet some of the amazing people that work for Schneider Electric, it's not just our company's motto. It's ingrained in who we are. We want to help you. We want to help our partners. We want to help people solve problems. That's what we feel at the core. And that's the kind of people we hire.

So I have a question for everyone. Did you guys, when you were younger, want to be superheroes? Did you love Spider-Man and Superman and Batman? Well, I did, and while I can't be Ironman yet, I do feel that engineers make the world run.

And that was why I wanted to be an engineer because I wanted to help people. And that's why I love working for Schneider because I do feel like I'm helping people. So please come to our booth, CON150, and meet the amazing team that's behind a lot of these great ideas and the amazing Autodesk team that's our partner, in that same booth, that has the same values because that's really at the start of it all.

And so like I said, sustainability is at the heart of everything we do. We want to empower people to make the most of their energy. And that is something we try to accomplish every day. So can't wait to show you and be a part of this journey together.

Just a brief overview. It's not just something we're preaching. We practice this every day. We use our own solutions and our own technologies in our own facilities, in our plants, in our factories, in our DC warehouses. We're taking that to a full level.

We've won Lighthouse awards for sustainable buildings. Several of our factories have that title. And you could see, we also have a global reach. We're accelerating the digital transformation, 1-plus million buildings, the top four hyperscale cloud partners, 10 of the world's largest airports.

I won't go through all the data, but this is something we're passionate about. And we know that you guys in this room are also passionate about it. So we're excited to be on this journey together. And I'd like to pass the mic over to Marta so she can go through some of what Autodesk is focusing on and their impact message too.

MARTA BOUCHARD: Thanks, nice. Yeah, so I mentioned that I'm sitting on this team that is a mix of our foundation arm, our extension of corporate commitments that go into where we can bring justice and value outside of just our own product solutions. But more importantly, where I'm prioritizing my work on a day-to-day level is on our product solutions.

But hosting all of that is what we call our impact strategy. You could also call it a sustainability strategy. But we really have three things that we talk about, the how and we talk about what, and there are three of each. I want to unpack that a little bit to understand how our organization at large is set up so that we can drive impact across a lot of different mechanisms.

So first, the how. Internally, just as Melissa was saying, we do focus on our operations, first and foremost. And we've been doing this for years. We think about how we can drive more sustainable business practices, how can we activate our diverse employees to make more of a positive impact at work, and we try to make sure that, from the core, we're practicing what we preach.

The second thing we do, and this is a little bit more in my day-to-day work, is we partner with our customers to help them drive more equitable outcomes. And I'm going to share with you, in a few minutes, a couple of examples of what that means. But we're empowering innovators to harness their data. We're trying to bring automation and that data into their everyday work and trying to bring insights to optimize how their design and make decisions can influence their business outcomes.

So the third thing we do is we advance industries. This is an example of how we try to advance industries through partnerships. But we basically try to do more-- we do cross-sector collaboration, we try to bring advocacy through our foundation, and we're catalyzing innovation even beyond the reach of our products and solutions. So essentially, that is an extension of our foundation arm.

And then what, what are we actually focusing on, three key things-- energy and materials, health and resilience, work and prosperity. And I'm going to double click into each of those. But these are what we call our "impact opportunity areas." And they help us not only focus our efforts, but also structure how we can drive impact. And the business issues and the solutions issues that we're prioritizing can stack up to these three criteria.

So let's just go one level down into what we mean by that. So within energy and materials, this is somewhat self-explanatory, but how can we have better energy, better material choices, how can we enable that, how can we reduce carbon emissions, and how can we reduce waste. Remember, Autodesk has many industries.

We have media and entertainment, we've got product design and manufacturing, and we've got architecture, engineering, and construction. We have a lot of areas where we can drive impact. And energy and materials affects every single one of those things. So this is a huge piece of our work. And we're going to go a little deeper into this today, hence the new energy landscape.

The second impact opportunity area, or IOA as we call it, is health and resilience. This is thinking about, how can we accelerate the design and the make of our products and our places so that they're safer, healthier, and more resilient. This is a great opportunity for climate change mitigation and trying to think about the resiliency of both humans and the spaces in which we work and live.

And then, third, work and prosperity. This is about advancing equity and access and facilitating the acquisition of in-demand skills. So this is starting to unpack the workforce challenges that we're having and the Great Recession that everyone's dealing with right now in terms of employment. And so we're trying to drive towards more meaningful work and more meaningful prosperity in the work that we do so we can design and make a world for all.

That said, I want to give you a few examples. I said that I would take a closer look at one area, energy and materials. So in the context of energy landscape, I think it just makes sense to give you a few examples.

I said that a lot of my work is about partnering with customers and thinking about our product solutions. So that can come from a lot of different forms of day-to-day engagements. So I want to just give a few examples a flavor, if you will, about how we're partnering with customers and also scaling for impact.

Something that might be a little bit easier to comprehend, in terms of other conversations that were on the main stage in particular, is thinking about carbon. There's an example, with Microsoft. They have a new headquarters in Washington State.

A few years ago when they were kicking off this massive project they knew as a business that they needed to have some environmental commitments and be able to measure and perform improvements on their energy and operational carbon story. And they partnered with us and Building Transparency and a handful of other key stakeholders to ultimately develop the EC3 tool, which has been shared in a few different conversations that I've been in today. I guess, I'm biased. I'm talking about sustainability all the time.

But they, in partnership, developed this embodied carbon calculator, which is available for many, many people to use. And over the course of that project, 17 new buildings, 2.5 million square feet, they were able to demonstrate a reduced carbon impact of 30%. That's just one example.

The next one, PlasticRoad, this is actually out of the Netherlands. PlasticRoad is a manufacturing company. And one of the ways that we were partnering with them and essentially funding some of this R&D work is that they took a waste stream, a ton of plastic PET bottles, and figured out a way to manufacture and fabricate 100% plastic roads that could be used for pedestrian pathways and incubated an idea that could actually be translated to a vehicular road.

So one of the things they discovered in this research was that they could construct roads in one third the amount of time. They could reduce waste. Up to 72% of embodied carbon was contained by using that recycled material. And so they've really demonstrated a way to change the infrastructure industry through plastic roads.

Third one I want to talk about is, based in Hong Kong, a company called Vecor, which essentially did a similar thing. They identified a waste stream that was otherwise a pretty big problem around the manufacturing of steel. There's a byproduct called fly ash. Sometimes we talk about it being a supplement now to concrete, which is a great way to use it.

But what Vecor decided to really bring into their product solution is they make ceramic tiles, and they found an opportunity where that fly ash could become a very big piece of the material fabrication of ceramic tiles. And through doing that, they saved 85% of their water consumption on the manufacturing side, they reduced raw material inputs by 70% because they replaced it with that fly ash, and they ultimately reduce their energy use by 15% compared to making a conventional tile.

And the last one, and something I think is really exciting because it also really taps into the ability to leverage technology to really drive impact at its most, is Airbus. They make really big airplanes. And so we partnered with them a few years ago, bringing in some of our research and engineering teams, to help them develop through generative design processes some lightweight components for their airplanes.

They focused on an interior cabin partition, think of the wall between the front of the plane and economy seats in the back. They took that element, which was notoriously a heavy component that would be an opportunity to start testing, a test bed for how can we reduce energy in our airplane fleet, through generative design and ultimately doing additive manufacturing. That's like 3D printing. We were able to support them in their development of a completely new, lightweight, interior cabin partition.

For every kilo of material that they reduced, they would save hundreds kilos of fuel for a year, which is incredible. So by reducing the weight of airplanes, we could reduce the fuel that's going into those airplanes and we can reduce the carbon footprint. Ultimately, they had a 95% reduction in material. That's incredible. Imagine just the savings there. And in turn, it saved over 3,000 kilograms annually of fuel and 166 metric tons of carbon per year for every plane that had this partition in its system.

So those are the ways we're trying to seek impact across industries and across technology to really bring this home. So that's a few examples. I just wanted to give the Autodesk side of how we can do this and drive impact. But let's go back to energy scale out a little bit with the building space.

MELISSA DOCHTER: That's so cool, Marta. I know I'm going to put 3D printer on my list for Santa later this year because I think that was really cool and inspiring really. But like Marta said, let's go back to how we got here, right? How did we get here, what is happening, what is impacting the world right now. Because over 80% of global CO2 emissions are due to production and consumption of energy, the way we use energy today is inefficient. 60% of it is lost or wasted.

So whilst we saw overall emissions fall slightly because of COVID, without significant structural change, we are inevitably going to see a rebound. And what does that mean? So at Schneider Electric, we look at things that can affect the entire building lifecycle. We have product solutions, software, services that can help sustainable, efficient, resilient designs and operations. So sustainability is emerging in buildings and construction industry.

So if you look at, in the building industry, it really takes about 40% of gas emissions every year. So what does that correlate to? Well, that's equivalent to 29 million round trip flights from Los Angeles to London. Think about that. That's a lot.

There's a lot happening right here that is a bigger concern than what we maybe even thought about before. But us, in this room, have the ability to change this. And what does that mean? That means that we're going to become superheroes, but we're also going to make more money, because isn't that ultimately the goal? I don't know, maybe not. I like helping people.

So let's look at back how we got here. So I'm a nerd at heart, industrial engineer, love manufacturing. But I also love electricity. So if we look at where we are today in Industry 4.0, we've had four industrial revolutions that were powered by fire and fuel. And if you look at where we are right now, now we're in the age of green growth and electricity and digitization. And how exciting is that?

So what does that mean? That means if we don't half our CO2 emissions by 2030, we're going to increase the climate by 1.5 degrees. So we have the ability now to act. We have the ability now to change things. And that's why we are here today. So this is our pathway to become carbon neutral by 2050.

And now, how can you get there? So let's look. I wanted to show you guys-- again, I mentioned those four technology-driven industrial revolutions. What does that correlate to? So you have mass production, you have automation, and then you get to industrial IAoT. Excuse me, my computer is a little testy.

So when you look at this, how does that correlate to electricity? So if you see right here, Electricity 3.0, that's the birth of green power and decentralization. Now where are we? We're at electrical IoT. That's what Schneider calls Electricity 4.0.

That's what we call the new energy landscape. And that's what we're here to talk about. So if anybody asks, what is Electricity 4.0, now you guys can tell them. You can tell them, you can be the champions, you can be the cheerleaders, you can be the superheroes.

So if we look at deliverable methods, they're inherently complex. We're dealing with a lot of personas within the ecosystem, within the journey of what we're trying to accomplish. And what does that really mean for the construction industry? It's kind of flatlined.

Inefficiencies in the industry over the last 40-plus years, the productivity of the construction industry has declined compared to other industries but not anymore, not after today. Today we're going to change that. Today we're going to be just on par with aerospace, just on par with manufacturing. We're not going to flatline anymore. And how are we going to do that?

So if we look at traditional methods, they're inherently inefficient, the lowest efficiency gains over the last 60 years. That's 10% to 20% higher construction costs due to the lack of coordination because you're doing reentry, there's errors, there's oversizing. There is a lot of things that could be efficiently handled in the design phase, that when you get to the operation phase, it's digitized.

So now you can predict. You get into predictive analytics. You get into your maintenance. You can almost understand when something's going to trip. You can get your energy calculations. And that's what we talk about with the full life cycle.

So today, we're going to talk primarily about the design because, again, we're here with Autodesk, and that's the basis of our partnership that we're going to go deeper into. But if you look at this, it's very alarming how much is being wasted that doesn't have to be because that additional costs are going to go back in your pocket and not waste it.

So we see that the industry is accelerating. I talked about the design phase. What does that mean for computer-aided design or BIM? And while this may be a Schneider slide, I'm not really the expert in BIM in this room now, am I? So I'm going to pass this over to Marta at Autodesk who can really speak to this because she's the expert. I'm the expert on energy.

MARTA BOUCHARD: Right, so we're talking about how these design tools can better influence the long-term outcomes and essentially the energy footprint of our built environment. So yeah, CAD-- I don't know about you, but I grew up on CAD. I might be dating myself. And then we transitioned to Revit. And we talked about the 1D, 2D, the 3D workflows.

And now there's 4D and 5D and 6D and 7D. And so there's quite a lot of evolution that's come with technology. But if you haven't heard the buzzwords today, there's a digital transformation that's happening around us. So we're basically trying to address that and leverage it specifically with an electrical mindset towards energy.

So I think what I'd like to do is share with you the MacLeamy curve, which you've maybe seen, but I like Schneider's view on it. So we talk about this design process. And you saw that spider web of stakeholders. And we could layer onto Melissa's list of industry challenges around all the different players and actors that go into making the built environment come together.

And then there's the technology that they're using to try to ultimately get to the same outcome. So the conventional design process shows you that the later you wait, you're going to have higher cost to get to those if you're going to make changes at the last minute. And so as you move those decisions earlier in the design process, you can control your cost better. That's where you're going to find some of your bang-for-your-buck opportunities.

This is over the course of time. So the x-axis here is time. And effort is up the y-axis. This blue curve represents what we would call the traditional method of how we design and build our buildings today. Later in the process, you have this peak of effort and coordination and intensity of making everything come together.

But if you notice how that stacks up to the cost curve, it also means that, oh, crap, if you're still trying to make design decisions, it's starting to get more expensive. And this isn't even talking about the energy efficiency piece yet. We're just talking about the coordination effort and the digital toolscape that we're all trying to work with, and send files, and sync to the cloud, and stuff like that.

So while we're looking at the cost piece, I think there's also an opportunity to talk about the technology piece. So the BIM method actually helps us bring in-- let me just advance that. What's going on? Sorry. --this earlier coordination opportunity, earlier in the conception or schematic design phase. And this is where we have more coordinated work sets. We've got single source of truth in terms of our model coordination and a slightly more intelligent 3D model called BIM.

Now, I think there is some specificity we're going to get into regarding the electrical engineer. Are we going to do that now or are we going to do it later? Because I think, if I throw it back to you a little bit-- let's talk about the whole building. And then I'm going to come back to talk about the personas and where some of these challenges are. And then we're going to-- is anyone here an electrical engineer?

MELISSA DOCHTER: Yeah. Yeah, how many in the room are in the electrical profession?

MARTA BOUCHARD: Right, OK, so we'll talk about you in just a minute. Let me toss it back to you. You handle this one.

MELISSA DOCHTER: All right, how many of you feel frustrated because you don't have one solution to work within? Are you working in multiple workflows? Are you working in multiple tools? Can you raise your hand if you are?

Is it frustrating at times? Are you tired of the redundancy and the rework? Are you watching your mechanical and architectural friends have all the software that they can do really cool things with and report really cool on?

MARTA BOUCHARD: I know those guys.

MELISSA DOCHTER: Do you know those guys?

MARTA BOUCHARD: I know those guys.

MELISSA DOCHTER: Why don't we talk a little bit about that?

MARTA BOUCHARD: This is something I used to do before I came to Autodesk. And so I feel I can somewhat represent, maybe not perfectly, but we got electrical engineers in the room. So we're here for you.

The typical BIM process that's been driving the energy efficiency story that we're here to talk about today has been targeted to architects and at best to mechanical engineers. Now, there's good reason for that. Let's be honest. The building envelope and some of the heating and cooling loads are, for sure, one of the bigger areas where we can start to drive energy efficiency and improve performance.

I know from personal experience that we're building energy models, we're building Revit and BIM models, and then we start to turn the dials and tweak the opportunities. We're starting to say, oh, could we swap out the equipment, what are our HVAC loads, what are our plug loads. But the plug loads piece is a funny one because we're just getting inputs from those electrical engineers in the room to just give us some information. Or maybe we're just setting it to code compliance.

That's even more so. I would say, from the energy modeling space at large-- and I'm stereotyping a little bit here-- but we haven't really enabled the electrical engineer to have a bigger voice at that table when the architect is trying to dial back all this stuff on their envelope, their roof, the thermal performance of their envelope. All those things for sure totally matter, but there's an opportunity here as we head forward to also bring the electrical engineer into that conversation to have more control and more lever-driven set of tools that could also drive towards an energy efficiency space.

MELISSA DOCHTER: And Marta, did you hear that the next NEC code is actually going to have a section for sustainability? Did you know that? That just came out. So I feel like that ties to what you're trying to say here.

MARTA BOUCHARD: Yeah, it's going to be really exciting to explore together this new energy landscape because we're taking the tools that we've started to use, we've got BIM, we've got these energy modeling tools, the landscape of them. And now, in the Revit, environment we're really seeking a solution that can bring better connected workflows, better connected documentation, and as we advance towards trying to not fall off that energy cliff that Melissa showed before, really think about the process of design, analysis, and optimization for a lower carbon future with the electrical engineer at the center of it.

MELISSA DOCHTER: So we didn't forget you. It's coming, soon, at the end of this presentation.

MARTA BOUCHARD: Yeah, so we're just about done here. But the point here is we want to try to accelerate the digital transformation of buildings in order to drive lifecycle efficiency and sustainability. And the point here is that BIM alone doesn't equal sustainability. Just this process doesn't solve our problems.

But if we can enable earlier design of optioneering and an integrated design process and bring a few more of those stakeholders to the table, we can start to have more insights about environmental performance. And so when we're thinking about the ultimate goal of optimizing energy and reducing our carbon footprint, while reducing rework and saving time and saving cost, the idea here is to try to bring more of those stakeholders to the table in a single authoring environment. That means one tool space.

We're not asking you to go link different things, and go do a calculation over here, and then go manually enter those LPDs and those block load values, which is typically one of the first ways to lose out on an opportunity to reduce energy that's otherwise not necessary. If we can break down this disjointed process and bring in a foundational, interconnected, integrated workflow, we really feel we can drive sustainable impact and put that in the hands of our designers.

That said, let's talk just a little bit about our partnerships. So the vision here, Melissa?

MELISSA DOCHTER: Oh, thank you.

MARTA BOUCHARD: Yeah.

MELISSA DOCHTER: That's my cue. To be the industry leader in design solutions for, guess what, the new energy landscape.

MARTA BOUCHARD: Right, so we've come together with this partnership. And from the Autodesk side of things, the mission here is to really offer our customers the most comprehensive electrical design tools possible so that they can drive impact and so that they can be part of this transformation using our digital technologies together. If we can enable the industry to design, construct, and operate more resilient buildings, we can maintain number 3, number 4, and sleep well at night.

But really specifically, regarding Autodesk strategy, I just want to align why we're here and committed to this is that we have these-- I mentioned this partner with customer space that our impact team generally does to just absolutely drive change. But even as a company, we do partner in a variety of ways in order to face our industry challenges, address some of the transformations that we're dealing with, and overcome unique industry opportunities as a partnership where we can bring our shared resources together.

And then we talked about just the industry challenge around the renewable energy space. The fact that things-- I think we quickly touched on it, but the whole IoT space, this idea that we're going to have more electric cars and more digital devices and everything's going to be plugged in, that's where we're going to need all this electricity efficiency coming in. Because the more we have electrically powered everything, the more this whole landscape is going to shift. And there's a handful of tools that we're going to need to start balancing the supply and demand of that space.

So the third thing around bringing industry expertise is really just enabling more technical solutions and specifically technical workflows in your authoring tools so that we can advance the design tools for electric engineers.

MELISSA DOCHTER: So what's really funny is that--

MARTA BOUCHARD: Wait a second. We're switching.

MELISSA DOCHTER: I know.

MARTA BOUCHARD: OK, we're back to Melissa. I'll stop.

MELISSA DOCHTER: No, I was just going to say, I only met Marta in person on Monday.

MARTA BOUCHARD: I was going to say that.

MELISSA DOCHTER: You were?

MARTA BOUCHARD: But I like that you're saying it. We just met on Monday. And actually, one of the things that was really funny was the first thing we said was, we cannot wait to actually do a real project. We were like, let's just get through this AU thing because then we can actually get to work. This was announced on Tuesday. That's yesterday?

MELISSA DOCHTER: Mm-hmm.

MARTA BOUCHARD: And next week, we're going to be meeting up to actually get together with some of our customers. Sign up if you want. Because in working with our product solutions, working with Schneider, we're going to try to escalate and elevate all of these opportunities we're sharing with you today.

MELISSA DOCHTER: Yeah, because we want to help our mutual partners, which are guys in this room. And we're ready to finally reveal, even though we just met, our baby to you. So I know that can be kind of confusing. But I'll explain how that works after. We'll parking lot that, OK?

He couldn't be here today, but Daniel Stonecipher is the VP and now CPO of our software portfolio, our independent software portfolio, including this joint partnership here today. And he has a really great quote that I'd like to read to you guys. "Our alliance leverages Schneider Electric's global engineering and sustainability expertise to develop Advanced Electrical Design for Autodesk Revit," a.k.a. our baby, "enabling electrical engineers to play a leading role in designing high performance buildings for Electricity 4.0," that you guys all know about now, "in the new energy landscape."

So what does that actually look like? And what does that mean? Anybody in here want to fill those critical BIM-based workflows that they can't right now for electrical?

Is anybody in here tired of that NEC code cheat sheet that you have to keep and update constantly? Are you just tired of that? Are you tired of the re-entry, the redundancy, with when you have a change order or you have to make a change, you have to go back and remember every place you made that change? Are you tired of oversizing?

Are you tired of not having automation in your workflow? Are you tired of generating your own reports? Well, guess what? We're here today to leverage a single BIM-based electrical design solution. And we're really excited to unveil this and show this to you guys today.

This has been in the making since 2015. That's when our partnership first formed. And today, we're ready and excited to show you what this is. So what is Advanced Electrical Design? It's an organic extension of Revit.

This is not a third-party plug-in. Our codes are embedded in each other. We're intertwined. This isn't something you're going to have to work around again. This is something that works.

It's a comprehensive electrical design solution. And it's going to grow and grow and be so much more. It's going to be the one solution, the one platform. It's more than just a tool. It's a new way of working. It's groundbreaking. It's going to change the way we design.

And why is your team going to love it? There's no complex learning curves here. It looks like what you're used to seeing. It's improved collaboration without ever leaving Revit.

And we're eliminating that data reentry I keep going on and on about. I'm sure you're tired of that, but I bet you're tired of the data reentry. So we'd like to show you guys our promo video. This is our baby. And I hope you're just as excited as we are after you see it.

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MARTA BOUCHARD: So I'll say Amy did a little teaser of that but that's so much more exciting than Amy's version. That's great music.

MELISSA DOCHTER: Yes, and actually we have the our agency that actually made this video right in the room here. So if you like that, you could talk to Anna after the class. But what did you guys think? I mean, are you excited? Is this cool?

AUDIENCE: Awesome.

MELISSA DOCHTER: Do you want to learn more? Do you want to see a demo? Come to our booth, it's CON150. Come meet the team. Come learn more about the partnership.

We want to work together. We want to help you solve problems. And that's what we're here to do today. We're here to bring a comprehensive solution, a new way of working back to the electrical professionals because we don't need to lag behind mechanical and architectural anymore, because we're making the world run, we're powering the world, and we're ready to make the most of your energy.

But we can open this up now to any questions that you guys may have.

MARTA BOUCHARD: Thank you so much.

MELISSA DOCHTER: Yeah, thank you.

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AUDIENCE: So timeline, what is that. I don't know how much you can speak about timeline. Would that be available?

MELISSA DOCHTER: Yeah, so right now, we're actually working with a couple early adopters, like ACOM and Gresham Smith. But we're about to release the products within the next month or so for the public. But we are still looking for more early adopters in the meantime.

So if you are interested, come see me after class. We can talk. I am the launch leader, so I'm sure we could work out something, schedule a few calls. I could give you a more one-on-one overview if you'd like to see more and go deeper.

AUDIENCE: Sounds good. Thanks.

MELISSA DOCHTER: Yeah, so this is real. This isn't something that we have to wait anymore. It's here now. And that's what's really exciting.

And it's only going to keep growing. I can't wait to show you guys our road map, can't wait to show you the exciting things that are coming to this new platform. So any other questions?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]?

MELISSA DOCHTER: Yeah, depending on what industry you're in or what type of work you're doing, Schneider has a lot of IoT or IAoT solutions and software that we can discuss too. So if you'd more information on that, we could talk afterwards too. And I can guide you in the right direction. Because as a large company, we have several different verticals. So depending on what industry you're in, we have something that can help you.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

MELISSA DOCHTER: Right, so as of right now, when we're launching the product, we have NEC code built into the software. But IEC is next. So that's why the UK will follow in early H1. And then the rest of the world will follow after that in H2. So we will have IEC in the code and in the software next year.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

MELISSA DOCHTER: This is a great question. And why so long? I mean, when you have two giant conglomerates focused on a lot of things and trying to save the world, they can move a little slower than probably they wanted. But like I said, when I started 11 years ago, prior to COVID, I was talking about energy management and sustainability and nobody wanted to talk about it.

But once COVID hit, it seemed like the floodgates opened. And now everybody wants to talk about it. And everybody is more than wanting to talk about it, they want to take action. So I understand that the acceleration didn't go as fast as the industry really needed, but it's OK because we're here now. And we don't have to live in that past anymore, because we're living in a really cool future that's today.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

MARTA BOUCHARD: So I'll answer the global code allegiance that we all need to tackle. My answer, with that piece, is similar to Melissa's, which is we have a road map for addressing our solutions across multiple country-- "countrification," we call it-- and trying to get all those different things adopted. It is hard to do at all. There's languages, there's technicalities, and you have to keep up with it. It's a big job. So that's just something that we do roadmap. But giving a timeline to that is tricky.

Your second question was regarding the integration. Is that right?

AUDIENCE: Yeah, well, I actually asked because it's quite [INAUDIBLE] with the solutions out there. But right now, you're building something [INAUDIBLE] would be better. But it will take quite some time [INAUDIBLE].

MARTA BOUCHARD: Yeah, I can speak to that a little bit. I had a different conversation this week at Autodesk University about this. But I think it comes down to the fact that, as the digital transformation has happened and the technology revolution has been in the last 20 years, there's just been a lot of tools on the marketplace.

There's a lot out there. And depending on which country you're in, you might use different tools. There's regionally specific analytical tools and modeling tools and things like that. It's hard for one company to do it all.

There's different expertise. And there's different ways to integrate that from a technology perspective as that evolves and the tech stack changes. We recognize it's hard to have one-stop shopping. It's really hard.

But with this type of approach and with Revit being a name brand in terms of BIM, it's by no means the only solution around the world. This is one way to try to aggregate what is a relatively disaggregated space. The tools are fractured. They don't always talk to each other. It's an interoperability opportunity to try to put it all into Revit. And so that's something that has just had its technology challenges.

AUDIENCE: If I may add--

MARTA BOUCHARD: Please.

MELISSA DOCHTER: But they're add-ons, right? So they're really a workaround. And there's tools, there's multiple.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

MELISSA DOCHTER: Well, let's take that offline. It may be late, but I don't think that matters anymore because this is ready to change. I mean, there's lots of things that were late, but it doesn't matter because the future is today.

So we could live in the past and wish we had something five years ago, but technology is always changing. And now we're ready to utilize that technology. But thank you. Let's talk after.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

MELISSA DOCHTER: Please, we want to continue this. Yeah, we want to continue this conversation. So we can definitely-- come talk to us some more. We can further dialogue.

MARTA BOUCHARD: Thank you, everybody.

MELISSA DOCHTER: But thank you, everybody. If there's any other questions, please come up. But we really appreciate you joining the new energy landscape and hope you have a great rest of your Autodesk University.

[APPLAUSE]