Autodesk Cost Management Implementation Journey

KYLE EWE: Hi there. Welcome to "Autodesk Cost Management Implementation Journey." I'm Kyle. Let's look at the safe harbor now before we start with the session, so a little bit of the safe harbor statement.

I'm Kyle. As you can see in the picture, I'm the Digital Lead under the contract and commercial department. With me is Matthew and also Milla. Both of them are actually a QS digital engineer. We've been working on this, as you see, Cost Management, since late last year. So we have a bigger team, but today three of us are here to go through with you guys on the Autodesk Cost Management.

So before that, a bit about us in terms of our organization-- we are coming from Gamuda Barhad. We have, actually, 46 years experience in engineering, property, and infrastructure projects in Malaysia. We are considered one of the largest infrastructure company with proven track records, and we have presence in nine countries, including Malaysia, which is our HQ, Singapore, Taiwan, Vietnam, and Australia now, including UK. Yeah. So that's about this. Next slide.

So let's go through the Cost Management module. So before that, this is the actual Autodesk Cost Management module itself. As you can see in the flow, we actually adopt all the modules within Autodesk Cost Management. We have budgets, contracts. Then we do schedule of values, measure quantity, IPA, which is Interim Payment Application and IPC, which is Interim Payment Certificates, where we certify the subcon's payment before we take all those data and pump it into our Autodesk Insight dashboards. So this is the basic flows that we have and also the modules that we are using so far in Autodesk Cost Management.

I will pass it to Matthew to explain a bit on our case study for one of the project, which is our water treatment plant in Malaysia. Over to you, Matthew.

MATTHEW LEW: All right, thanks, Kyle. Hi, everyone. I'm Matthew, so I'll be continuing this session. So as mentioned, the ACC Cost Management Implementation Plan-- so for today's topic, we'll look at our case study, our water treatment plant project all the way in Malaysia. It is our first pilot project using ACC Cost Management, which in project located in Selangor, Malaysia. It is quite a big project in Malaysia, which is quite the biggest-- one of the biggest water treatment plant.

Now, the objective or basically the aim of the implementation is to enhance our contracts and commercial management processes, including their workflows, their approval management, everything, while simultaneously boosting their overall work efficiency. We want to help them work even better and more efficiently, hence why the implementation plan was created.

And our objective is also to construct a robust data pipeline to feed into our data warehouse and to subsequently translate this data into real-time dashboard. So what all this means is once we have all the data inside Cost Management, we will then pull all this data into our data warehouse, which will then make sense of the data and then create a dashboard for our management to make sense of it and making critical decisions.

So once everything is in our data warehouse, we can pull it into real time, and then anytime our management will require to see how is the projects health status, what are the things that is happening, what are the good, what are the bad, what are the things that to be working on, everything can be present here.

OK. So a little bit on our project overview-- this project's value is about 2 billion ringgit Malaysia or, if you translate it to USD, about $500 million. Yeah, that's quite a big sum. Then for site progress, this project actually started back last year in July 2022, and it's expected to complete in 2026 of February. Currently, the work progress is about 25% completed. It's quite on track as well.

Now, moving on to the contracts, so we have about 60 over contracts in our Cost Management for our pilot project as well as over 60 subcontractors. So basically the contract's uploaded. There are also subcontractors as users, so they would then use the system. They would share the same platform and upload their claims inside as well.

And then once the claim has been uploaded, the users will actually go through the approval flow and certify their payment claims. So if you can see on the last slide, 200 over interim payment certificates have been approved and has been issued out so far in Cost Management.

So basically, contractors-- they upload their claims, and then the users would then certify and then run through the Approval Flow and give back to the contractors their certificates.

So these are just some of the site photos, the progression of the site. There's day and night.

So what happens during our journey? During the pilot project implementation in terms of days-wise, granted it was quite a rocky start, a bit shaky because we are not too sure or understanding on how Cost Management works, hence why some of these days implemented was quite longer than expected. So let's go through with the first one.

In terms of preparation-wise, basically understanding the project, the setup of the project, the approval workflows, basically all of the contracts to be imported, the budgeting and all, it took us 65 working days to actually understand everything and then filling it up into the Cost Management.

For training-wise, it took us about 14 working days. This training involves internal as well as external, when we were teaching internal users and also external subcontractors. So it took us about 14 working days to perfect what is the current syllabus that we are teaching right now.

And as for implementation, it took us 33 working days. Now, why is it the three working days is granted that this pilot project started quite early last year there. Were a lot of backlogs, basically documents that's already ongoing or already previously completed that was required to input inside Cost Management to ensure that all data is the latest and most up-to-date. So we have a complete information here.

So we took about 33 working days to assist in the backlogging and then proceeding to go live. And as for the last category, in terms of support-wise, we provide online support as well as live support, and it took us about 38 working days to provide the full support as well as handover to our respective teams.

OK, so I'll pass this session to Milla, whereby she'll be explaining the challenges and issues we encountered throughout our journey in our implementation of the pilot project. So Milla?

NUR MILLATINA: OK. Thank you, Matthew, for walking us through our pilot project that has implemented Autodesk Cost Management. So hi, everyone. Today I'll be sharing on the challenges encountered and also their solutions, so let's delve into the topic.

So as you can see on the screen, there are three main challenges faced during the first pilot project, so we categorized these main challenges into three categories, which are Verification Versus Revision, Contracts and Payment Certificates, and Workflows and Certification. So let's go on to the first category, which is the Verification Versus Revision.

OK, allow me to give you an overview of this issue. So in APAC region, including Australia, usually the QS practice claim verification instead of asking the subcontractors to revise their claims. So when QS has done verification, they need to state the reasons of the differences and quantity, and also this method is supported by a presence of governing law that actually protects the subcon from receiving late payment.

So this law-- this law actually govern the timeliness of the subcontractors' payment. So what we can-- when we first use Autodesk Cost Management, we can only see that there is only one verification column. As you can see the top on this screenshot, there is only one column Total Work Completed. So what we did was we approached Autodesk. Then Autodesk has introduces a new feature which-- there is a Verification column together with the [INAUDIBLE] submission. And also they have enhanced the process flow for this process based on our feedback.

So as you can see at the below of the first screenshot, there is two. You can see the comparison between the claim submission by the subcon and also the QS verification column. So in the future, what we are looking into is to improve one of the key areas in the payment verification process, which is the joint measurement.

So joint measurement is actually part of the payment verification process whereby the Joint Measurement Committee comprises of the consultants, engineers, and also other parties that will evaluate the work done at site and also will provide this input for the payment certification.

So what we can see is there is a lot of manual work required here because you need to record the quantity at site and also transfer all this quantity to the payment certificate. So in the future, we would like to actually create an online form in the Autodesk build so this quantity will be reflected into Cost Management.

So through this method, we can actually reduce the human error and also increase the accuracy of the quantity. This method also helps to reduce the time taken to actually transfer the quantity. So we go on to the next category.

All right. So the next category is the Contracts and Payment Certificates. So there are two challenges that we encountered during the implementation, which are the format of the BQ used by the quantity surveyors across this company is different from the ACC template as well as there is a difference in format, too, in payment certificate used by the quantity surveyors before the implementation of this project with the ACC template.

So when we first I do data gathering during the preparation phase, we realized that the usual BQ format that we use is different from the Autodesk ACC template. So you can see from the screenshot on the right side-- you can see the difference in the heading label and also the number of columns. So what we did initially during the implementation-- we had a lot of backlogs to do, so we did manual work by copying all the data from the BQ format and to the import template. So this took a lot of time and a lot of resources to complete this task.

So we have explored a few methods to actually speed up this process because it delays our preparation fees period. So we explored a few methods, and we come across a solution, which is we use-- which was we used Python script to translate this BQ format. So this has actually sped up the translation, and also we get to reduce human error, too, because by copying and pasting-- there's a lot of human error if we do it manually, so actually we can-- based on-- sorry, based on Matthew's presentation just now, you can see that we do a lot of time during preparation phase.

So for our future implementation, we are foreseeing to cut down the preparation fees by a few weeks too. So the next challenge is the differences in format of the payment certificates. This seems like-- sorry.

So as you can see, the second challenge is the differences in format of the payment certificate used for our project and also the ACC import template. So when we-- during the data collection, too, we realized that the payment certificate has a lot more information compared to the provided template in ACC, so what we did was we created custom attributes in the Cost Management application module. So this custom attribute consists of all the extra info that you need in the template, so this-- when you put inside your-- when you put inside the custom attribute, you can actually display all this information in the template.

And we realized that also there is a formatting issue whenever we generate the document in ACC. So we explored a few way too, and we found out that there is a way to tackle this issue. So we used-- initially, we use Apps Script-- Apps Script is actually an extension in Google Sheet-- to actually-- which required to-- which required to do minimum coding. So this code will help to actually translate the formatting of the original generated template from the ACC to the required formatting.

So this formatting is also stated in our company guidelines, so this is a compulsory requirement that we need to actually assist the user to do. So we realized that by using Apps Script-- actually, you need to add an extra step when you produce IPC certificate, what you need to do is-- OK, after you already fill in all the quantities in the Course Payment Application.

So then you need to go to document generation. Then you need to generate all the document. So this document you need to upload into the Google Sheet to run the script and also re-upload into the system, so that is an extra step that user need to do. So after using all this quite some time, so we realized that there is a shortcut actually to speed up this process.

And we managed to find out a way, and we have used ACC API to actually replicate the method by Google Sheet. And we out-- we input this script into the system. So we can actually cut down the time to do this extra step as well as-- the user just have to generate the document and wait a few minutes, and they can actually get the converted file on time.

So we are quite glad that we actually can figure out all these solutions. So next one, for IPC approval-- OK, usually for IPC approval, if you done it outside the system, there will be handwritten signature to indicate that is a valid proof of approval to proceed with payment.

So when we realized that we are going to circulate this IPC through the system, so there will be no proof of handwritten signature. So we think of a way to actually make the approval valid especially to the finance department because they want to proceed with payment. So they need some kind of a proof.

So what we did was we used-- we created a custom attribute for the approval code, so how does this work? The approval code will be generated at the end of the approval, and also you can see from the activity log in the system that there will be name of the approval and the date and time when they approve. So this information will replace the handwritten signature, and this info will be shared to the file every time that the IPC already approve and we require the finance to proceed with payment.

And for future improvement, so what we see-- that I have mentioned to you a lot of script and extension of the system to actually resolve all the issues that we encountered. So we are planning to put all these functions under a platform that we call Gamuda Standard App. So this platform will act as an automation tool to actually automate all these translation scripts, the generation of code, and as well as the new functionality that we will come up in the future. OK, so I think I move on to the next category.

So the last category is the workflows and notification. So as you can see on the screen, there are two challenges that we encountered under this category. So the first one is different workflows for different contracts. So as you can see, that our pilot project is quite a big project, so the practice here usually is we divided this project into several packages, so these server packages are handled by different teams.

So for payment certificate process, usually they have different team of approvals and different managers that will sign off the IPC, the-- sorry, the Payment Certificate. So when we start using this system, we realized that there is only-- the system only allows like one team to approve, so we approached Autodesk on this matter. So Autodesk shared with us, actually, a function in ACC whereby you can actually customize the contract type in the Cost Management application module that-- sorry-- in the subcontract.

You can actually customize the contract type in the subcontract according to what you want to customize. So we use that type function to actually set up our team, so meaning that different team will input a different team there. So we set it as a condition for the workflow, so meaning the workflow will run when the condition is met.

So we set that type for each subcontract, and we managed to resolve the issue. So second one is there is no email notification for certain processes, so these certain processes is actually quite important for the subcontractor and the user to receive the email reminder.

So the processes were when the subcontractors submit their application through the system there is no email reminder for the service to proceed, and as well as when the payment certificate is finally approved until the last approval, there is no reminder for the quantity survey, which is the creator of the payment certificate to receive any sort of email reminder to say that it is already being approved at the end.

So what we did-- that we have used API before, so we asked for more API function in the Autodesk Platform Services. So we have managed to create-- sorry. We have managed to create a function to drive this email application that I mentioned before via Node.js, so managed to resolve, actually, all those issues that-- all the issues encountered by us and also the users.

So for future improvement, as I mentioned before, we are building a platform to actually accommodate to all the new functions that we have come up with, and another extra function that we want to include in the platform is actually to drive the workflows with condition to an agent, meaning for the workflows if any of the approval is unavailable or absent, the agent is able to detect this and replace it so it can approve on behalf.

So this will mitigate the delay in processing payment. And also, as I mentioned before, there's a law that govern the subcontractors from late payment. So we want to actually avoid this from happening, so we want the workflow to be met on time. So I hope that we're able to actually develop more function to the platform and we are able to improve the user experience.

So I think all in all there's a lot of challenges that we manage to resolve, and I can foresee that Autodesk Course Management can become a platform that can digitalize the payment processes in our company. So I think I'm done here, so I'll pass back to Matthew to tell you about the improvement that is contributed based on all the challenges resolved. OK, thank you.

MATTHEW LEW: All right, so thanks, Milla, for explaining on what are the things that we bump throughout our whole implementation journey. So as you can see, the whole journey wasn't as smooth sailing. There were quite a number of bumps in the road, and we managed to solve it all with the assistance of the team as well as with Autodesk.

So now that you heard about-- as Milla mentioned, there was a lot of copy-pasting, a lot backlogging, a lot of manual type of working. So after all those things, we created different types of solutions to accommodate different types of issues of it.

So right now, as you can see here, this is our New Project Implementation Planning in terms of days. So for example, preparation-- project setup, workflow setup, the BQ imports, basically stuff that is required at the start of the project and understanding the project. Previously, we took 65 working days. Now we only take 10 working days because firstly, we understand how everything works already, what are the information that we need, what are the information that we required, and what we can filter out. So it only took us 10 working days instead of 65.

Now, as for training, as mentioned previously, internal, external trainings-- we had 14 working days to do it, so out of that 14, we managed to concise all of the important materials and those things that we believe are useful and informative for our users. So the training is cut down into just mere three working days.

Now, as for implementation, this is a bit subjective as if there are new projects, that tend to be less backlog or no backlogs, so implementation journey can be start-- rather than 33 working days, it can start immediately in 10 working days.

And for the last one, in terms of support, online as well as live support and handover, previously it took 38 working days, whereas now we can only-- we can done it in 17 working days as we're already quite familiar with certain questions that the user might ask or certain issues that may encounter throughout the working process.

OK. So a more dive into how the improvement of the new implementation journey began-- so let's start with preparation-wise. Shorter time taken as the projects and workflow setups are already well-defined at the start. So we already understand how the whole procedure would work. Immediately, preparation would be sped up immensely compared to before.

And one of the main things that is to be started in the project is the budget needs to be inputted into the Cost Management before you start anything else. So previously, a lot of copy-pasting is required because different templates require different types of methods to put in, so what we have done-- as Milla mentioned, one of the solutions that we develop is we created a standard script converter to assist our users in converting different formats into ACC's format. So users immediately do not have to copy-paste, double-check, manually key in. They can just use our script converter and then upload into the system itself.

Then, moving on, training-- we do many trainings. We do numerous types of training for internal and external. So all of those trainings-- we actually develop our own training materials, and the training materials are always updated from time to time and shared to the users, internal and external, as we are also working with Autodesk to improve the system and improve and increase new features as well. So everything is always up-to-date.

For implementation, new projects can start immediately if there are no backlogging documents required, but if there are backlogging required, we are already able to accommodate to backlogging even quicker, no longer still have to copy-paste manually or type in manually. We can assist, and we know what is needed and what is not needed to assist with the backlog. For example, converting BQ, the script converters, is one of the functions that help.

And lastly, in terms of support, live support ends when the handover has been completed. So in any system that everyone uses, support is very important. No support, you will tend to feel like you'll be lost or whatsoever.

For us, we do provide live support as well as online support, but once the progress has been quite some time, online support continues but with a lesser rate due to the familiarity of the user. The longer you use, the more you tend to get more familiarized with the system, and then not only that. As we encountered different types of situations, we already know what and how to tackle these issues already.

All right. OK, so I'll pass back to Kyle to tell what is next in our journey.

KYLE EWE: Yeah, thanks, Matthew. What's next? Well, the journey has become more interesting for all of us in Gamuda and also everybody who is involved, including the subcontractors. So we do get feedback from subcontractors as well on how to make things better.

Right. Let's move on to the next slide. Yeah. So in terms of what's next, we put upon ourselves three new challenges. The first one will be efficient project delivery. Of course, moving forward, we want to make our deployment more efficient. We want to ensure all the gaps has been breached. We also need to optimize all the processes between all this when we do these project deliveries. And of course, in terms of what we are doing, it has to be sustainable.

Up next, innovation and integration-- of course, again, we need to continuously developing our tools, improving our tools, enhancing our tools. One of the questions always been asked is integration with ERP. Yes, we are doing that. It's not only that part. We are also working with third-party vendors as well, the apps and all those.

So if you guys are any vendors that you would like to talk to us, yes, we are open. The other thing that we are looking at is also machine learning AI. So one of the project that we have embarked, which I will show you a bit more later-- it's actually [? Doclets ?] verification. We use ACC to capture all the photos of all the [? Doclets, ?] and that's where we pump into Google Doc AI to do document understanding and extract all the information that we need from the [? Doclets ?] so that we can actually do that verification work, the matching work before we push to our ERP system.

Finally, it's very, very important to look at user experience. We need to continuously engage our users, understand our users, maybe get some new ideas from our users as well. All this is to improve the overall experience. And the other thing that we are also looking at, we are also working with Autodesk is forecasting on the Autodesk Cost Management. And of course, analytics is important where we need to make sense of the data that we have captured from all the processes that we have. OK, next slide.

All right. So you can see now there's a difference between what we had previously, a very simple flow. We have more now. As Milla has mentioned, [INAUDIBLE] mentioned will come in to go through the measured quantity. We also allow what we say cost control form, where we also do potential change order to come into our change order.

Again, forecast forms, working with Autodesk on this, and also the [? Doclets ?] registration. That's where we use the Document AI. So the integration part you can see we are using Workato to integrate with SAP, which is our ERP, and we have our data warehouse, which is Google BigQuery. Next.

Yeah, a bit of ourselves-- on the left-hand side, you see that's our team. We are growing. Yeah, it consists of our QS digital engineers and our programmers, our software engineers. And on the right-hand side is the bigger family that we have under what we call the GET Team, the Gamuda Excellence Transformation Team. So all of us are part of the digital engineering team. Next.

Yeah, I think we come to the end here. I would like to thank everyone who joined us today. I would like to extend my thanks to Autodesk for organizing this and allowing us to present today. Myself, Matthew, and Milla would like to thank everyone for joining us tonight. Good night.