Autodesk's Role in the Evolution of Connected Construction

SUMIT OBEROI: Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. We're delighted to be here in attendance virtually. But also we'll be running the session live in New Orleans. So today, we're sharing our presentation, which is titled Autodesk's Role in the Evolution of Connected Construction. And joining me today, I have my colleagues from my strategy team, who I'll introduce shortly, and a special guest named Andy Leek, who I'll also be introducing.

So before we start sharing our presentation today, we need to sort of share with you Autodesk's Safe Harbor Statement and say we're here to just share to the best of our ability how our solutions are meeting the needs of the industry in the near and midterm and how we intend to meet those needs through the Autodesk Construction Cloud.

As part of that, we remind everyone that we may share some forward thinking ideas here about our strategies, products, and operations. And what we discuss is confidential and subject to change. And we appreciate your understanding on this matter.

So it gives me great pleasure to introduce today's presenters. I'll first introduce Andy Leek, vice president of technology and innovation at PARIC. Welcome, Andy. Thanks for joining. Please introduce yourself.

ANDY LEEK: Thanks, Sumit. Nice to be with you guys this morning. Yeah, I'm Andy Leek. So I've been with PARIC for about 10 years. I'm the vice president of tech and innovation. I come from a background of architecture and design build. And it's kind of evolved into this technology role, where I get to work with the likes of this panel and people across the industry. So really happy to be here this morning.

SUMIT OBEROI: Thank you, Andy. And Sunil Dorairajan-- Sunil, thanks for joining us today.

SUNIL DORAIRAJAN: Yeah, thanks, Sumit. And happy to be here. So my name is Sunil. And I'm part of Autodesk Construction Solutions in the industry strategy team. I came into Autodesk through its acquisition of a company called Pype, which I co-founded. And I came from the field. I was a project manager for more than 10 years in commercial reconstruction so love everything that's the intersection of construction and tech. And back to you, Sumit.

SUMIT OBEROI: Thanks, Sunil. And, Matt, a very warm welcome.

MATT KEEN: Thanks, Sumit. So like Sunil, I'm from the industry. I've been at Autodesk for 10 years. And before that, I worked at a general contractor in the UK market. I represent our international business, looking at how we're taking the Autodesk Construction Cloud into what we call Europe, Middle East, and Africa, our EMEA region, and working with Sumit in APAC. So I'll hand back to you, Sumit, to introduce yourself.

SUMIT OBEROI: Thanks, Matt. And yeah, somewhat overall industry strategist here, based in Melbourne, Australia and supporting the APAC expansion. And I've been with Autodesk for two years. Prior to that, I ran the mechanical contractors in Australia.

So in terms of today's learning objectives, these are the three things that we want to impart with engaging with Andy and engaging with our strategy team. So the first is we want to provide an overview of the construction technology startup ecosystem, including key trends and what we're seeing in the venture capital, the VC, marketplace.

We also want to provide some understanding in terms of how a platform strategy provides that balance between standardization at scale, and innovation through new technologies. And third, we want to really hear key insights from industry leaders, such as Andy at PARIC, to share how they're really looking to optimize and improve their operations, and ways in which they're driving innovation moving forward.

So our agenda is really based on three things, again. So the first is we want to provide an Autodesk construction strategy update, how we're trying to achieve some of the objectives that we've set out to deliver in the organization and help set the scene. Then I will invite Andy to provide insights. I should actually say that it's part of our Autodesk construction strategy conversation.

I'll invite Sunil and Matt too to really form that link of where we're going as an organization. Then I'll hand it to Andy. And then followed by Andy's presentation, we will all have a one-on-one conversation with Andy and try and touch on some of the themes that we've set the scene with today. So when we think about our strategy, when it comes to construction and connecting the fragmented industry, it's probably based on three pillars.

First, it's really about digitization, fully empowering construction businesses for the digital age. It really isn't about moving [INAUDIBLE], although that is an essential first step. It's really about digitizing processes so our customers can enhance the way information is shared through connected devices, no matter where their teams are working from, and enabling that faster and better decisions from a single source of truth.

Then next, really, is that piece around workflow integration. We are bringing business processes together and trying to automate manual workflows across all construction phases by connecting all project data across financials, bidding, the tender marketplaces, project management, and maintenance systems, both from the pre-construction and site construction perspectives, and really trying to derive the benefit for our customers, how they can really leverage data generated throughout the entire project lifecycle.

And then by bringing all of this together, we are trying to capture this critical information and provide an opportunity to support our customers so they have the tools that they can leverage data to improve their understanding of their business and really drive more proactive efforts within their business to understand what are some of the upcoming issues and what are some of the ways they can mitigate those in a timely matter.

And so through this, our ideology really is to call all this connected construction at Autodesk. So we know that over the past five years, there's been real significant advancement in technology, aimed at resolving some of the critical pain points for the construction industry. There is great choice out there, in terms of these technologies and the improvements in which they set out to achieve.

And we're finding that a lot of businesses now are really starting to challenge how they're adopting and deploying these technologies. And they're looking to really drive down costs, reduce their risk, and hopefully increase their profit margin and differentiation in the marketplace.

But when we start to think about the ecosystem, if we observe what's happened pretty much at the start of 2010, the start of the decade, the evolution from widely construction point solutions were-- really, there was a real proliferation there, where I think these point solutions were trying to focus on the needs of the industry.

And by the second half of the decade, a number of industry players, pretty much from the feedback that we get from leaders such as Andy and others in the industry, to try and find ways of integrating these point solutions to start to expand your product portfolios to create that suite of integrated solutions.

And so now this whole conversation in the industry is really around, what is the role of point solutions and platforms, and what are the pieces that can have that process control in a single place through more standardization, consolidation, and integration of key technologies?

So I think, as we move forward through this presentation, obviously, we'll start to sort of unpack some of these things. But there will always be opportunities for point solutions, particularly when they are capitalizing on that continued growth and penetration of mature solutions, understanding where some of the real pain points are in particular segments, and then ways in which the augmenting of those offerings in the market can take place, where you can increase further penetration in the industry.

And then this piece around platforms that have been able to try and drive this position of connecting the office into the field, where they can scale platforms with a specific angle and have a solution that can have that broader connection in the built environment and start to drive more analytical understanding behind them. Now I'll just hand it over to Sunil.

SUNIL DORAIRAJAN: Thanks, Sumit. And I think that what we saw, with the more proliferation of technology into construction, and then you add the capabilities which expand both increasing the depth and breadth of what these solutions cater to for the industry, it's a natural recipe to attract venture capital. So next slide, please, Sumit.

So 2021 was definitely the banner year for construction tech. That's what we thought when we made this deck. But looks like 2022 is going to continue to surpass 2021. And I think that's an interesting thing. While there are corrections happening in the public markets, construction still continues to attract huge amounts of investment. Again, just looking at this, like going for a 5x to a 6x increase just in the last five years is just mind boggling.

And this shows clearly how big the opportunity is, which is the called the total addressable market in the venture capital world. And I think that that's basically stemming from customers adopting more technology, and back to how do you digitize, how do you integrate, and then how do you analyze information? And we are seeing that transformation happen day in, day out, at the job site level today, which transforms to more dollars coming into construction tech.

Next slide, please, Sumit. With respect to VC funding in construction, there's always been family offices, which are normally run by large EPC general contractors and maybe even specialty contractors, for example, like Brick and Mortar is being led by [INAUDIBLE] and Bechtel, is part of the Bechtel family. And we have Suffolk Technologies being run by Suffolk.

So this is an interesting shift, where there are more family offices being set up by contractors, and they're investing in construction, which is a great thing to see, which is going to really push more innovation. And as these dedicated VC funds operate, there's also been an influx of more generalist VC funds. And typically a generalist VC fund, they invest in all types of verticals, let it be construction, health care, FinTech, whatnot.

But they are also seeing construction as an area of interest, I would say, like a high area of interest. So that because the number of processes that exist today, which are extremely manual spreadsheet driven, error prone, I think, all those tasks need to be automated, so I'm excited to share what Autodesk's position is in the middle of all this funding environment.

And before I go there, I think this is an interesting stat to show the sheer volume of dollars coming into construction space, right. Again, if somebody looked at this slide like five years ago, everyone would have scratched their head saying, what are these numbers? These numbers are just mind boggling to see how much these companies have raised. And again, this also shows the opportunity space and how big the market is.

And there are definitely areas of interest, like you can see the common theme around progress tracking. I think, when you think about how manual the process is and also the risky nature of the construction business, and being able to track what gets on the field-- so these are some examples.

And again, supply chain, we see that's another area where we continue to see more VCs pouring in dollars for companies to innovate and provide better solutions, especially in the middle of the crisis. We've been on the supply chain trend, so-- next slide, Sumit. Well, we've been busy at Autodesk Construction Solutions for sure.

And this happened, I would say, in the last four plus years, where Autodesk started acquiring like the best of breed solutions, like solutions that are very close to heart and minds of the industry that we cater to. And I think today's portfolio has expanded significantly since the acquisition of these companies. And I'm happy to be here, part of the Pype acquisition and our recent add to bolstering our pre-construction suite through ProEst.

So while the acquisitions-- we've been active on the acquisition trend, we've also been busy on the investment trend, where we've invested in best of breed solutions, catering to field and the office, including Bridgit, Eyrus, Rhumbix, and Aurigo, which is a player in the owner space. And they provide project management, capital planning solutions to owners alike.

And I think, the way we look at the ecosystem is-- when we look at different segments, where we have owners, contractors, general contractors, CO specialties, and subcontractors, I think that's a wide, wide spectrum of different personas who need different solutions. And we are very mindful of that at ACS, which is Autodesk Construction Solutions.

So I think will continue to be one of the most active, strategic investors and also acquirers in the space, and look forward to continue to fuel more innovation for construction tech. So with that, I'll hand it back to Sumit.

SUMIT OBEROI: Thanks. Thanks, Sunil. Appreciate that perspective on what's happening in the VC and also the strategic investment place. Now I'll hand it over to Matt to walk through some of the key focus areas that we have.

MATT KEEN: OK, thanks, everyone. So what we'd now like to do is explore areas that we believe are critically important to the industry's current and future success. And over the last 12 months, the team that I sit in with Sumit and Sunil, we've actively been engaged in over 80 distinct conversations with customers. That's direct one-to-one conversations. But that also includes our executive briefings and all of the executive counsels that we have both in North America and EMEA.

And during these conversations, we've identified three key areas that construction companies have seen as critically important. So let's have a look at those now. So first, contractors are committing resources to mitigating risk across all stages of the project lifecycle. And avoidance of profit or fee erosion is critically important to remaining solvent with profit margins sitting around about 2% to 3% on a good day for GCs, around 5% to 6% for subcontractors.

Second, much of that fee erosion can occur as a result of inefficient processes. And they exist across the industry. And you'll have heard about it a lot. I mean, McKinsey, typical for telling the industry how bad they are. And ultimately, what we've been looking at with customers is, what are the opportunities for streamlining the business operations and unlocking that productivity? Third, late payments pose a major threat to the longevity of GCs and subcontractors alike.

So across the industry, the subcontractors finance the project until they get paid. And such a late payment cycle averages between 80 to 100 days, creating a major cashflow crunch for the industry. Now, those three things on their own are critically important enough. But all of this is underpinned by the need to have actionable insights around these areas so that construction companies can gain visibility into project performance and receive early warnings if key project performance indicators start to slip.

So let's just take a look at each of these in turn. So you all know that risk is embedded in every aspect of the project, from pursuit, all the way through to project completion. And contractors must plan, mitigate, and manage project risk to achieve operational and financial milestones. Now, every construction project is unique and has its own challenges. Risk is pervasive in all aspects of project execution.

And having effective tools and processes to measure and monitor project controls is a key aspect of effective project risk management. Now, construction projects innately have a multitude of moving parts across budgets and costs. So managing financial risk is paramount to achieving the project's forecasted profitability. And this is an area that customers tell us is critically important. Now, the other area that we know that contractors constantly monitor is productivity.

And they critically appraise the current methods of working to identify opportunities to remove waste from the process. And pool operational efficiency stems from a multitude of factors, things such as heavy reliance on paper and manual processes, a lack of a planning process early enough in the project lifecycle, disjointed communication and collaboration, pure QA/QC. When you think about all of these things on their own, that can be bad enough.

But combined together, that's where the risk appears in projects. But you know, it's not that construction professionals aren't giving these things due attention. It's complex. And that's why these things can impact productivity, by and large. Let's now look at the next error, which is faster payment cycles. The industry is plagued by culture of late payments. And cash flow is critical for GCs and subcontractors alike to effectively operate their business.

Late payments or non-payments can be a key contributor to some organizations unfortunately going bankrupt. Subcontractors come under the greatest pressure, as they have to pay their suppliers within that 30 days, but also have to typically wait around 90 days to get paid themselves. So effectively, they end up financing the project because of this risk. And based on a recent study, 67% of subcontractors have stated they won't bid on a project if a GC or owner has a reputation of slow payments.

So we believe there is a distinct opportunity for digitization in this space. We've seen a few players looking to automate and streamline that process. We obviously said that all of this needs to be underpinned by data. And over the last three years, there's been a surge in the demand for business analytics, reporting, and dashboards across our customer base. And this has been driven by this continued increase in the amount of data being generated on a project.

According to a joint study that we did with FMI, bad data cost the global construction industry about $1.8 trillion in 2020. So as a consequence, construction companies are investing in data infrastructure resources and data science skill sets to access real-time and predictive insights related to project and portfolio performance. And when they talk to us, they tell us they want one of two things.

They either want access to APIs so they can build dashboards themselves, or they're looking for out-of-the-box reporting and customizable dashboards so that they can actually access data as they use tools on a day-to-day basis. And so we increasingly have to cater for both sets of asks in order to remain competitive as a vendor in the market.

So they are the kind of four areas that we've been focused on. If we just move forward and just think about the technology ecosystem, construction companies are regularly adding more apps to their tech stacks. And this trend isn't slowing down anytime soon. These new tools need to be integrated with others or they'll inevitably lead to risk, rework, and error. And standalone software applications create these data silos and disconnected workflows.

So we're hoping that the viewpoint that we're taking as Autodesk Construction Solutions is that how can we help integrate these tech stacks and help organizations seamlessly move data and connect workflows. And for us, when we talk to customers, they tell us it's about getting the balance right between centralized standard applications and the ability to integrate new innovative solutions into their enterprises. And you can look at it in this way.

So we believe this requires a balanced approach to innovation. So Harvard Business Review did a study. And they said that you should split your innovation dollars into three distinct buckets-- Now, which they say it should be 70% of your investment. These are the things that you have to deliver on a day to day basis. So these are your document management systems and your core project management solutions.

You've then got Next, which is-- oh, sorry-- New, which is the cutting edge at the other end, which is some of the real innovations that you see in there, so like robotics and 3D printing. But in between that is this adjacent piece to the Now, which is what's coming down the track. So think of things like drone technology, which are actually adding value to the workflows that you commit to today, but they're not quite there yet to be able to do that at scale.

So it's about getting that balance right between those three different areas. So hopefully, we're now going to hear from Andy, and he's going to talk about how they've been balancing these three different areas. And we'll hand over to you, Andy. And you can talk to what you're doing at PARIC.

ANDY LEEK: All right. Thanks, Matt. That was actually a really great lead-in to my part of what we're going to talk through here today. So PARIC has been in the industry for quite a while, over 40 years as a company in construction. I have the unique role of working with a lot of different types of technology, but more importantly, an awful lot of different types of people.

We support people both inside of PARIC, as a builder and looking at things from throughout the lifecycle of a project from pre-construction through design coordination, procurement, and ultimately, constructing a building, and handing over an awful lot of information, both throughout the construction process, and then as we hand over the building for the client to begin operating it. And so our focus hasn't really kind of changed over the last 10 years in starting to embrace technology.

And what does that mean, in today's terms, I've started the coin a lot in a lot of conversations as there's this concept of a master builder. But today, what does it mean to be a modern master builder? And that's not to say that we're the preeminent builder of all time. It's more of just embracing what are the tools that it takes to be a builder in today's world, that you can master all the different aspects of construction. And a lot of that is in the planning and the things that lead up to that.

So we use a lot of technology for that. And so there's kind of this road of evolution that we're working with today. And so to give a little context, I think it's important to understand the size and scale of different types of companies. So PARIC's a mid-market firm. We're based in the US. St Louis is where our headquarters is at, but we have offices across the country. And really we go wherever our clients want us to go with them. And so we're constantly looking for ways that we can improve delivery.

And so as I mentioned a second ago, we started in that early pre-construction phase, where we're going out, using things like drones and laser scanners, and doing reality capture, really trying to drive in as much information around the context of a job site in the environment that we're going to be building in. And sometimes that's as much about the client or the physical building as it is a lot of the other environmental factors or economic factors that are driving a project's success.

And so we very quickly partner with a lot of different aspects of our project team, from the designers and architects, the vendors, the subs. There's a great deal of communication that goes into all of this. And so we really kind of have embraced this concept of a lifecycle partner, where it's not just a building we're trying to deliver. It's all about the experience that we're delivering to the entire project team and, ultimately, to the client, who's asking us to get them a facility in place that's going to serve their day-to-day needs.

So PARIC has embraced technology early on. It's part of our DNA, if you will. We are an ENR top 100 firm. We continue to work really hard to maintain that and be a top place to work for our staff. So we're really focused on culture. It's something that we spend a lot of time on. And so here in recent years, we really started to shift our focus to having a culture of learning, and learning technology, learning process, learning how to work together, learning how-- this is a practice.

It's a constant evolution. And with all this new technology disrupting the way that we have done things in the past, and we're looking for ways to embrace that. So along with learning, comes adoption. And we feel like there's a really important connection there, that it's one thing to buy software, we don't do that anymore. And we've gotten to where our 100% focus is on partnerships, partnering with technology vendors, partnering with our subs and our design partners so that we're all working towards common goals.

We all realize that there's going to be something that's going to have to evolve in our process. And so that's where there's a lot of learning opportunity inside of that as well. So a lot of focus on learning in our culture. So part of what's driving a lot of our innovation work today has really been based around this concept of BIM-based life cycle management. And so the initial phase, and I think Sumit talked about a little bit earlier, is digitizing your practice.

And so that's a great first step, is at least getting everything into a repository that everybody can access the information from wherever they're at. As we've evolved, a big part of our focus has been, how do we leverage BIM to get the maximum value out of that? And with BIM comes an awful lot of data. And so now we're applying data to every aspect of our business throughout each phase of the project.

So early on, when we're quantifying things, whether it's BIM, or it's laser scan information, or its schedule, or its cost, or productivity figures, we're looking at how the data is going to be planned. And then as we cross that bridge of the project lifecycle, how can we ultimately track that work that's going into place, the amount of time it's taking, and be able to round trip a lot of that data and be able to do historical analysis at the end.

Part of the goal is not only to make the business more sound today and have risk management tools at our fingertips, but it's also, how do we continue to improve? And so I mentioned this culture of learning. Part of learning is realizing where we could have done better, where things were simply out of our control and they were based on the economy or whatever other kind of crazy things can happen these days.

But ultimately, having this data-centric concept, where we're looking at the whole lifecycle of the project-- and again, there's data in all of that. And as Matt mentioned, we're always looking for ways to build new and better dashboards to drive insights. But at the end of the day, they have to be tools that we can embrace. So a big part of that aspect-- and again, we can invest in all the technology in the world, but you have to have a great process.

And so that affects the way that we think about the business. That affects the way that we think about how we manage data. And so what we started to really hone in on is, OK, what do we want to know? When do we want to know it? Who needs to know it? Who do we need to share it with? Where's the data at? How are we going to be able to connect the dots? As Matt mentioned, there's tons and tons of apps out there.

And they may be best-in-class at the one thing that they do, but for us to get value out of them, we have to figure out how we're going to embrace them and make them a part of our ecosystem. Standalone products don't really bring much value to us anymore. And so if it's not integrated, if there's not an API, if there's not some way to connect the data, there's a gap in the opportunity there.

So I've kind of gotten around to this new concept I've talked about quite a bit recently is around 1 plus 1 equals 3. And I know, that obviously sounds silly. But if you're just getting what's on the surface, what's in the marketing brochure, that's not where all the value is at.

The value is in connecting the data between multiple different platforms, or ecosystems, or apps, and ultimately to our team partners so that we're connecting information in as close to real time as possible. The decisions that are being based on that information can happen more seamlessly. And you're sharing that information back out to the rest of the folks that are either upstream or downstream.

So that, again, taking risk out of the equation, trying to streamline workflows and process, and so that's really where we spend a lot of time thinking about, OK, if we're going to integrate a new tool into our ecosystem, what's the value? How are we going to maximize that? And kind of leading into this next part, and Matt mentioned this a little bit, there's 70% of what we're doing now. There's 20% of what we're focused on in the near term.

What is the next drone, or robot, or streamline automation, whatever that thing is? And then there's kind of what we refer to as the bleeding edge, so the robots and things that we're working on that may come to us, and they're kind of more of a duct tape and zip ties kind of form. And you have to do a little bit of all those things. Part of that is exciting. It's exciting for us to be a part of that process.

It's exciting to learn new things and really challenge how the status quo has been done and how we can evolve that. So I was going to give you a little glimpse into kind of what we've been working on and how that continues to evolve here at PARIC. So I've been very fortunate. We have decided as a company that we want to invest in certain types of partnerships. Sometimes those are just thinking about our process, an IP.

But sometimes they're actual dollars. And so we've gotten to where we invest in certain platforms that we think are going to bring value to us. And we really want to have a hand in their development, realizing that we're a small part of the equation in the scheme of the globe. But we're making stands in different places where we really want to spend that energy. And we see it as an everybody wins kind of scenario.

So we're willing to put some capital in to help evolve the product. And the goal there is that not only do we help improve that product, but in the long-term, we're finding other ways that we can maximize the value out of that. So just a handful on the screen here, I wasn't going to go into detail on each of these. But we spend quite a bit of focus on how we're going to invest those dollars.

So is it strictly a dollars and cents kind of investment? We don't tend to do those. We tend to do investments on products that are something that's going to affect our business, something that we can be working on or working with every day and finding ways that we can make that partnership better.

Part of it is driving our staff to evolve, or get better value, or help just generally reduce things around risk management and the quality of product that we can deliver in a timely fashion. So how do we streamline schedule? So there's the aspect of the investment, then there's partnerships. And partnerships don't always have to come with dollars and cents. So a lot of times, there's just mutual value to be found by working together.

And so we spend a lot of time working with a variety of partners in that kind of scenario. And there's just a general opportunity that can evolve from these relationships. So not going into great detail on all of these, but we spend a lot of time around robotics. We find a lot of values there. It can improve the general delivery of a project. It can drive efficiency. It can help to elongate just a teammate's career path.

You think about some of the things we do manually today, layout's one. So I'll highlight Dusty on here. We started working with the Dusty team a few years ago. And that's a tool that helps us just streamline layout work. And it's easily got a 10x efficiency factor. And you think about the types of efforts that we're putting into delivering project every day. And people are having to literally get in on their hands and knees to do some of this work.

If robots are going to work for us, let's make them work for us. And so we partner with them to figure out, how can we make this product better? Somebody's got to get out there and bump their knees on the ground a little bit to get it to work sometimes. But that product today is absolutely awesome. And it delivers us great efficiency. There's data coming out of that thing now, where we can really start to understand what are the efficiency factors.

How do we make it better? How do we leverage them? Again, thinking about that BIM-based lifecycle, the things that we're laying out are coming out of our models. They're coming out of the coordinated CAD files. And so that's driving the layout. And so that 1 plus 1 equals 3 concept is, here, we spend a lot of time coordinating and designing things and making sure that they're going to work. We're prefabbing. We're doing offsite construction.

We're bringing these materials in place. Our goal is to streamline getting that work in place as quickly as possible because the more time it's sitting on the job site, the less work's getting put in place. So leveraging something like Dusty or some of the more recent ones, like Raise, we've worked with, just looking at different ways that we can improve that process and really use robots to do that. Again, it improves the general delivery.

It really is helping to elongate career paths. And it's giving part of our field staff new and interesting things to experience as tools. And we're moving beyond hammers and nail guns. Now we're moved on to robots. And how do we maximize use of those? But in terms of delivering and reporting information, the information doesn't just come from anywhere. So we're leveraging tools like Kwant.ai, Beck Tech, Autodesk, obviously, is a big partner for us, Bridgit, and OpenSpace.

This is just a small part of our ecosystem that we look to. There are some things that are out on the horizon, like BitRip, that we see as having value that, you know, how do we get better barcodes? And how do we get them in place quicker? And how do we streamline just the general delivery of information in real time? And so I hope this gives you somewhat of a picture of where PARIC's at today.

There's no one specific area that we spend all of our time. It's, what's the area that is going to bring value today? And that's important today, that's great. A week or two, or a month or two from now, that may not be the area of focus anymore. But throughout all of this investment, I can tell you that it always comes back to the people, making sure that we're spending the time and the investment in learning so that people are going to maximize the value.

We can create standard processes where, again, from a business perspective, we want certainty. We want to be able to mitigate risk. The way that we have found to really improve that has been really look at the data. Really make sure people are leveraging that information so that they're getting the maximum value out of that. So that's it for me for now. I'll hand it back to Sumit.

SUMIT OBEROI: Thanks, Andy. That was a very inspiring presentation that you just provided us. Now it gives me great pleasure just to fire off some questions back and forth to really engage you further, in terms of some of the things that you've shared and also building off the earlier conversation that we provided with Matt and Sunil. So you mentioned that over the past 10 years, in many respects, your focus as a business hasn't really changed.

However, if you think about all of the different technologies that have been made available, if you think about some of the decisions that you and your team were making 10 years ago to the decisions you're making now, through the partnership and investment and opportunity space, has your decision making changed a lot? Or are you still sort of looking through the lens of how you were 10 years ago?

ANDY LEEK: I think that the business focus has always been at our core around delivering buildings. I think what has evolved is, one, just the amount of work that's coming through us these days. We've got close to-- round numbers, we've got over $2 billion in our pre-construction pipeline today. And that's a scale of almost 2x from where we were 10 years ago.

So you just think about the amount of work that we're pre-planning or working through to understand, is it going to be a good project or not for us? Can we get alignment on resources and the things we need to deliver a project? So to do that, again, as I mentioned, it really comes down to the data we have at hand, whether that's pricing information, how we can look at schedule, do we have the resources ready to go, is the project job site ready to go?

So I would say that what has evolved quite a bit has been a lot of the contextual data that we're using to drive those decisions today, laser scans, and drones, and more and more design information earlier, and really kind of revolutionized in some ways the areas of focus in design, to some degree. So that part of the process has started-- not only did that part flip, but now we have more and more context information.

And I think that's where you marry that up with an ecosystem that's cloud based, and you're able to share that information with a larger team. They're not waiting on a weekly meeting or a monthly meeting to come together and talk about design specification requirements and what level of efficiency do you need out of the glass in the mechanical system? You're able to share that information in near real time.

And so as questions pop up, we're instant messaging each other. We're texting each other, Slack and Teams, and there's all these different ways to communicate, but we are also all looking at the same content, the models, the plans, the point clouds. So in near real time, we're sharing information that's allowing the team as a whole to make decisions that are timely, that are well educated, or well-informed, I should say.

It's not like we've completely flipped the entire world around. But what we're giving them is better information in real time. And that, to me, is the goal, is let's make more informed decisions in a more timely fashion.

SUMIT OBEROI: Do you think it's getting harder and harder to standardize as a business on particular processes than it was 10 years ago? Or do you think it's slowly, by going through the process in which you have engaged your team, they're a bit more receptive to where the business is going?

And when you talk about this thinking around finding value for today, not being too fixated that maybe you might have to change a few different things and direction, but what's your thoughts on standardizing today versus 10 years ago on particular processes?

ANDY LEEK: It's a great question, Sumit. I think, what's funny is-- I think, one thing about construction that I've learned in my close to, oh, my gosh, 25 years in this industry is that there's no such thing as a standard process anymore. There never-- I don't know that there ever really was. There's the concepts of a standard process. But every project site's unique. Every project team seems to be unique.

Even if you're working with the same companies, there's different project teammates within that company that's working on a different project, different types of buildings, different types of delivery methods, contracts. All drive different ways that you approach the project. So I think there's that part. You have to distinguish, what can you standardize?

And even coming down to simple things, what we used to think for simple things, like folder structures or review processes for our [? buys ?] and submittals. What we thought were standard really still have to be tweaked quite a bit from project to project. So what we've embraced today is, OK, what are the toolsets we're going to use for these projects? And there's 10 different platforms that do everything, it seems like today.

But what are best-in-class? What are the tools we're standardizing on? We refer to those things-- at our company, we call it the PARIC way. And what we mean there are, what are our toolsets? What are our workflows? What are our data requirements? Who's responsible? What are the must dos for different teammates so that there is this sense of consistency and standardization in what can be a rather chaotic industry?

What we can draw on are consistency in the tools and the workflows and the data that people expect to see. If we have a project team that needs to grow over time as the project increases in scope and work is being put in place, we don't want to add somebody on and have them kind of walk onto a job site and be confused as to where do they find information.

So having consistent folder structures is a very simplistic thing, but that's one example of-- they know to expect that. They know the dashboard for that project has the same information for safety, quality, punch listing, all those kinds of things. So there's a consistency in the tools and the information that's being delivered to them.

And that is where the value comes as they're embracing or adopting that new toolset. They're working it into their workflow. And now they know what to expect on the next job, and the next job, and the next job.

SUMIT OBEROI: And some of the activities that you as you and your business have undertaken to, because there is so much, I guess, variation in the way in which a business will undertake processes, and you mentioned all of the variety of different projects that you have, how do we sort of-- what are some of the activities that you've undertaken to try and share the benefits with other parts of the business that might not be getting up to that level of improvement?

ANDY LEEK: Well, the concept, it takes a village, right? So I think that that, again, is where we're trying to connect our entire project team together in the process. There's not this distinctly hard line in the sand where we were in pre-construction and now we're in construction. These days, at least for our business, pre-construction seems to have this slow transition phase into the operations phase.