Start Small and Show Big: Large-Firm XR Solutions for Any Size of Project

AJ LIGHTHEART: Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining our session, deploying Workshop XR-- large-firm solutions for any size practice or project, how to start small and show big. We have a lot, a lot, a lot that we are going to try to cover in a short period of time. We will get into the agenda as well as introductions in just a moment. But want to take a few seconds upfront to lay a little bit of groundwork, foundation of what the intentions of our session are, but also what they are not.

I'll start with are not. What we are not coming here to do is try to pitch you or sell you on the value of XR and do a deep dive on the different use cases. In our minds, you're already bought in, potentially already starting down this path. What you came to this session for and what we are focusing on is how you can build your arsenal of information and collateral, how you can turn into a strategy to take this from a concept to implementing to scaling.

We're going to do that in four main sections today-- listen, learn, and understand; anticipate perceptions; XR is a tool; and finally, the message. Now, we're going to take a little different approach than a lot of presentations you partake in. It's not going to be I talk for 10 minutes, Jon talks for 10 minutes, Chuck talks for 10 minutes. We're going to go point to point to point in each one of these different categories, so a lot of pattern interrupts. And we hope that it makes it a very engaging presentation for you.

I'm already talking. So I might as well just keep that going as we move into introductions. My name is AJ Lightheart. I'm a senior product sales specialist here on the XR team at Autodesk, been with Autodesk for two and a half years since the acquisition of our startup the Wild. My world revolves around really anything and everything-- XR, real-time collaboration, immersive experiences. I've had the true pleasure of working with thousands of firms throughout the world on this exact topic. So pleased to get to share some of this information with you here today. Jon, I'll hand it over to you.

JON MATALUCCI: Thanks, AJ I'm Jon Matalucci, BIM manager at Stantec. I work mostly in the health care and SNT sectors. I do takeoffs and landings, leaning more heavily into the production management, data wrangling, and let's say VDC coordination. Mr. Chuck.

CHUCK LOUNSBERRY: Thanks, John. I'm Chuck Lounsbury. I run Stantec's visualization technology group. And essentially, we're a team of design professionals who focus on horizon-type technologies, things that are out there that haven't quite made it in yet. Our goal is to find them, dress them, study them, make sure they're secure and safe, and then implement them in a way that can grow throughout the company. And as part of that, XR technologies, AR, VR, MR is part of our day-to-day work. AJ?

AJ LIGHTHEART: Thank you, Chuck. Well, group, let's dive right into it, section number one-- listen, learn, and understand. So if we look in our world right now, there are a lot of movies that are getting remade. There's a lot of melodies from past songs getting repurposed. And that's not happening because people are lazy or unoriginal. Rather, it's taking place because there's a recognition that we can reuse, repurpose what's already been established and put our own spin and twist on it.

The same can be said for collateral around XR. I hear it all too often when working with organizations, that they feel like everything has to be custom-built, built from scratch. I'm telling you, that's not the case. You're putting yourself behind the eight ball before you've even gotten started.

Throughout this industry, there's a lot of different channels and forums of how you can take in and leverage information. There's dedicated LinkedIn groups. XR in AEC is a perfect example. There's podcasts that have done deep dives on this, providing a lot of great anecdotes and stories. Some of the top industry publications that you probably even have a subscription to-- AEC Magazine, Archinect, ArchDaily-- have done deep dive articles on this topic.

So the point being is a simple one but an important one. Leverage the collateral that's already in place. And I'll draw some attention too. We give you a starter pack as part of our handout. Maybe it gets you 75-80% of the way there. Then you can put your own spin, twist, and voice to it, connect it back to your firm. If you do this, you'll be laying a wonderful foundation that will put you in a great spot to start small. Jon, I'll hand it over to you.

JON MATALUCCI: Awesome. Thanks, AJ. So I'm going to let my hair down a little bit. This is essentially how I start my day. The commute to my backyard on the surface of the sun is typically uneventful. I've got my coffee and VR-ready straw in hand, getting ready for the morning huddle and workshop. I published a model while doing the grind. I frothed my milk. And I hop in a bit early to poke around before the team arrives.

So whether it's work in the office, work from home, our teams, as are most of yours-- our teams are distributed. But there's an underlying joy in how we work and when we work in VR. Chuck will get into the traditional metrics around value and ROI later. But happiness is a pretty good one to start with and one we don't talk enough about in AEC. Next slide.

So here's my friend Louis. He wants to work with his teams and workshop. But he's only got one headset. So like all projects, his projects have issues. He's doing all the right things. He's booting up early. He's working hard. He's doing cardio. Louis needs a platform. He needs enrollment in his firm. And he needs more than one headset. So Louis is starting small. Next slide.

So Louis knows, in a real space, we have an innate calibration to what's around us and immersed. These review sessions feel much more natural than, say, print, pan, and zoom, which are decidedly unnatural. Enrollment and adoption are hard for any size firm, even at large firms like Stantec.

So here's one tactic that was particularly beneficial. We rolled out VR-- in this case, Prospect-- to our summer interns. We did this to create FOMO in the various offices, raise awareness, and demonstrate the very, very low barrier to entry. We asked staff who had absolutely no XR experience to be the XR office champions for the interns. And this was at project kickoff.

The model here that's under review is the intern project from the previous summer. They're learning about communication, clash avoidance, issue tracking, general project planning, and VR. We even had a few instances of interns tagging walls, so lots of jokes.

The lessons were clear. This was their space, space to collaborate, onboard each other, learn about our company and their team. So essentially, we're building future teams on the workflows that we need to scale. Next slide, please.

So when you're getting started, maybe not charge for it. This is not a rule. Of course, we work for profit. This is a proposed mindset for startup. May seem slightly counterintuitive. But XR is a productivity tool. Maybe don't bury it in an invoice to the client. Becomes a barrier to adoption if you do that. The ROI is there, as you'll see in a minute-- thank you, Chuck-- but only if you use it.

And if you're only planning a handful of headsets to kick off with, consider treating it as a capital expense, meaning the cost of doing business. Cost of the hardware is provably negligible-- essentially the same as a monitor or mouse. The gear is infrastructure. And as initial setup, onboarding have very, very low barriers to entry.

If you're planning to add gear, maybe structure high-frequency, short-duration non-meetings first. This will set the right cadence for your meetings in XR. If you're starting small, maybe don't wait. Write the business case now. If you're using XR-- and for you to know others are using it-- you are the expert. It's your case to make. Case is simple to write. Use some of the data in the handout. Writing it down is key. Making it easy to circulate means it will circulate.

Once you have a small, stable pool of headsets and users, why don't you look to scale as a group? Chuck's going to walk us through the numbers. Chuck?

CHUCK LOUNSBERRY: Yeah, thanks, John. When you get started and when you're just getting going, as John mentioned, you should definitely be the one who is establishing and defining what the value of XR is for your team. But if you're going to make the argument for more widespread adoption, you really need to be able to understand how the finances are going to bear out.

So on the chart we see here on the screen, the blue line represents VR headsets sold worldwide 2016 to 2023. The orange line represents my company's purchasing records for headsets during that same period of time-- so all in all, not too bad, a little bit behind the global market.

But interestingly enough, we saw the same similar increases in the requests for technology from 2020 through 2023. Now, you might recognize those years as the COVID years. While there were a lot of advancements that came out from having people all of a sudden working from home, we found that one of the better advancements, the more useful advancements for us were VR meeting platforms. And they rose to the top of our energies. Next slide.

So prior to the use of VR meeting platforms, most VR experiences were single-built for one person at a time. It was still a completely unique way to interact with your design, though. Placing you in that scene at that true one-to-one human scale was something not a lot of designers had experienced. So a major drawback was that you are always alone when you are having this experience. It was really hard to share with your team and with your client what it was like to be in and be involved in this.

So a meeting platform allows for multiple users to share a single, simultaneous virtual environment. Think of it like a meeting but inside of your [INAUDIBLE]. Teams could gather in the design files, comment, revise, discuss, and independently move around to review their designs. They sure felt like productive meetings. People seemed to think they were providing something unique.

But it's hard to back up financial documents with feelings and supposition. So we actually started evaluating meeting platforms in 2019. We worked with Resolve, another platform we use at Stantec, to study the project benefits of conducting regular design coordination meetings and construction review meetings in VR. Next slide.

So we asked each project that we tried this on to purchase headsets on their own and to purchase their own licensing with Resolve and agree to have a minimum of eight regularly-scheduled meetings. After those meetings, we asked the participants questions related to participation levels, engagement levels, efficiencies-- both achieved and perceived-- and benefits-- project benefits-- both perceived and achieved.

So over the four years we ran that study with Resolve, we found that most small to medium projects could and should support about five headsets. Five was the critical mass for small-scale VR meeting rooms. And on the other end of the large scale, there really was no limit. We had a project that had our largest project at 36 headsets in it at one time. And it was great.

We also found that people were more engaged while using VR. On average, we found that VR meetings produce about three times the number of comments that we've been seeing in traditional design reviews and weekly product problems. So when it came to the efficiencies gained, however, we found that there were a lot of benefits for designers in terms of that one-to-one relationship with their space.

We got a lot of comments, like I think I bumped my head and I can't fit my arm through here in VR-- so issues that largely wouldn't have been noticed until bid or construction, when someone issued an RFI or a change order, that said, hey, I think this bulkhead is too low. Or the constructability of this utility closet might be in question.

So in the end, based on user feedback over this four-year study, which many times, most of the time included subconsultants, we determined with Resolve that two to three RFIs were avoided per one hour of review. So let that sink in for a second. Every one hour of review yielded two to three RFIs that could would have been avoided later in the process.

So a published study by the Navigant construction forum stated that the average cost to respond to an RFI was around $1,200. If using XR technology is helping to avoid, say, two and a half RFIs per hour, it is potentially saving your client $3,000 per hour in use. Roll the next slide.

So our study started in 2019. And we just completed our longest-running case study this past July. We concluded a two-year-long project that had regular reoccurring meetings./ and every other week, the team of roughly 22 would gather in the Federated model for project updates. Over the course of those two years, over 1,500 comments were logged in VR and issues tracked directly in ACC.

In the end, we estimated about $1.7 million in cost savings for the client and a roughly 64x return on their initial investment. Also, the team became so comfortable. And this is something that I don't think necessarily feeds into the bottom line always-- is that the team became so comfortable with their meetings that the focus of some of the meetings started to evolve into things like operational rehearsals, safety reviews, equipment maintenance run through, things like that.

So from a financial perspective, the data says that VR meeting platforms have a high potential for project savings, as well as a fairly short time to recover your initial investment-- two really great things from a financial perspective. But the byproduct, the extra, is that these meetings produced healthier, more usable, happier customers and a better-educated designer. So no matter how you define value-- small or large, financial or happiness-- these key factors are enough to help you support your growth across the bottom line. AJ?

AJ LIGHTHEART: Thank you, Chuck. All right, group, let's move into section number two-- anticipate perceptions. Know what you are stepping into. As I've talked with organizations, again, around the world on XR, I feel like I have heard anything and everything related to XR. It's like an XR rap battle. Here's everything that's wrong with it.

Now, you won't hear everything that I and we have heard. But there will be some consistent themes that you will come to forefront as you're engaging with people around this topic-- so for example, that it's a fad or a gimmick just for kids playing video games, that hardware is both costly and extremely invasive, that our customers won't respond to it, everyone will be abrasive to it, that going from design to XR is extremely manual and time-consuming, that we don't have someone on our staff that knows Unity or Unreal or has a coding background security. What are we going to do about security and devices and how we're accessing data? But the list goes on and on.

But the point here is important. One, anticipate this. Have a game plan of how you are going to speak to these different topics so that you can help people think about it and look at it through a different lens. And again, I'll draw some attention to we give you a starting guide in our handout.

Most of us have heard of the acronym the six Ps-- Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance. Well, again, the same is said here, for sure. If you're driving an initiative, if you're driving one of your projects, you always have a game plan, a strategy, anticipating what will come up. Do the same with XR. Have a strategy. Have a plan of how you're going to speak to these different items. If you do that, you'll be in a very good spot to start small. Jon, handing it over to you.

JON MATALUCCI: Awesome. Thanks, AJ. And it's not a very tall hill to climb. So maybe you got a headset in hand. Maybe you've got one on order. But you got to start something. Craft those new perceptions. Start a channel dedicated to how you want to work. Make it public. Add supervisors, project managers, anyone at your office that may benefit. Go full guerrilla

You may say, come on, Jon, how is this going to help? Well, you could talk about-- this is essentially free. Use your existing comm platform to champion XR. It's a great way to build a tribe. And as we know, and I know, email, blizzard blindness is real. So cut through the noise. Go guerrilla with the [INAUDIBLE]. Ask Chuck. I'm that guy. I plant seeds.

I have a home to document your workflows, best practices, tips, tricks, troubleshooting. Probably doing this already, but be deliberate. So we've got non-design folks that we work with the game. They see the promise. And they want to engage at work. They're passionate about XR, essentially saying, everyone's a potential advocate.

Use a starter pack from your vendor. Cut and paste from our handout. Take some of that outward-facing LinkedIn and maybe pirate broadcast inside your firm. The links are doing absolutely no good buried in your feed or browser. All right, next slide.

So shop it around inside. Ask your firm. Ask your super where or when you can demonstrate the tech to others. If you're in a multi-disciplined firm like I am, make your gear accessible. Power it up. Hey, have you got a minute? Check this out. Brand your headset. Treat it like a billboard. It's the most conspicuous eyewear there is. Conversations start organically. And they last, well, well beyond.

And here, I had an amazing opportunity to demonstrate XR at a Stantec in the Community event for the visually-impaired. It's an amazingly powerful experience. But I was asked because an admin saw me in my headset and mentioned it to a sight-impaired colleague. By the way, the research on that is incredible. So it's well worth a search.

I was also asked to run a workshop for a couple of design classes at Arizona State and was struck by how few undergrads had actually investigated beyond the gaming. So we did it early enough in their projects where they could actually reconsider their work. It's absolutely a repeat performance, repeat of my experiences with the professional teams. Simply put, inspires better decisions. Next slide.

I'm going to pause here a minute because this is very easy to miss. Pass the torch. Pass the remote to the XR bat signal. Encourage others to be the XR person until they have one more to add. Each new adopter becomes the expert. So you're essentially onboarding evangelists. Don't be a crutch. Be a ladder. Be a bridge.

And avoid continuous onboarding. Work in such a way that others can derive that knowledge transfer too-- short-burst, high-frequency communication. And start a wiki. Open a SharePoint page for everyone. Create a Teams or Slack channel whiteboard, whatever. If you've already got something going, add another author or curator.

And this part is key. Ask them-- or, more specifically, encourage them to put their name and picture on it, no matter their experience or title. As firms, how do we inspire change when we've been successful? This is the way. The goal? That we want to build the greatest common factor so that everyone can contribute. Chuck?

CHUCK LOUNSBERRY: Yeah. Thanks, Jon. And as we move up the ladder here in terms of larger scale, some of the things that we're going to compete against besides security and cost is still that stigma, as AJ alluded to earlier. It exists even at a large scale.

So there's a couple real easy ways to work around that and to help normalize the use of XR technology. Make the hardware easy to get. The more people have them, the more normal it'll feel for people around your office. So create a standard XR hardware bundle. And ask to have it displayed on your internal intranet landing page. Or see if a senior manager or an office leader will send out an email that says, hey, these are available to you as designers. It's a great way to start socializing the use of technology.

Do your best to encourage ad hoc reviews. Big meetings, multi-user meetings are fantastic and efficient and a wonderful way to achieve an ROI. But sometimes, the benefits of having these really small ad hoc meetings are just substantial.

Even if you're in the same office, you and a coworker put the headset on and do your quick reviews in XR. Use something like workshop XR that's integrated directly into your ACC project so that it's a really fast, quick way to get into an XR meeting in ad hoc. Reap those benefits on a smaller scale.

Don't overlook the benefits of individual user experiences. Project managers who spend less time in Revit or other production software have reported that short VR experiences were the only time they get to feel what their space is going to be like. It's a really valuable tool that is still unique. No matter how often you're in it, there's always people who haven't. Socialized that around. And let more people get in, get involved, and share that experience.

Don't overlook that. screen fatigue is real. Teams and Zoom meetings with the cameras off and mics muted have a really, really, really low participation rate. And they're frankly stupid. Turn your weekly scheduling call from a Microsoft Teams call into a VR meeting.

Microsoft Teams has a VR function built into it if you can get it enabled. And a lot of significant communications platforms have their own VR options now. There's also dedicated platforms, like Arthur and Engage, that are built to support larger VR meetings and even some VR conferences. So these are great opportunities to increase engagement for staff and for management and to help normalize XR within the day-to-day workflows of business. Next slide.

Now, possibly the easiest way to scale up XR within your company is to scale it based on a platform that already exists. And most companies are going to have a scaled development platform already. So use an solution that can work directly with that platform.

So since we're here at Autodesk University, I'm going to use Autodesk Construction Cloud as my example. Here on the right, we have a wellhead design that's been designed and federated in Navis, but stored and securely distributed within ACC.

So instead of downloading the file and having to upload it to a different cloud or to a VR viewer for review, utilize an app like Workshop or Resolve that actually can extend the functionality of ACC and extend that data directly into your headsets. This means that you're always going to be looking at the most current data and not some subset that was downloaded and taken offline on the Friday before, when you wanted to leave a little early. That's where mistakes happen is when you introduce multiple forms of the same data.

Point two is leverage the success that you are seeing. You've built a great model in 3D, federated it in Navis or Revit, and reviewed it in with your team. Now, leverage that great model for reviews, like safety reviews and maintenance checks, if you have it or can get it.

And I know this is a little bit contrary to what AJ said, pick up a seat of Unity or the Unreal Engine. Both have some terrific pre-made templates that you can use to import your 3D design files and build more advanced, more tailored VR experiences. So pictured here on the left, this is some safety training we worked on using the Unreal Engine that was for that same wellhead platform that's pictured on the right.

This additional training could be paid for by the client in the form of additional services or even offered up to internal staff before they go on site for some early safety training or just to be aware of what's going to happen on site when we get there. My point is that your platform and your design files are gold. Use XR to make sure you're maximizing what you're getting out of those assets. They can be so much more than instructions.

AJ LIGHTHEART: Thank you, Chuck. We can probably feel that snowball building. Now, we're starting to implement this and starting to scale it. Let's step right into section number three-- XR is a tool. I'm going to repeat this. XR is a tool.

I want you all watching this or attending Autodesk University live to promise me that when you go back to your firm, you're going to start speaking to XR is a tool no different than Revit is a tool. Navisworks is a tool. Your second monitor is a tool. Every tool has a focus area where it supports your workflow processes and efforts. XR is no different. We need to start thinking about it and speaking to it as such.

There's another layer to this. And it's the case in any industry. Tools evolve over time. Let's look at the AEC industry. We went from hand-drawing to CAD. We went from CAD to Revit. We're currently going from a 2D design review to an XR immersive design review. Again, tools evolve over time. People can make sense of that. They can latch on to it. It doesn't mean they like it. But they can make sense of it.

So the combination of XR being treated and spoke to as a tool and the reality that we're currently in, that evolution of how we take in information in this industry right now, lay a great foundation and a great way for you to start small. Jon, I'll hand it over to you.

JON MATALUCCI: Awesome, AJ. Thank you. I can add on that. Of course, XR is a productivity tool. So let's talk about putting it into work. And why? Because we're busy. Mostly, we're slammed. Rarely, we get to look out of the window and say, hey, ponder.

So let's build a case for time. Dominant use case for VR on projects has been for those client-facing maybe somewhat static presentations. However beneficial these initial interactions are with our clients, we leave a lot of potential efficiencies, profit on the table when we stop there. We still have painful clashes. They're inevitable.

But identification is the easy part. Negotiating the move, that's where the work is. And you hear things a lot, like I really need more of my team in here. So production use is your initial target. That's where the risk is. That's where the benefit is.

AJ mentioned earlier alignment. So let's talk about that other white rabbit, utilization. The greatest beneficiaries of more efficient collaboration are the folks with the highest utilization rates. That was a mouthful. And yes, I was reading it. So I'm going to say it again. Greatest beneficiaries of more efficient collaboration are the folks with the highest utilization rates.

We're talking about production teams. We're seeing bottom line improvement and higher quality from our production teams, essentially, using the XR platform. Workers release faster when there's better alignment. So we're going to go get it. Now, the XR snowball is building. We're going to let it roll. Momentum can carry it along. But you got to have a plan to get out of the way. Chuck?

CHUCK LOUNSBERRY: Thanks, John. And it's an apt transition to say that sometimes, your momentum gets a little ahead of you. So you've got XR in place. You've had some success. You got a bunch of headsets floating around and more people asking for them every day. How do we encourage that growth in a safe way? How do we encourage that growth in a way that onboarding and management of these headsets doesn't turn into your full-time job?

Well, here's my chart again. Here's my lesson. It's around 2023. We totaled up our total investment in XR headsets. And it turned out that we had quite a few. We had around 298 headsets purchased over the past few years to the tune of around $149,000.

But when I stopped to think about it, how many of those headsets could I actually definitively tell you where they were? How many could I put my hands on? I looked around my office, called John, called a few other people. And the answer was a little frightening. I could only find about eight. So $149,000 is enough of an investment that it gave me pause. But to have 290 headsets floating around with some form of company data on them, well, that definitely was not a good look.

So next slide is if you-- here is where we enter the MDM. External devices like VR headsets can be a total security nightmare. Most of them, most headsets are both wireless devices, like a cell phone, or they can be a tethered device that plugs into your computer and requires its own set of software and drivers, like an external hard drive or a monitor.

Enter your MDM search. MDM is Mobile Device Management system. And it's a layer of cloud-based administration that mobile devices, like mobile phones, tablets, laptops-- they utilize these MDMs to extend local network security policies to the mobile device. So almost every company out there that has a VPN has an MDM system, a way to manage that hardware from not inside the office.

But in the last few years, as the XR community has grown, these medium to large enterprise spaces, we've seen a bunch of specific MDM systems come on the market. So products like Arbor XR and Manage XR and Quest for Business, they are built to extend those services of your local network policies down to your hardware.

So as an example, here in the middle of the page, in the middle of the screen here, is pictured your XR MDM. This is your cloud-based solution. The connection to the right is a secure connection to your locally-managed or Enterprise security policies. Your local IT, your network security teams, they can push out existing security policies that are there in orange-- so things like PIN and password requirements, user-level permissions.

And they can even approve software updates for the headsets themselves. They can push those out via local policies, but have it executed through the MDM. The MDM you choose-- if the MDM you choose has the option, if you get the enterprise options, most of the time, you can even establish an SSO, which is a Single Sign-On, so that your users can utilize your company network, sign in, and not have to use the vendor-specific accounts, which is a great thing for local security to have access to.

So going to the left now. Look on the blue side of this chart-- is the MDM actually offers you or the administrator of your fleet additional functionalities that you can't get out of the box. Location tracking is a big one. Where are my 290 headsets?

Preloading Wi-Fi settings or Wi-Fi certificates to make moving your headsets around from office to office easier and more secure, casting or some even have drop in support to help users who are in headset, remote lock and remote wipe-- again, see the previous note about missing 290 existing headsets with company data on them. One gets lost, one gets stolen, happens. You want to be able to make sure that that product and that data is secure from any outside forces. So that's a big one.

And then having a shared mode-- frankly, if you're a small office with a couple users and you want to share a headset, it's hard because they're usually controlled on a user basis. A shared mode allows you to basically separate individual information, individual profiles, and have a community headset that's great for small-office sharing or for going to conferences or trade shows, where you might have to put a headset on and off a whole bunch of times. It's a great use of that tool. And that's a functionality that typically only comes with an MDM.

But really, frankly, from my opinion, as the XR enthusiast, the MDM's killer app is the onboarding process. Some of the larger vendors can ship hardware that is pre-configured for your specific account directly to the users. Users-- all they have to do is open the box, put it on their heads, join the Wi-Fi like it's any other small device, and it automatically phones home to your MDM. It picks up your pre-configured policies, your settings, and your applications for you automatically.

All headsets used to come through me. And then I would then mail them out again to the right users. No longer. That's a thing of the past. And honestly, that's one of the things that's been best for me personally about scaling XR with an MDM is it automates the parts that you don't want to do. You don't need to be involved in things that are just [INAUDIBLE]. So for that, I'll pass it back to AJ.

AJ LIGHTHEART: Thanks, Chuck. All right, group. Maybe we have the base of our snowman. That snowball continues to build. Let's move into our final section, start to bring this home with the message. So one of the many things that XR does have going for it is that wow factor, that sexy sizzle and spice aspect. And that's good. It will help you get your proverbial foot in the door to start a conversation.

However, where I see firms go wrong is they put all their eggs in that basket. They lean too heavily into the science fiction, that savior element that XR is going to solve all the woes we face in this industry and all the challenges that we have on our projects. And I'm just sitting here telling you today, that's not the case. Now, doing that puts it at a bar that is unattainable, that it will never reach.

So then the question becomes what do we do? Well, I think it comes down to a very simple, open, and honest look at what we do face in this industry. Projects are getting more complex than ever before. There's more people involved. That increases the probability of misunderstandings.

So where XR comes in, and really the heart of the message, is that if we can bring people together from anywhere in the world and put them shoulder to shoulder, we can help them better communicate spatial intent, spatial understanding that can so easily get missed or misunderstood through a 2D screen because even with the likes of clash detection, one, we can all agree that not all clashes are created equal. So how can we go in at one-to-one scale and prioritize them?

But two, some of the items that create the greatest constructability issues aren't even a hard clash at all. It's ADA compliance, throughput, capacity, ergonomics, sightlines-- again, things that we can't fully comprehend from a 2D screen. But if we can put people together shoulder to shoulder-- and even if it is avatar shoulder to shoulder-- we can take what are very complex topics, that is your work, and break it down to the most digestible fundamental level.

So that anyone, whether it be a 20 year professional, whether it be a junior intern at a school, whether it be one of your owners or stakeholders that doesn't have a technical background but we all know they darn sure know what they want, or even if I put my 12-year-old son in there, we can leave crystal clear. You know what I meant. I know what you meant. We can go back to the real world. And we can move the conversation forward. We can move that ball down the field.

So in essence, XR in its purest form, is really just an empathy engine, where all parties can better articulate, advocate for project priorities. And by doing so, we are increasing the probability of achieving the holy grail in this industry-- alignment-- and getting that alignment at a faster clip. That's the message. Use XR as a bridge. Put your twist on it. But know that you have allies on your side along the way. If you do that, you'll be in a very good spot to start small. Jon, over to you.

JON MATALUCCI: Sick, AJ. So allies-- perfect segue. Don't go it alone. Plan to get to know your customer success representatives. Yes, like AJ, they really partner with you. It's not lip service. They want you to succeed and get back to what you do best. Be visible. Chuck lives in Boston. I live in a dirt parking lot known as Phoenix.

But we can fish. I know it sounds silly. But team gaming is a great way to build up familiarity with the tech and each other. Set up a VR mini golf outing at lunch. Invite colleagues to bring home devices into the office. Take 30 minutes on a Friday. Many people already have these devices at home. And they say they game in VR. Encourage team gaming as a gateway to collaborative VR. I've got a couple of reasons and I'll get to that in a minute.

If you're a hardware manager, consider approving a game or two for your teams. Cast your headset to a nearby wall-mounted screen, or maybe even to your own desktop, so that colleagues can see everything you're doing. We look silly sitting in our desks, waving our arms around, talking to ourselves.

So give your office a window into what you're doing. Invite a principal, a colleague, or a key team member to join you in a scheduled session. Make it easy. But get it done. VR XR is cool. But multiplayer is the game changer. Use other productivity tools, like I was showing earlier-- MS Office in VR. An in-use headset is a bazillion times more visible than one sitting on your desk. Next slide, please.

All right. So raise your game within your company. Be visible. Talk it up. Drive adoption. Go from a single headset on your desk to having a conversation with the board of directors in XR. So for reference, Stantec's C-suites all-in on XR. Some have personal gear at home. A few have gear in the office. If you're a leader at your firm, XR is an amazing way to inspire high performance from your teams, deeply inspired by that meeting. Next slide.

So I've got this article up, not just because it was an ultra cool experience, which it was, but to illustrate the interest and the buzz that continues to remain around the business case. Then you're looking to AEC to understand the value proposition that XR products from companies like Meta and Autodesk and others bring. Be visible. Be that voice. Let's continue to grow the market that these amazingly talented companies are working to enable. Chuck?

CHUCK LOUNSBERRY: Thanks, Jon. And I couldn't agree more. It's super important to be visible within your office and within your organization. But it's equally as important to promote XR for your whole industry. The reality is that the more people that are involved, the better it's going to work out for everyone.

Couple key moments here is get the client on board early. Most of the time, the client is footing the bill for your efforts. And most XR solutions have pre-built navigation that is intuitive enough to make it easier for even new users to get in and start right up. If the client buys in and sees value, they'll feel more engaged and more part of the process. And that's great. But they also have the juice to require other subs and other consultants and other vendors to participate.

And to that point, invite sub-consultants and other disciplines. Hell, even invite competitors, if you're into it. So the benefits of the project-- benefits of XR to the project increase when the model is more complete and review meetings have a wider audience.

And then my last point is maybe the most important point is invite non-professionals to the discussion. Again, most XR applications are so very easy to use that people don't have a hard time getting into the headset and enjoying the experience with a little effort. Take advantage of the professional-- of these professionals' knowledge of what the environment you're building is.

We send headsets to hospitals, water treatment plants, oil refineries, police stations, and just about anywhere else that we can find someone with specific user experience that they're willing to share. We get so many great comments about usability and practical efficiencies from people who actually have some experience in the real world with these designs.

So a good example is we were in review for a mid-sized LNG processing facility. And the client had invited-- we invited the client. And he invited some of his operations and management team to come in with him.

We found that one guy who was an older gentleman was focusing on this one particular part of the project. And we went over to him, and in VR, and asked him what he was looking at. He was grabbing this big valve that he's like, this is at belt height. And we said, yeah, we know.

And he said, well, can we raise it to be chest height? Because I have to turn this valve three times a day. And when it's low, it hurts my back. And we were like, yeah, that's a great comment. It costs us nothing to change the height of that now because we were in early design.

But that's the kind of feedback that you don't always get in a design review. There was no conflict or clash. There was no reason for us to look at that as an error. It was all designed to code. And it was consistent with what had been designed before.

But here was a moment, a chance comment, that we found only in XR to make the design better and to move beyond that. The comment was logged, tracked through issue tracking, and now informs the standard details that we use for that client and across that business line because at the end of the day, that's what we want. We want better products for our clients. And again, I'm not trying to build this up to be something it's not. I'm not trying to overinflate the grandioseness of this one comment. But intrinsically, the value is that this information makes our designs stronger.

But it also makes our designers better. Young staff now know that this is an easier way for people to use the facility, which they wouldn't have otherwise known. So when you're looking at adoption, you're looking at scaling. And you're looking at value. No matter how you determine it, a byproduct of having better designers is it can only be a plus. It can only help move the needle when it comes to adoption of XR technology. AJ?