Panel on Digital Twins in Practice: Lessons from Industry-Leading Innovators

ROBERT BRAY: Welcome, everybody. Fantastic to be in person at AU again. I know Andrew said that earlier, but I cannot reinforce that enough. Two years of sitting at a desk with Zoom calls with all of you has been very painful, Very happy to see these gentlemen in person, because I've talked with them a lot and never met them in person until today.

[LAUGHTER]

Here to talk about digital twins. I want to make this a bit more of a pragmatic talk, more an industry talk than a technology talk. But we'll definitely talk about that. I want to point out to you that these guys come from all over the globe, because digital twins are of interest everywhere around the globe. Which is pretty cool.

Kick off with a couple of slides-- our traditional safe harbor. I'm not going to talk about products, so I'm going to skip that. Panelists today-- Jon Williams of BECA, Gert-Jan of Dura Vermeer, and Alex of McCarthy. These guys have been working closely with us, as we've been developing Autodesk Tandem. Very useful to get their insights, but also very useful to hear their industry perspective, which they're going to share today.

I think the big backing story here is really about the continued digital transformation not only of the AEC industry but of the owner ecosystem. Data really being that becoming a defining business asset and technology really starting to unlock the value of that data in new ways. And as we talk to customers, digital twins are really at the heart of business strategies leveraging that data, that technology, for really innovation and business growth.

From Autodesk perspective, as we think about a digital twin, the way we define that-- and I'll do it here for you, because I think it's useful context-- is, we think about a digital twin as a digital replica of a built asset, but the digital-replica part isn't really that important. It provides context. What's important is actually the connection between the physical and the digital-- and a bidirectional connection. Because what that gives the twin is that operational and behavioral awareness necessary to simulate, predict, and inform decisions based on real-world conditions.

More importantly, as we think about digital twins at Autodesk, we see the value of thinking about the built-asset life cycle differently. And we know many of our customers are thinking about this, as well. How do we start to create that digital thread of data, from early stage planning through design, through construction, but then take that thread beyond construction and leverage it beyond handover connecting data for space planning, for maintenance activities, IoT systems, building-management systems, for performance data being able to correlate what is traditionally siloed data and visualize that and interact with that data in new ways and learn from that data?

Two things happen here. In the asset-management life cycle, we can start to compare-- we design this facility to meet these criteria or to hit these sustainability criteria. Am I hitting those or not? And if not, why not? And what can I do to improve that facility, in its operations?

Furthermore, all of that knowledge that you're building helps you plan, design, build better in the future, not only as an owner. But if an AEC firm understood how their buildings actually perform in the real world, think about what they could do on future projects. Very powerful concept.

Autodesk Tandem was started about two and a half years ago. This is really Autodesk's digital-twin offering that I lead. And really, we think about this in two parts-- one, creating that digital thread through plan, design, construction, and taking it beyond handover. This is the idea of digital handover-- or "twin building," as we sometimes refer to it. It's really harnessing the process and the data you create today but giving value to an owner.

These guys are going to talk about this a little bit-- some of the challenges and some of the opportunities, as they see it. What that leads to for an owner and for AEC firms in the future is obviously this rich-data insights. I know we'd launched Tandem about a year ago-- a little over a year ago, now-- talked a lot about digital handover. We are really excited today to announce the next part of Tandem, which is the idea of being able to bring real-time data into Tandem, visualize that-- if any of you have seen Project Dasher in the past, we're bringing that capability to life in Tandem.

And the key in all of this, of course, is repeatability. If every twin is bespoke, which is what we see in the industry today, it's never going to take off and hit scale. So we need to be able to do two parts of this very repeatedly. One is that data creation, that twin creation. And second is the connection to operational data. Both of those things have to be highly repeatable, for this to take off.

You'll see more about these new capabilities, either at our meetup this afternoon or our futures briefing on Thursday. If you're in either of those sessions, you're definitely going to hear a lot more about this. With that, I'm going to hand the clicker to Jon-- let him talk a little bit about his experience.

JON WILLIAMS: OK, thanks, Bob. Firstly, a little bit about myself and BECA. I've come a long way to be here in New Zealand, and it's great to be here in place and face to face to face. We've had a lot of Zoom calls, over the last three years, and it's going to be hard.

BECA is a multidisciplinary design firm. We've been around for just over 100 years. [INAUDIBLE]

CREW: It sounds like it's on full.

JON WILLIAMS: No. It's on. OK, well, I won't touch it again. We operate mainly around the Asia-Pacific region, but we just recently opened up an office in the Netherlands, about a year ago. And that's really focused on the marketing support of some of our digital products.

We've grown organically, over the 100 years, to be just under 4,000 people. So that's quite a growth. And growing organically is good, in some ways, but also creates some challenges. We're very diverse in what we do. And that again has benefits, as it gives us a lot of resilience but also means we have a lot of markets to serve.

Outside of doing my job, I'm quite a passionate road cyclist and cycle tourist. And when we finally got out of a very, very long lockdown, my wife and I jumped on our bikes and rode 2 and 1/2 ks down New Zealand, to just get away from it all-- plan to do the same in the States sometime.

One of my main roles-- I'm the GM of digital transformation in BECA. And that's really looking after what we're doing with our own systems and tools. That's sort of the vision we have for our Digital Transformation group.

Part of the challenge with being so broad is that, every one of our engineering teams and every one of our engineering clients, they all have different desires. They want to use different tools and different platforms. And it'd be so much easier if we said, no, you have to use this one thing. But we have to cater to them all and try to corral all those into a single ecosystem-- has been really what our digital-twin journey has been around.

Before getting specifically on to twins, our wider digital strategy is based around these four headings. Products-- we are an engineering-services business, but we see the benefit of trying to get some money without having to sell time. So we have a number of products we are marketing at the moment. They're at very early stages, but again it's a fun journey.

All of New Services associated with digital-- digital consulting, information management, asset management, a lot of data capture. You can't offer new and exciting services to the outside world without getting your inside world sorted out. So we've had to really improve our own business operations and refresh our entire enterprise stack of software and automation. Any part of the industry we're working in, automation is a key thing. It's key both to stay cost-competitive but, most importantly, to be able to offer our clients far more options. With automation, you look at 10, 20, 30 options. Conventionally, you can only really look at 2 or 3.

Everybody's definition of "digital twin" has three headings. Bob gave his, before. Ours is slightly different. We have a "looks like," "behaves like," and a "connected to" component.

None of this is new. We've been doing "looks like" with models for a long time. "Behaves like" simulations, whether it's seismic performance or thermal performance. And a "connected to." SCADA and BMS has been around a lot longer than the whole cool IoT stuff.

But what I think is new is the bringing this all together under a single platform. But even when you do that, there really has to be a why. And that's why I put that Peter Drucker quote up there. We can't do it just because we can. We have to do it with a real why behind it.

Our view of the digital twin is a product we've developed called FACILITYtwin It's a bit of a working title. We're going through some branding work, at the moment. And really emphasizes--

Those are four screenshots of four things for different clients, and they're all very different. Some clients very much want to see a model. Some want to see a point cloud. Some are quite happy to see a 2D thing.

But they're all just different takes on the same thing. And what we've found is, you can't-- this is a bit contrary to what Bob was saying. We're struggling to find the single, vanilla thing that you can sell to everybody. Everybody wants it a bit different. So it really is around creating an ecosystem that you can configure.

The last step in our journey is with Tandem. We've just started a proof of concept with one of our clients, building Tandem into our FACILITYtwin product. And hopefully, in a few-- maybe at next AU, we can talk about it. That's me.

GERT-JAN DITSEL: So, yeah. Thanks. You saw the small map from Jon. That's the Netherlands. That's where I come from-- a rather [LAUGHS] small country, but I think also an innovative country.

I want to talk to you, first of all, around Dura Vermeer here but also something that we always have to keep in mind. People are more important than technology-- and I can't shout it out enough, so I do, with every presentation that I have. Well, yeah, sitting like here, you folks are mainly the engine who drives digital transformation but also solutions like this. Let me explain more.

We're a family-owned company in existence of 168 years-- so, a long history. And the fifth generation is on the throne, let's say-- Job Dura. So-- yeah? There's Dura Vermeer, and Job Dura is still the owner of the company.

We do around $1.6 billion. We do only business in Netherlands. That's where Job-- his rule is, don't go out of the boundary of the Netherlands. But there is work enough for us, as you can see, with 2,700 employees.

But what Job also always keeps in mind-- he has to have a long-term goal. So he wants to have an existence of another 168 years and, on top of that, another one. So you can imagine that he is also playing around with looking into the future. And that's my role.

So I'm blessed with a role to look in the future. That's why I'm here. And that's why I also connected to Rob and digital twinning and the team, and it's fantastic adventure that we have with Tandem and looking at the products, yeah, doing stuff with the products is just an awesome journey, so far. So, thanks, Autodesk and also Rob for having us.

Yeah-- long-term goal. But also customer-centric. So if you don't have customers, you don't have projects, you don't have turnover, you don't have a company. What we did is, our digital transformation that we had-- I think it began in 2009, 2010-- sniffling on BIM and what is 3D modeling and what is Revit, I think you all can agree that everybody has that journey after-- [LAUGHS] in the history of the company. But what I found out, in all that time that I'm with Dura Vermeer now-- and that's now nine years-- is that we actually do nothing with those models after we are finished as a general contractor. So I was very curious what Tandem could bring. And so far it's been a great journey.

Yeah. People-centric, client-centric. And what we do is-- we do this with our colleagues. And our colleagues are also the engine that drives innovation, in our company. So we have a lot of people and employees who can drive themselves also forward in innovation. But mainly, they are the key users of the organization.

So I want to point out that I'm not doing this on my own. We have also fantastic colleagues who I collaborate with. But I'm representing now, but also I'm going to talk, I think, in the questions about [INAUDIBLE] he's a contract manager for the hospital.

What kind of hospital? We took on this hospital. It's a hospital that we recently built, did the handover, and then got a contract of maintain-and-operate for 25 years.

And then we were like, OK, and what are we going to do right now? So we are not totally into maintain-and-operate, so it was completely new business. But it is also because of the technology and all the models that we have around that hospital that made us start from, OK, it can be a new offering that we are going to give to our clients. But I think that discussion will also come up with the questions we are having.

So, taking care of our customers, but also, if you look at those six boxes that I-- check-boxes that I said-- so, Single Source of Truth, Sustainability, IoT, and also Learn from the Building Data. But I'm not going to repeat the awesome stories that Rob and Jon told.

So [INAUDIBLE]. And this is some screenshots of our digital twin right now. So everything's in. If you zoom in, it's-- yeah. It's great, of course, [LAUGHS] what's all in the model. If you look at the way from, wow, what we are not going to do with the model, and it just sits there, it-- yeah, it's a pity. So-- hand it over.

ALEX BELKOFER: All right. Thank you, gentlemen. Alex Belkofer, with McCarthy Building Companies. A pleasure, Bob, for having me join you guys here on stage, representing McCarthy.

So, if you guys do not know who we are, we're a national builder, general contractor, construction manager, design builder, focused primarily in five regions of the United States. So we're not international, just based here in the US. McCarthy is a 160 plus year old GC, employee owned. And my focus for the organization is to help drive virtual design and construction strategies, both in my region as well as across the company.

I'm an operations person by trade, so I was not a tech person entering the industry. So most of my lens comes from the project-management, construction-operations side of the business. And I've worked with a number of owners, over the years, helping them to craft things like BIM standards, drive an understanding of how facility data and leveraging BIM as their tool can help drive downstream value. So that will be my context for today

Just a real quick-- this is a day in the life for me. We all wear different hats. I think we're all used to that, in our technology and operational career pathways. So a big part of what I'm doing daily is trying to optimize project delivery with these tools.

A term that we like to say, here at McCarthy, is we're big promoters of what we call "integrated virtual building." Which is really just the practice of VDC but really promoting that to all stakeholders and really promoting this idea that we can truly virtually build before we physically build. And that takes place throughout the project life cycle, all the way from plan through design construction into the operational stage. And then really just doing what we're doing here today, which is just promoting, training, and guiding folks to helping to realize how you can do this in your organization and share our perspectives.

The one thing that I like to always start with-- and you led it with people, which is always a good thread, is that it all begins with the people in this room. But I use my "holy trinity of design and construction" slide, right here, to show that the tethering of these three things is really the impetus of what we do in the organization, from a virtual-design-construction perspective. This, to me-- you have to have this, to do digital twin. It's very hard to do that without it.

So we start here. And then the Virtual Design and Construction group at McCarthy starts to tie together both the technical and the human aspect of what do we want the digital twin to be. Bob uses the word "bespoke." I like that word, because we're trying to move to a new stage of that, where bespoke becomes standard operating procedure. But we have to meet people where they are, so they can understand what a digital twin can be, and then help craft that for what their needs are.

So in order to do that, the three pieces of the equation that I like to help people put together is that, if BIM is our tool and level of development or LOD is our language, our common language that we're going to speak, how can virtual design and construction drive a process that gets us to that digital twin? So from that point, we have to start working on a number of things together. And that is, meeting people where they're at, with what their business needs and their challenges are, and then putting together a schema or a pathway to get to where we want them to be, which inevitably is a functioning digital twin.

So to that point, what does that look like across the project life cycle? This is a slide I like to use. It just shows how we build upon a digital twin, starting from the planning stage. And there's important components to get there.

You know, we talk about BIM execution planning, just purely from, I feel like, a modeling standpoint. But that really is the impetus to get to the digital twin. So looking at it throughout that project life cycle, if we do all these things in sequence and we do these things together, we'll be able to get to that digital twin-- that timely handover of reliable, meaningful data-- and then start to put a program in place that lives on past the keys being handed over to our facility-operations personnel.

So a wise man once told me-- and probably some of you guys may know Chuck [? Neiss-- ?] early in my career, when I first met him, he said, there's three key data questions every owner should ask. It still resonates today as much as it did 17 years ago, for me. And those three questions are--

"What data do you want?" So, understand the data challenge that we're trying to solve. "Who is going to use that said data?" Let's make sure we're putting a solution in place that can be achievable for the end users. And then "Hose will that data be received and maintained?" If we don't have accurate data that is maintained, then our efforts could be for naught.

So in order to get to that digital-twin utopia, we have to answer those three questions. And if we can't answer those, then we're probably fooling ourselves.

So one thing that I usually do, in our user workshops, is, these are three components that are critical to moving on for the next steps of digital twin, which is-- clear data standards and requirements will then yield meaningful pathways and vehicles to exchange said data, and then we can determine the data package. I oftentimes just see people jump to the third bullet, and you can't do that without understanding the first two or having clarity around that.

So, lots of user roundtable discussions, lots of meetings with like-minded folks that want to get to digital twin. These are just three components that I like to share with the audience, as we look to try to do more of this.

So just a couple of quick tangible examples, and I'll hand it over to Bob. "Digital twin" can mean many things to many people, as Bob mentioned, in that bespoke nature.

So here's just a couple examples of some clients that have chosen to define what that digital twin is for the organization, using this as a baseline and then being able to build on that as we kind of showed in the project life cycle. If we start with BIM, if we start with good understandings and requirements, where can it go? One owner-- in this case, a higher-education client-- wanted to really leverage reality capture. We recently built a parking structure for this client. And they said, well, we want to potentially do something else with this facility in future years.

This facility had a lot of detailed structural requirements, a lot of post-tension cable-- and, not to mention, we buried it in the ground 80 feet. So how do we get back to that data, in a future state? Reality capture was one of those mediums. And this was a good place to start with them. Obviously a lot of robust BIM deliverables, but the reality-capture component is going to yield results for them that may be well beyond our years.

Second example, here, is just really doing something that's not super common, which is site-utility digital twin, being able to really do a true, as-built verification and documentation of conditions that, once again, we may never see unless they're daylighted. So this is just an example of a very extensive site-utility project that we did in St. Louis, where we fully coordinated in 3D both existing and new utilities, but also we back-checked, and we did a lot of as-built verification.

So, leveraging the model as a datum and as a point collector for future opportunities to connect this to their campus ecosystem. This university is a 200 plus year old campus-- so, lots of unknowns that we found, lots of new stuff put in. This is just an example of taking that to the next level.

And then the third one, of course, and where we're working with Bob and the Autodesk team, is one of our clients-- a health-care client, as well, in St. Louis-- that is trying to look at things in a very specific way. In this case, our partners at Mercy really wanted to zero in on something very, very specific, which is life-safety standards and life-safety data. While the model element is cool-- back in 2019, we helped them achieve a BIM standard and a schema of data that was going to be consistent on their campuses, moving forward, something they've been wanting to do and endeavored for years to do but just hadn't quite gotten there.

So yes, while this platform is going to provide some great visualization opportunities, the real advantage for them is to be able to quickly drill down and validate life safety, back-check their compliance with their different organizations that they have to maintain ratings and in compliance with, and being able to take this next step, which is the idea of being able to do some more of the simulations do some more of the analysis.

So, just some great examples. We're really excited about what we're doing with Bob and the team. And I'll kick it back over to you.

I guess the last thing I'll leave you with-- our path forward, here, is these are some opportunities for the future state, where you guys can help engage, cater, leverage the industry, create some goals, and just pick a place. These three clients, as an example, started somewhere.

So that's my leaving point, before I hand over to Bob, is, start somewhere.

ROBERT BRAY: Thanks, guys, that was fantastic, as I expected. We're going to do two things. We're going to have a little bit of a discussion. I've got some questions for these guys, but also I bet this room has questions. So there will be an opportunity for you guys to ask questions, as well. As you think about that, I'll start the first one and kick forward just a little bit.

One of the things we've spent a lot of time thinking about and working with these guys and other customers on is, what's a workflow for creating a twin? And I'm just not going to walk through this, because I don't want to spend that time on it. But if you think about it, there is a process. That data specification, very early, is very important.

What data does the owner need? How are you going to get it? Who's going to deliver it? How are you going to set up that facility? How are you going to break down all that data? How are you going to get all that data in through the design-and-construction process, validate it, do that exchange at the end, and transition that into operations? --is all kind of critical steps in the journey.

And so we continue to refine this, over time. We continue to build these capabilities as we go. And it's pretty important that we think about this as a life-cycle tool for the data as you go. That is a really important part of this.

And I guess you guys kind of touched on this a little bit, but what is the thing that is motivating the three of you, as really AEC firms, to think about digital twins and delivering digital twins? Alex, why don't you take that first?

ALEX BELKOFER: Sure. What I find motivating is that there are more clients willing to entertain the conversation now than ever before. They're seeing things at conferences. They're hearing their peers talk about things. They're seeing their own data challenges. And they're finally realizing that, hey, if I can ask for this up front And help my project teams understand where I believe there's value, how can we achieve that together? In that first bucket, there, that's specifying those data requirements. Having that conversation at the impetus of a project, having that conversation at the time of kickoff, owners are starting to realize they can have the data and they can have the things that they've wanted for years, just by bringing the right people to the table. So that, to me, is what's most exciting and encouraging, is that the value's there; we just have to curate it and extract it and put it together.

ROBERT BRAY: That's great. Jon?

JON WILLIAMS: I think digital twins are sort of like what BIM was eight years ago. Everybody wanted some but didn't know what it was. And you spoke about the [INAUDIBLE] at conferences. And I think the journey we've been on is that a lot of our clients are asking for these things but they don't really know what and, more importantly, why they're going to be out of it.

Most of our client base we've been engaging with have been on the industrial or utility side, as opposed to the commercial building side, so that the story is a little bit different. And they usually have a reasonable amount of old and aged data. But what we're seeing now is, by allowing them to leverage that data in a more accessible way is creating new conversations. And those new conversations are creating new opportunities for us to go in and do new and different work and talk to different parts of the organization--

Like health and safety. All of a sudden, we're developing health-and-safety briefing packets that are done virtually as opposed to taking someone down at the shop floor to do it. So it's a whole bunch of different conversations but, again, a new business.

ROBERT BRAY: Gert-Jan?

GERT-JAN DITSEL: Yeah I think-- I don't know if this is an English translation, but "the knife cuts on both sides." Is that-- yeah? OK. It's the same in Dutch, then.

[LAUGHTER]

So yeah, I think, from our perspective, it's the road to go forward within the digital transformation. So let's say, it's the next step, which is also what Jon mentioned.

And I think the second is taking care of our clients. Like they are-- they have such a challenge, for operating and maintaining those buildings. I think it makes sense to also-- yeah.

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

GERT-JAN DITSEL: --yeah, take care of them. Yeah.

ROBERT BRAY: Sorry-- logistics. Thanks. Thanks for that. There's a couple of things that, in all of our customer conversations, we hear time and time again. And one of those is really a lack of clarity around an owner's data requirements. We hear that consistently. Alex, you talked about that a little bit, workshopping. But often what we see is, capital teams put out the project requirements without ever talking to their facility-management team about what the data requirements are for downstream operations. You guys build things, toss it over the wall or fence, and then they have to pick up the documentation and try and figure out how to operate the facility, based on whatever you guys have in your submittal documents, et cetera.

So that's one challenge that we hear all the time. The other thing is, we hear a lot of data inconsistency. So an asset tag that's in the model doesn't match the asset tag that is maybe captured in the field when that asset is procured, installed, commissioned-- maybe doesn't match the asset tag that might be in their FM system. So dealing with those data-consistency issues is a pretty big challenge, as well. So I guess, from your perspectives, what can be done to improve one or both of those challenges? And Jon, maybe we'll start with you this time.

JON WILLIAMS: Yeah. Late last year, we got certified to ISO 19650-- which you might think, oh, well, that's the answer. But it's actually a plan to have a plan. It creates a structure around having a conversation. But if you don't have those conversations, nothing goes forward. You've just got a lot of forms to fill in.

And what we've seen is that, by having the structure to have those conversations with your clients, you can start getting some learnings from other clients and passing those on through the industry and starting to create a bit of consistency. And I think, things like the ISOs, they need to be moving to the next step and actually providing actual templated data schemas that are applicable to industries. Because starting from scratch every time just takes too long.

ROBERT BRAY: Thanks. Gert-Jan?

GERT-JAN DITSEL: Yeah, I think I'd like to set an example. So what happened is, Ruth is my colleague, and Ruth is a contract manager. So he takes care for the client to do the operating and maintaining of that hospital. If something breaks, like a door handle, 9 of the 10 times he phones our side manager, who run the project, phones him up and says, yo, Alex, the door handles-- where do they come from? And he will say, Manufacturer A.

And then Ruth will phone Manufacturer A and say, hey, you did the door handles for the hospital project. Oh, yeah, yeah. What kind of door handle is it? And so it's a manual process. And I'm not quite sure if it is the same internationally, but I can imagine it is.

So the information, the entry, like, what kind of entry you choose is, like-- now it's human-based. I don't know if that makes sense, but it would be awesome that the digital twin is your entry of your information. So looking it up, clicking on the door handle, saying, hey, this manufacturer did that-- and yes, we can do that in a BIM model, but yeah, then, all of a sudden, you were in the specify thing, and if nobody mentioned, hey, put down the manufacturer in the manufacturer-instance field, and-- yeah, it isn't in. So, yeah.

So that's my example. And maybe some recognition in the [INAUDIBLE].

ALEX BELKOFER: Back to that idea of that early kind of workshop-- I call it the "data-discovery meetings"-- those are critical here, because you can have a great data standard, you can have a great schema template, you can have all these things that have been created and hand that to your project team and say, this is what I want, but that intentional conversation, oftentimes, I've found, yields-- our own clients internally are not aligned on what they want. And that may not be anyone's fault, per se, but just having the right people in the room to have that unified conversation, I have found, time and time again, has yielded very meaningful results, just because you were in the room to have the conversation, not just, here's my 17-page standard. Please go follow this. There was a meaningful, human-based conversation that ultimately yielded, we need this data at this time, and we're going to check it together so that we don't just toss this over the fence and maybe we get what we want, maybe we don't.

There's still very much a human-based transaction there. And I think that's where we, as an industry, have to get better-- is, meet people where they are, which is at the beginning, together, and stay together-- be that digital and human thread, throughout the course of this digital-twin endeavor. Otherwise, we will have varying results, and it will be bespoke, as Bob mentioned.

ROBERT BRAY: In those conversations, Alex-- I'm just going to add to that question, quickly-- do they always include somebody from the capital team, as well as the facilities-management team, of that owner or--

ALEX BELKOFER: Not always, but they should.

ROBERT BRAY: You have to encourage that.

ALEX BELKOFER: And what I've found is, in different organizational structures, there are facets and groups of people that don't normally talk to each other. Which then could be a missed opportunity. And so we are very intentional with making sure PD&C, Facilities, IT, Real Estate-- any of those organizational subgroups-- really are coming to that table, so they can have a voice. Right? Because at the end of the day, if you're creating a digital twin and it was only serving one of the nine operating groups, are we really achieving the full possibilities?

ROBERT BRAY: Yeah. Just to build on that-- Tim and I were meeting with a customer recently-- had a chance to sit down with their facility-operations team. And basically they said to us, they don't trust a thing that comes out of the design and construction, as far as data goes. And they build and manage a lot of facilities. And they don't trust any of the data. They basically have to go validate every piece of data, once the facility's done. It's usually six, often nine, months for that facility to be operational, post handover. That is, in my view of the world, insane, by the way.

Are there any questions out there for these guys or for me or these guys? Anybody want to come up and brave a question?

AUDIENCE: Yeah, I have a question.

ROBERT BRAY: Yeah, come on up to the mic, please.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

[LAUGHTER]

AUDIENCE: Hello.

ROBERT BRAY: This is karaoke time.

[LAUGHTER]

AUDIENCE: You guys said that, for the digital twin or the data transformation happening from design to construction and then the handover stage-- correct? So, while we are dealing with customer, we have seen that, design stage, facilities-management teams are not coming. So how you can ensure that data could be started from design stage? And how all the people come across the board, and they could convince, and they could start digital twin from the beginning?

Because the endpoint is the facilities-management operation part. Correct? But while we start the design, these all are not coming together. And this question might be a big question, but how could you eliminate this all kind of gaps, and we can all together start from the design stage? Is it good question, or-- I'm not sure.

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

ROBERT BRAY: It's a great question.

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

ALEX BELKOFER: Very relevant.

ROBERT BRAY: It's at the heart of, really, all of our conversations.

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

JON WILLIAMS: The capital-works team and facilities-management team battle has been going on way before digital started.

[LAUGHTER]

The capital-projects team want it quick and fast. The FM team want it to last forever. What I think this is doing-- it is promoting those conversations. It's giving you a reason to have those conversations. And if you can use it as an excuse to get these groups together that haven't talked for the last three decades, use it. Even if you don't get a digital twin at the end, get people talking. That's the cool thing.

AUDIENCE: And if you don't know the data, where is the data? And the general contractor also finding where is the data.

ALEX BELKOFER: Yes. Well, but even before that though, the owner needs a data champion. There needs to be someone that is promoting this and wants this. What I have found successful is that owners that can give one person or empower one person to be that connection between those operating groups and say, we're going to give you this opportunity, or you're going to be our champion-- go forth and achieve this-- we can then do our great work together. Everybody in this room gets it or wants to be part of the solution, but we need our clients to have that champion.

ROBERT BRAY: By the way, that should sound really familiar, because that's exactly what had to happen, 10 to 15 years ago, with BIM. In AEC firms, there had to be a technology champion for BIM. We need the same thing on the owner side of the fence-- a data-technology champion that understands the challenges, understands the opportunity, and can shepherd this. And I do think that's really critical.

GERT-JAN DITSEL: So, maybe to elaborate on-- I totally agree with all the gentlemen's talk about, we turn it also around. So we as Dura Vermeer took on the challenge to have 25 years of operate-and-maintain and helping our clients. And underwater, my goal is to prove that a digital twin is working better than all your solutions that you have as a client. And I'm not quite sure if I'm going to make it, but--

[LAUGHTER]

--anywhere in years, [LAUGHS] I'm definitely going to make it. But yeah, I don't know if that answers your question.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

GERT-JAN DITSEL: But sometimes you have to grab the gloves and go fight, yourself.

ROBERT BRAY: That was a great question. Are there other questions out there? You want to brave the mic?

AUDIENCE: I have a list.

ROBERT BRAY: Oh!

GERT-JAN DITSEL: "I have a list"?

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

[LAUGHTER]

AUDIENCE: So right now my organization's in the incremental delivery phase. And I'm wondering, with the digital twin, it's such a big thing to deliver. And I've already been on it for a year and a half. I expect it's going to be another year in the incremental phase. And from there I'll begin hand-off and transition.

Of course, the CEO says, what can we deliver now? So how do I find some of those short-term deliverables that I can give to him, to help push that forward?

ROBERT BRAY: I'm going to start on that. And I'll let these guys chime in. But I would say, be pragmatic. Start small. Right? The smallest win knocks down that first bowling pin, which gets you to the next one. So pick a particular problem that that owner has, that you have or the owner has. Start there-- might be just finding the data they need. Right?

We were talking to-- an example of this, by the way, is, we were talking to a retail owner. And if they have a certain number of accidents, because the floor tile is slippery, they need to know where they have that tile installed in all their retail outlets. Today, they go survey every store. If they could ask a digital twin that question, how much time and money could they save? That's a lot.

And that's a simple question to answer. It doesn't require connection to operational systems-- doesn't require anything-- just requires good, clean data. So start small, would be my advice. Guys?

JON WILLIAMS: Another take on starting small-- start simple. You don't need a huge model. You don't need a huge point cloud. You can start with a 360-degree photograph.

So if you've got a bit of facility, take a 360-degree photograph. Come up with a way with tagging the assets in it so someone can actually look around, tag on the asset, and link it to some data or some information. That's something you can deliver in weeks or days, not months and things.

And it starts the conversation. It says, oh, now I understand what you're getting at, here. Can you do this? Can you do this? And it just opens up the whole conversation. When they know what the output's going to be makes setting the input and the data requirements a bit simpler when they can sort of visualize how it's going to be used in the end.

GERT-JAN DITSEL: Yeah. I think I have nothing to add to the practical part. In the hospital, we only do the doors. So that's it. And we are responsible for the doors and many other things. But with Tandem, and especially with the Autodesk team and [INAUDIBLE], he helps us a lot from, OK, begin small, begin with a door. You know, a door has a handle, has a door stop, has a swing. So, yeah. Begin there. And begin small. That's-- nothing to add, there.

ALEX BELKOFER: Yeah I would just go back to the data-champion thing. Like, find that champion, and then get their testimonial. Because what's moved the needle for us is that we have the end user saying, yes, this drove value. Here's the value that it drove. You want to use this quote, go for it.

But they're going to keep coming back for more. So find that person and get their validation that what you're doing is valuable.

AUDIENCE: So that actually brings me into my next question. And just for a little context, I'm in construction, manufacturing, and installation. So we kind of have three industries that we're bridging. And as far as, like you said, finding something where we can start small, that's something that we have done. So we have tagged a picture of some different equipment that's there. It gets complicated.

And then I bridge into my next question, which applies more to the organization with 2,700 employees under it, being that, when you have that conversation with your lead stakeholders-- so I'll do the same thing, where I'll bring in a representative from each different group and hold those conversations and get that conversation going. And then, of course, the same thing happens, every time-- that you start to deliver that, and the boss or the department head doesn't have time to do those daily meetings, so they assign a subleader to help work with you.

And then scope change [LAUGHS] and scope creep comes out, to present its ugly head. So [LAUGHS] how do you deal with the scope creep that comes when you get to the next layer down of leadership that's more hands-on with the people?