Right Sizing Digital Transformation

DAVID BANYARD: Welcome, everyone to Right Sizing Digital Transformation. My name is David Banyard. I am going to make this panel a discussion, so I'm hoping that all of you will get involved and bring anything that you'd like to us.

A lot of what we'll be talking about today, each of these customers that are represented, a lot of what they're doing in digital transformation is not discussable because it's stuff that they want to keep secret until it comes to the public. So we're going to talk about some things in different ways to make it so that they don't get in trouble with their customers. But also, we'll try to show you what use cases are possibly around, so that you can understand how you might want to go at these topics and how you might want to make your companies move closer to wherever you want to be with tech and with how you are doing your work out in the world.

So my name is David Banyard. I am a principal business consultant at Autodesk. I've been there just about two and a half years. I came from working at places like WeWork, Clark Construction, Skanska, Perkins and Will. I'm an architect by training, but I've worked on the owner side. I've worked on construction. I've worked in design side. So I've seen a lot of different things over my career. And I use those things to help me help any of you with doing different things within your companies, making things happen with software, when it doesn't want to do what you want it to do, when you expect it to do it.

I am in San Francisco, but we have consultants all over the world. And we'll talk more about what we do in consulting. And then talk more about my panel here. So my panel consists of Stephen Brooke, Shaun Walford, and Aaron Phillips.

Each of their companies are Enterprise companies, which means that when they sign up for their Enterprise contracts, that allows for them to have different things happen with other parts of Autodesk, like consulting, and special benefits to being a large spender at Autodesk.

So Stephen Brooke, he's with Burns & Mcdonnell. We've been working together on a lot of different types of projects. And I'll let him explain exactly what he does at Burns & Mcdonnell. Here's Shaun Walford. He's based out of South Africa. And we've been working on some great projects all over the world and really late calls on all different time zones. And Aaron Phillips, with Jacobs, he's the guru of everything, I think. And I think he'll be able to give a great perspective on a lot of what we hope to show you about digital transformation.

So what is digital transformation? It could, to many of you, be moving through the tech stack. Sometimes it's about moving stuff from server to the cloud. Sometimes it's about how you change from doing line-based design to object-based or database-based design.

Sometimes it's about bringing in automation and machine learning, and converting your business into something that allows for you to get more data and then feed that data to all types of projects. And give it to your owners and just get services. So digital transformation can mean a lot of things to a lot of different people. And depending on what department you're doing it in, you can have very different outcomes and very different ways that you might want to apply it.

So now we're going to hear from each of the companies that we've invited to this panel. And then we'll go into some questions that I have for them about why they did what they did and how they're getting to what they consider digital transformation in their firms.

STEPHEN BROOKE: So, awesome.

DAVID BANYARD: Go ahead.

STEPHEN BROOKE: Yeah, so I'm Stephen Brooke from Burns & Mcdonnell. I'm the current digital delivery manager for our global facilities business line. I've been at Burns & Mac for 16 years with experience in Revit, BIM management, BIM coordination. In the last nine years, I've been working with our construction arm to get an understanding of how construction works from pre-con all the way through close out, hand over to owners and clients. And then handling VDC management of our subcontractors, the models that are subs give us, to make sure that we're coordinated out in the field, handling RFI submittals, et cetera.

Currently, right now, I'm working on developing ACC workflows to better integrate our in-house EPC design projects. A lot of the work that we do in global facilities is all mostly design build. So we work hand in hand with our construction folks. And so, for the digital transformation a lot of our focus has been to seamlessly bring those two units together and utilize the Revit, and the ACC, and the Build platform to better execute that work.

We've also done some other work with automation in some of our other divisions, such as our transmission and distribution group. So we've been able to automate design of our cell phone tower structures and take a lot of man hours out of the replication, the cookie-cutter process of creating those drawings and those systems.

And then we've also, in working with Autodesk, have automated and come up with some stuff to help with computational fluid dynamics that allows our engineers to cloud-base process exhaust stacks for data centers, making sure that we're not recycling exhaust air in with the intake air, water fluids within components of a processor system.

From GFS, we've been working primarily on a pilot project with ACC. And everything that we've been learning here at AU this year about digitization, the transformation-- and this is our pilot project. And I spearheaded this one with our consulting services from Autodesk to really leverage our workflows from Procore and translate those into the Build platform. And from there, we've been able to really streamline and really have some great discussions about how we evolve our job trailer of the future, essentially. So that's been what we've been up to for the digital transformation side recently.

DAVID BANYARD: Shaun.

SHAUN WALFORD: Yeah, hi, everyone. As David said, my name is Shaun Walford, based out of our South African office, working with our-- mainly with our Middle East team for the last few years, with David and a couple of other people. Actually stepping into a new role going forward, helping our Enterprise capabilities teams, overseeing our buildings and places business line. Just to bring some automation, digital change from transformation, other bits and pieces like that into many offices that we work in around the world. And that, obviously, comes with its own challenges.

So I think the best way of explaining what I've been doing with David and a couple of other guys from Autodesk over the last few months is just a couple slides that we put together. So obviously, AECOM is quite a large company, with offices all over the world. And obviously, my wheelhouse is not necessarily in the top one there, where I've put corporate digital transformation. I'm not impacting that. That's set by some other people in the business.

There's regional and business line digital transformation. I get involved there. And then you've, obviously, got team and individual digital transformation, where each one of us and other users would get involved on a daily basis. And where all three of those overlap, we end up with the whole company having digital transformation. But for me, specifically, especially with our Middle East teams on the projects that I've been working on, regional, and individual, and team digital transformation. And that's what I will speak to a bit today.

So one of the other things we were looking at was, well, for our teams we're not necessarily doing digital transformation for everyone. Everybody's at a different point. And we need all four of those things that you see on the screen to help us.

So are we just doing some digitization? Are we just doing digital innovation? Are we going full digital transformation and completely going 180 degrees in the other direction to take the business in a different direction? Or is it just somebody who's encouraged to do something on their own? And obviously, each one of those has a time and a personal investment in those, where they are in that train of thought.

So that's-- if we can just jump to the next slide. So one way to explain it would be-- I stole this from one of the other guys in the office, but that's fine-- so Koenigsegg is, obviously, a car manufacturer. They make a few cars a year, pretty much by hand, very slow process, very specific, like to order, effectively. And that's sometimes what we do on every project. And I think a lot of companies do sometimes on every project, we hand build everything. We start it from the beginning every single time.

But if you took Tesla's as another example, something like 80% of the vehicles are the same. You can change the color. You can change maybe what the wheels look like and what the interior color is, but pretty much the rest of the car is the same. So it's easy to roll it off the production line. You can make a lot more.

And so when we're looking at digital transformation, we're wanting to say, well, how do we take where we are now into that-- if we want to box it. So again, working with Autodesk, we've been looking at how we set standards and things that enable us to do that-- to repeat the 80% and only change the 20%.

Yeah, so if you just jump to the next one. Thanks. So just, again, I sat down with-- obviously, I can't tell you about the projects we're working on, but I certainly can tell you what we're thinking about when we look at what we're doing. So is what we're doing scalable? Is it consistent? Are we over-complicating things for teams?

Are we going to get team engagement? Are there software limitations to what we're trying to do? And what is the skill set and capability of our teams? Those are-- so when we sit with Autodesk and work something out, or we-- some other people in our teams, we take those factors into consideration when we're trying to roll something out.

Because there's not-- if it's not scalable, is it really worth doing? If it's too complicated, maybe somebody else isn't going to be able to replicate it. Are we actually going to get team engagement? I think we all know that that's sometimes a problem.

Software limitations could be a broad range of different things, not necessarily just your computer, but there's a whole lot of issues. And then, obviously, again, AECOM being a really large company, we do have a turnover of staff, and skill sets change, and you want to replicate what you're doing.

So I hope that explains what we've been doing in the digital transformation front. And when we look at our projects, those are the things that we are factoring in. And so, I think when we answer some questions, I'll probably refer back to those.

DAVID BANYARD: I've got some more questions for you soon.

SHAUN WALFORD: Perfect.

AARON PHILLIPS: I'm Aaron Phillips. I'm the Director of Digital Delivery for our Life Sciences North America business unit. I'm actually fairly new to the Jacobs world. I started last November at the end of the year, but have enjoyed a great team building exercise in building out my team for life sciences. We've got 28 folks on staff now that make up our digital delivery family.

Previously, I spent the first 16 years of my professional career on the multi-discipline design side, supporting-- as an architect at a college, working on architectural teams, and then ultimately, supporting the transition from CAD to BIM, becoming a BIM director, an IT director as well. I know that sometimes is a little scary for some.

But then also, switched to the dark side, or the light side, about nine years ago, depending on who's in the room right now. So I switched to the construction side nine years ago, where it was focused really heavily on prefabrication, a lot of health care design, and looking at advanced manufacturing techniques. Got a chance to help spin up a manufacturing plant for our construction company, where we were doing a lot of offsite prefabrication around exterior wall systems, interior wall systems, rack systems, all sorts of stuff, and looking at how to get that into the field quicker.

So it's been great having that diverse approach to my career path. It's given me a lot of exposure to a lot of different concepts and ideas that I've been able to bring into the Jacobs world and try to leverage those on really different scoped projects. The scale and size of the projects and the complexity of the projects that we do is vast and tremendous.

Life sciences, for us, is a lot of big pharmaceutical manufacturing around the world. So having projects in Denmark, and Milan, and in China as well, as well as the US. And trying to provide a consistent approach to how we're executing those projects is really what is driving us on our digital transformation path. And being able to leverage those ideas on the big projects has been tremendous.

Because I think that when I stepped into my role, it's vastly different than when I started our digital transformation back in 2004, 2005, on the design side. When I first got into it, people were eager when I got to Jacobs. People were craving the level of engagement to help push the conversation forward. And I think that that's always been an important aspect of what we do, is build our people.

And I think that we've been able to successfully repurpose folks within the Jacobs family that were maybe going down a slightly different path and gave them an opportunity to see what digital delivery was. And we've also been able to bring in some fresh ideas from outside of Jacobs to help build that team. But we're always focused on the people that we work with. Because ultimately, it doesn't matter, the tools, they tend to change and adjust on a fairly regular basis.

So it's a digital transformation of the people, I think, and getting upskilled, and getting used to the rapid pace of change, I think that sometimes is where a lot of folks struggle, is how quickly we have to adjust. And the difference between being flexible and being agile, not just being able to adjust, but being able to adjust quickly, and really focused on that delivery system.

My group, itself, we actually divided it up into several different teams so that we could answer a lot of the questions that our teams had at that point in time. So actually, I have a projects team that is focused on the actual day-to-day operations of projects-- spatial coordinators, project managers, folks that are helping digitally collaborate with everybody on a team, and connecting the dots from early design into construction, and then, ultimately, into turnover.

I also have a group that's working on integrations and data analytics. And really, it's finding all the pieces and parts that exist in that digital ecosystem, and finding ways to leverage the data, and take what we're doing at the beginning of the design and transforming that information that we're collecting into data, and then, ultimately, into wisdom and knowledge for the project teams.

I also have an integrated design team that is looking at how our engineering and software support is working on a process and piping side with our other disciplines, and trying to find ways to execute better and be more data centric in our design-- design processes. And then we have some construction folks, some visualization, so AR/VR type of activities.

But I think the one thing that we have been able to show is a path of getting a lot of people spun up and engaged on projects and initiatives, while still maintaining billable rates and executing on those projects. And being able to push the various initiatives through that. The one promise I made to our operations team when I first stepped into the role was that we were not going to put the burden of implementation of figuring things out onto our already overburdened operations team.

There's not a project that we work on anymore that is slower than it used to be or staffed with more people than it used to be. Everything's continually getting leaner, getting quicker. And that speed to market aspect is so important. So making our operations teams feel like they're supported and feel like they have someone that's going to help them on that journey and mentor them through the process has been critical to a lot of the success that we have had so far.

And we're also starting to connect the dots outside of our business units. One of the additional roles that I've been able to take on in the last actually month and a half is helping with the Autodesk relationship, and being able to get in a lead role to help drive the connections with the various business units around the globe, and find out the different pain points and the different issues that we're having, and have solutions for those problems.

I think that many times along the path at the various companies I've worked at we have a solution, or sometimes a shiny toy, that we get. And then we go and hunt for a problem to solve with that solution. And I think it's important to flip that and identify problems, identify your flows, your workflows, your processes. And then find the solution for that and help get that in our team's hands before they need it.

So it's a bit of just in time delivery from that perspective, with our solutions. But I think it's really allowing us to really aggregate a bunch of different ideas, and concentrate on those that have the biggest impact, and drive that change to our operations teams.

DAVID BANYARD: That's great. I really appreciate that you all could give us your perspective on what you guys are doing and how it's affecting you throughout the changes that you want to see. Because obviously, as you're new into a place or something like that, you see the change that you want to do because you came from somewhere else, you have a different perspective.

Now I'm going to give a little definition of what is Autodesk Consulting. We are part of the customer success organization. We are not necessarily sales related. And I'm sure some of you have sat in a Zoom room with some Autodesk people and ended up having a lot more Autodesk people than there were of you in that room, on Zoom especially right now. Sometimes, in person is not quite that way. So you know that there's a lot of different departments.

But with Autodesk Consulting, we are-- for one thing, we are about giving you a solution. And it doesn't have to be about our software. It doesn't have to be about necessarily our technology. What it does-- what we do help you to do is to strategize and find a solution for whatever it is that will meet your business outcomes and that will help you get to where you need to be to deliver whatever products you have.

So we have people all over the world that are subject matter experts in every single industry. A person like me, that's worked in two of those different industries, as far as design, construction, even in the M&E world, on movies and stuff like that, I can bring a lot of different perspectives to problems, where I can bring something out of the box for something, for applying it to a problem that you may have. And not being just stuck on, oh, you need to use this tool. I'm not about tools. I'm about how you get to your desired outcome.

So we have experts all over the world that we can bring in as we approach those solutions for you. And what we try to do is partner-- and I'm sure you've heard this 100 times. We want to partner with you. We try to partner with you as a team, so that it's not just about what Autodesk wants you to do. It's about what we can do together in solving your problem.

And what I'm going to do is show you there's a number of use cases of how you can use Autodesk Consulting. In the past, we were mainly focused only on the largest Enterprise customers, customers that are spending millions, and millions, and millions of dollars with us every year. You can also leverage Autodesk Consulting in ways now, more ala carte, for lack of a better word. So at a certain level of spend, can get access to Autodesk Consulting.

And that includes some of the products that we create when we're working with our customers. Sometimes we create something or we come up with an idea in Autodesk Consulting that can become either part of product or it may be something that we can give to you as a more of a here's something to solve your problem in some software or integration that we can't yet offer as a full Autodesk product, but we can offer to you as a solution for your problem.

So I'm going to show you the way that we're built. This is just a slide talking about the types of firms we work with, where we have people. And for some reason my map is gone, but you can see that we have a number of people in the Americas, Europe, and in each geo. But even a person like me, I work with Shaun in South Africa at whatever time of the night, because it's about getting the problem solved. It's not about my sleep, necessarily.

[LAUGHTER]

And I wanted to show you these are ways that you can use Autodesk Consulting. Sometimes it's about the digital transformation in your data to Insight. So how can we help you use things like machine learning, use things like all these different databases that you have, in all these different softwares you're using. Because even if you're using 40 of our softwares, you might be using another 100 softwares from all these other different companies out in the world.

So we can help you bring data from all those different places and then be able to leverage that in ways that you may not have been able to see before or that you can't necessarily iterate within your companies. Because sometimes, you might have a team that can do some of these explorations, but when you hit a wall, that's when you come to us. And we have programmers. We have implementation specialists and things that can help you get there.

So sometimes, it's about different areas of study. So in this case, we're talking about digital twins. So a lot of these guys on the stage, they're doing things that are contributing to the digital twin. And obviously, that term is still developing. It's still evolving. We're still trying to figure out what the use is and where to use it. But we help you with finding that answer.

The future of work, that's another place where we can help you with, whether it's training, whether it's understanding how you're going to communicate in the world. All of those things of what we-- we bring our expertise to the field. And then, sustainability, what we try to do is find the ideas that you might be struggling to figure out. How do we innovate in a way that gives us a new way to go after work, keep work, and then deliver work in the future?

And in process automation, this is one where we are very heavily used in the consulting group. Because process automation often can hit roadblocks as you start to use whatever the out-of-the-box tools are. So our groups do a lot of programming and coding to help you get past those roadblocks.

So, now we're going to talk about how each of-- whoever wants to talk about each of these topics-- how you chose the path that you decided to get where you're going right now. So whether you decided to do a small job, like changing from AutoCAD to Revit, or you decided to do something big, like creating a new piece of software that allows for you to deliver something to a customer, why did you choose the paths that you're going down in any departments?

Was there anything that spawned that? Or did you just say, oh, well, this is the outcome that we needed and what does it take to get there?

AARON PHILLIPS: Sure, I think that in some ways, early in the stages of our digital transformation, it was more internally focused and looking at the efficiencies that we could build in exchange of data back and forth between different things. But I think that as we progressed in maturity, hopefully, over the years, we've started to be driven by our clients as well. Because I think our clients are demanding better outcomes on their projects.

And I think that that's really where the magic happens, when we find that engaged client that's asking us some tough questions, and we're trying to respond to how they want their information, and how they are looking at using it, and leveraging it after the fact. And I think that we started on the design side in 2004, 2005, and some would suggest earlier. And it was mostly a design-led conversation.

I think-- 2009-- 2008, it feels like. I don't know that that's 100% accurate, but it seems it switched over to being more of a construction-led, because they were the ultimate receivers of this information, who still had to build with it. And I think in the last few years, it's really switched over to a client-led environment, where they're demanding more of us. They're demanding us to be better. But they're also willing to engage. They're willing to put time and energy.

Because I think that we've done-- collectively as an industry, we've done a pretty good job of educating our clients on what is possible and showing them the results. I think that when we first started, we didn't have the results. We didn't have the history of delivering that we do now.

And I think that getting that engagement before projects start, so that you're not trying to present all your ideas in the interview, you're getting it out ahead and you're talking about the problem or the challenge on that project specifically, I think that that's been the most exciting part.

And that's, I think, directing a lot of our energies and efforts at this point. We still are looking at internal efficiencies, issues, and things of that nature, but I think that's our main driving factor.

DAVID BANYARD: And does the cost of innovation ever deter you from making some of these explorations? And often, are they beneficial to you, regardless if it's successful or not, to learn what you go through in that process?

AARON PHILLIPS: Yeah, I think that it depends on the mindset. And I think that a lot of traditional ways of thinking about project execution, the cost of digital transformation would be too high and the investments. Because when you're focused on that bottom line only, I think it can be difficult.

And I think that once you elevate it to look at not only work that you can win and that you couldn't win before, but then I want my digital delivery group to be force multipliers. And the fact that every hour we spend, we're saving somebody 10, 15, 20, 100 hours, whatever it is, on the various initiatives that we're working on.

And I think proving that point, it flips the script, versus why wouldn't you do it, versus why should you do it. And allows us to elevate the conversation about-- it's no longer about cost, it's what our capabilities are moving forward.

SHAUN WALFORD: Yeah, if we go back to your question, I think for us, at the moment, especially on projects, it's what problem we're trying to solve. Stuff breaks. Yes, we have a long-term goal. We have a long-term vision. We're trying to automate it. We've got a team of people who are there to try and help us to create automations to do generative design and a whole lot of other stuff.

But at the end of the day, a project still needs to be delivered. So I think lately, it's-- not lately, in the last year, especially where I've been involved, there's problems that need to be solved on a project. And projects change, projects adapt.

And I think you mentioned earlier, agility. Agility is something which, for us, is key. This portion of the delivery is different from the next portion of the delivery. And so you have to change track a little bit sometimes. And knowing where you can and can't go to help your teams, because also you don't want to suddenly go 180 degrees in the other direction.

Because that then throws everybody off. So it's how do you change something enough that it works and helps you go forward, but not so much that it completely throws everybody off and derails an entire design process that we've been developing for a year, or two, or three, or four.

I think that is some of the driving factor. And that's why I say, I come back to that first picture I had, with there's overall digital transformation that's set by our digital strategy team overall. But there's actually portions of us who are actually in the delivery day to day and trying to get things out the door. And that's a very different thought process and mindset. One is long term. One is for actually shorter term.

STEPHEN BROOKE: So I'd say for us and how we kicked off our digital transformation is, in the last year, I think one internal reason of why we did is that the businesses and the way our business was running was IT drove the business practices, and the mindset, and the softwares, and everything that we use and do.

And I would say in the last year, we decided to take control of that mindset and start driving our IT and other corporate services to get better service, not just from Autodesk, but even our internal clients, our accounting system, our safety guys, our operational guys that are all in-house. And ever since we did that, the whole dynamic and the whole mood has changed within the company.

And then the other caveat to that too, or the second piece to that, is that from my perspective in global facilities, is that I've been in the trenches with the guys in the field. I've seen how they do their operations. I've also done all the modeling, and contract drawings, and BIM on the design side. And so I've seen both sides of the fence.

And I've seen all the inefficiencies. And for Burns & Mcdonnell, we have our engineering, and architects, and environmentalists all in-house. And we have our construction guys in house. And they weren't even talking to each other. And so that creates a disruption. And you start pointing fingers. And it's, guys, we're one Burns & Mac. You guys have to talk to each other. You have to collaborate.

And so when we were actually approached by Autodesk to say, hey, if you guys weren't aware, as part of your EBA, you've got access to Build. And we would like-- have you guys looked at it? Have you guys tried it yet? And so, they were reaching out to our corporate contacts. And said, hey, who can we pilot a project on? Who can we get to take this on and really dig into it and try it?

And from past experience with BIM 360, I can say from what I saw with our design teams, is they weren't using BIM 360 the way it was intended to. It's not using the tool to the full functionality. They were treating it as a file repository for all of their Revit models.

Well, with the improvements of ACC, and then the addition of Build, what I was able to do is replicate a lot of the workflows that we use in Procore, because that was the primary program we'd been using from a construction management standpoint. And I replicated a lot of that process into Build.

Now, was it great at first? No. There was a lot of workarounds. But it was me leading that effort, going through the trials and tribulations, and just doing all the grunt work on the pilot project. And then, also, trying to pull in the right people on the team.

So when I made the initiative to do the Build side and push it on this pilot project, I had already started all the legwork. And then I went to the managers for the project and said, hey, I've already done this. I'm going to do this. I need you to get on board. I got some officers involved to say, hey, this is what I'm doing. And I had upper management's support to really push that transformation going forward.

And in the last nine months, I can say that I've ruffled a lot of feathers from our Procore users on our construction side. I've ruffled a lot of feathers with our IT archaic, old-school way of thinking, of, hey, IT drives the business practice. You're not going to tell us how to do our job. You're not going to come in here and start connecting your programs to ours. We've spent time and money into this stuff and we're not going to try.

And like what you guys are saying, that's not the right mindset. If you can't get the right folks to have the right conversation and come to the realization that this is all costing us money-- and actually before AU, one of our directors of construction told me that-- he goes, with the regurgitation of data that we do day in, day out, just-- let's throw out a number-- 4,000 hours.

OK, and then we started doing the math on that. And we estimated, based on the level of the individual doing that work for the work that I do in GFS, or we do in GFS, we estimated to be $1,000,000 a year on wasted man hours, regurgitating data. And it's just lost time, lost money. And it's just not-- it's not efficient for us. It's not efficient for our clients. So that kind of led us to the transformation that we're getting to now.

DAVID BANYARD: And so for each of you, do you find the difficulties in approaching whatever digital transformation you're doing from the corporate level, like at the higher up level, is it about the people that have to do the digital transformation, like as far as using the new tools, using whatever the new processes are, and things? Or is it somewhere else? Is it in how you work with your customers and your clients? Where's the biggest obstacles in getting to your digital transformation?

STEPHEN BROOKE: So I would say the biggest obstacle for us is, like I was saying, like you get the old-school IT guys that wanted to drive the business. They'd been there for 25-plus years. Obviously, Procore is a big thing that we're using, along with other GCs out there.

And so there's that battle of we just got implemented with Procore. We finally got all of our field staff trained. We got all of our APMs trained, and our safety folks, and our QA/QC guys. Everybody's been trained on it and now you're wanting to change everything up again. And you can see the aggravation in their face.

And I'm like, but just give me a chance to show you how I can bring the efficiency to the company, save us time, save us money. And for that obstacle, I didn't have any issues with a lot of my upper management within global facilities. And the reason being is because I'd been in the trenches. They've known my work ethic and what I've been able to bring value to the jobs I touch. And so my reputation spoke for itself.

So when they were going to meetings or their getting our board members who are complaining that we're looking at this stuff and starting to weed out, or try to weed out Procore, they've got my back, and that's important. So from the obstacle standpoint, that's where we were at.

DAVID BANYARD: OK.

SHAUN WALFORD: Sorry. So I think it depends on what-- again, what are you trying to do. So if you're trying to bring in a change in, and bring in an automation, or you're trying to do something like that, where you're trying to bring in an application, or you've written an application that affects engineering, that's one group of people. Engineers, we're generally resistant to change and we love using spreadsheets, and unless it's my spreadsheet, I'm not interested.

So you've got to kind of get people's mindset to change in that sphere. But then, also, it's like, well, we need a new application, but we might have one, or we've had one in the past, or we're trying to change it because it makes more sense. And then it's the modeling staff or it's-- so completely-- I think it depends on where you're trying to implement the change. Because not everything affects everybody.

If you go and change a BIM 360 workflow, are the engineers really going to mind? Because it more affects maybe the modeling teams or certain members of the engineering teams, not all of them. So I think it's identifying which people in your team that's going to affect and engaging with them. So that-- again, that team engagement.

Like at the moment, we're going through some processes of engaging teams around some of the processes that we're doing around some calculations. And actually, just speaking with teams and saying, great, what is your workflow? They go-- then, like, do you have it?

So just actually going-- and they know what they do, but they haven't necessarily documented it. So it's that process of coming in and walking alongside to get, not necessarily buy in, but to get understanding from both sides. I think people in this room are digital. They understand digital. We understand how some of that stuff works. For some people, that's scary. They've never experienced it. They've never been in a-- they've experienced it to some degree. So getting buy in--

DAVID BANYARD: And so, in some ways it's about how you can use things like a pro side type engagement, where you're having stages of making sure that people are both learning about the--

SHAUN WALFORD: Correct.

DAVID BANYARD: --the processes and then applying them. And then having resources--

SHAUN WALFORD: Yeah.

DAVID BANYARD: --to connect to.

SHAUN WALFORD: And getting to understand where it's maybe broken, or it's not working, or it's inefficient. But it's just because we've done it one way for 30 years, or 20 years, or 10 years, or five years. It doesn't necessarily mean it's the right way now. And in order for us to maybe optimize something, we need to change the way we do it. And that's sometimes, I think, more scary than anything else for people.

AARON PHILLIPS: I think that it's good to be able to articulate a vision, a shared vision, and to find spots that people can engage with and take some ownership of it. And I think that what we're trying to accomplish is bringing a bunch of really, really smart people together to say, what can we do together? And what can we drive?

Because I think we-- again, getting back to that force multiplier idea, if I can have five people all rowing a boat in the same direction, that force becomes unchangeable, as far as that.

And I think that one of the things that-- early on in my life, when I was starting the transformation on the design side first, I used a lot of terminology, like we're going to fundamentally change the way we do this or that. We're going to radically change. We're going to shift. We're going to throw away the old methods. We're going to have all these new methods.

And that worked for a while, but there-- I jokingly say there's probably a path of cold, dead bodies along the way that we just elbowed out of the way and stormed over. And when I got into the construction side, I think it was stepping into a very successful construction company that knew how to make money and that knew how to build projects. And at first, I'm here to fundamentally change this. And really, tell me how you're going to fundamentally change the fact that I can make money and do projects on this.

So it was a change in the lexicon, a change in how we were-- our phraseology. And so we need to be supplementing. We need to be enhancing. Because the old way isn't necessarily wrong, it's just it can be better. And I think that creating an articulating that vision of what is possible, sometimes taking a step back and taking the foot off the accelerator. Say, what is the outcome that we desire from this initiative? And then creating-- and taking that time to create the buy in accelerates moving forward.

It's the same in construction. If you take the time to plan at the beginning, your flow will speed you up. But just rushing blindly around, chasing the new shiny things or the new initiatives, without creating that sense of an entrepreneurial spirit within the teams, of being able to own some of these initiatives, and be engaged, that that's a part of it, I think that that's where success lies in what we can do with our teams.

DAVID BANYARD: And in doing that, that's about changing-- being able to shift, being able to adjust to whatever's happening in the process that you're going through as you're doing these changes in your companies. So we've only got a few more minutes. I want to make sure everyone gets a chance to ask some questions.

So how do you approach your partnerships, or working with, not only Autodesk, but even with other companies, when you're trying to deal with the technology that needs to come involved to apply your transformation?

AARON PHILLIPS: I think it's about changing, again, the way that partnership works. And that, I think, in the past Autodesk has been looked at as a vendor. And all of our software folks are looked at as vendors from time to time. And I think that the synergy right now, especially with what we're trying to do at Jacobs, in moving from engineering to solutions providing, and I think that that's in mirror with a lot of what Autodesk wants to do and hopes to do.

And I think that alignment, that zippering effect, if you will, is creating that true partnership. And being able to have confidence enough in ourselves to open the robe and say, here's all of our bumps, and bruises, and warts, and stuff, help us. And we're getting that return from Autodesk.