Maximizing Collaboration with U.S. CAD, An ARKANCE Company: Streamlining Design-Build through Common Data Environments

In the latest episode of Design-Build Delivers, we explore the powerful role technology plays in bringing teams together on design-build projects. We were joined by Neetha Puthran and Aaron Wagner from U.S. CAD, an ARKANCE Company, along with Brian Skripac from DBIA, to discuss how common data environments (CDEs) and tools like Autodesk Construction Cloud (ACC) are transforming collaboration.

From overcoming long-standing barriers in communication to sharing real-world examples of technology streamlining project processes, this episode highlights practical ways teams can improve efficiency, reduce requests for information (RFIs) and ultimately deliver better results. The conversation also explores future trends in project management, including the growing influence of AI and machine learning.

Guests:

Neetha Puthran
Business Unit Director, Architecture and Engineering; U.S. CAD, An ARKANCE Company

Brian Skripac
Director of VDC, DBIA

Aaron Wagner
Senior Director, ACC; U.S. CAD, an ARKANCE company

Access all our free design-build resources and learn more about Design-Build Done Right® at dbia.org.

DBIA members are shaping the future, one successful collaboration at a time.

Chapters

• 0:09 Episode Overview
• 1:26 Challenges in Collaboration
• 3:34 Technology's Role in Overcoming Barriers
• 5:44 How the Pandemic Changed Risk Management
• 7:53 Football or Football? Streamlining Communication
• 11:57 Best Practices for Team Alignment
• 15:57 RFIs Then and Now
• 26:20 Lessons Learned for Your Projects
• 31:10 Technology Challenges
• 34:19 Using Technology to Keep the Wheels Rolling
• 36:29 Time for Wild Speculation: What's Next?

Transcript

Sep 2024 Podcast

Fri, Sep 27, 2024 11:48AM • 40:12

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

common data environment, project, design, work, people, owner, technology, team, rfi, build, acc, aaron, contract, information, collaborate, process, construction, gc, data, challenge

SPEAKERS

Aaron Wagner, Erin Looney, Brian Skripac, Neetha Puthran

Erin Looney  00:00

Aaron in this month's episode of the design build delivers podcast. We're joined by our sponsors, US CAD, and we'll talk about the intersection of collaboration and technology and design build projects. I'm your host, Aaron Looney, and our guests are architecture and engineering business unit director Neetha putran and acc senior director Aaron Wagner, both from us CAD along with our very own director of VDC, Brian skripak. Now let me set the stage a bit here so we can minimize any potential confusion over terminology in this episode. First, we'll be talking a lot about CDEs, that's common data environments which help teams collaborate by centralizing project data. We'll also touch on the Autodesk construction cloud or ACC, one of the tools leading the way in this space. And when you hear Brian or nitha Say the name Aaron nine times out of 10, I'll say 99 out of 100 they're not talking about me. I know nothing about this stuff. They're talking about Aaron Wagner, who actually does know a lot about this stuff. I'm just the voice prompting the expertise. That's it.

Aaron Wagner  01:12

You also have a nicer voice than me. So if it's a nicer voice that responds, it's not Aaron Wagner.

Erin Looney  01:20

It's a good thing people can't see us, because I definitely embody face for radio now coming from these respective perspectives, which is hard to say, but bravo to me. What challenges do you face in making sure the design and construction functions stay aligned?

Neetha Puthran  01:38

A lot of it is the antagonistic attitudes that have just been ingrained in us, whether we're on the architecture engineering side, whether we're on the construction contractor subcontractor side, everyone has these super hardline beliefs about each other, and it can be difficult to come together and like, understand what our motivations are and how to make you know a better project as a whole,

Aaron Wagner  01:59

probably in most circumstances, if not all, those single largest challenge are the people, you know, they might have some preconceived stereotypes or prejudices, and you know, maybe even don't trust other people to be able to collaborate effectively with that. You know, you kind of have to have a culture for collaboration, or a culture to really align the project team in a healthier way, and then ultimately a technology infrastructure that you know supports any kind of advancements and better collaboration. One

Brian Skripac  02:29

of the things that we talk about at DBIA, and reinforce that is that order of people, process and technology, the challenges are people first. But I also think to expand upon what NIFA started the conversation with our traditional contractual structures really aren't set up for collaboration and design. Bid build, the design professional comes up with 100% set of construction documents that go out to bid and awarded by a by the low bid contractor. One of the things we kind of joke about, but it's always true, right? One of the first things somebody on the construction team will ask is, hey, can we get your model so we can use it? And inevitably, the designer's a little apprehensive to give that over, because their fear is, well, we didn't build the model with the goal of being used throughout the construction process for whatever initiatives may be out there. Our contract was delivered documents, and that's what we did. So not having everybody on the same page at the outset becomes a challenge as well, which is one of the, you know, the big differences that we see in design build.

Erin Looney  03:34

So then how has technology we've talked people process, technology helped you all overcome these hurdles.

Aaron Wagner  03:43

Like I say, the technology needs to support that culture. You kind of have to make people feel comfortable in the platform. So not necessarily something that should take months and months and months to set up, but something that should be fairly intuitive, but bringing people together in a safe environment where everybody sees the impacts that they're having, they can, you know, reliably get the information that they need without any surprises and things like that, and, yeah, just kind of fewer gates, but more collectiveness or inclusiveness for for the people that need to get through their their project. That's come a long ways in recent years. I

Neetha Puthran  04:18

would definitely think it's been more in recent years than ever before, especially because people had to do that over the pandemic more than anything to survive. But also I think that, you know, contracts exist and like they were created in the way that they were, because we had a certain perception around risk and cya and you know how to minimize our own liability. But what technology is done nowadays is basically remove a lot of that inherent risk. So those old contract structures, they're still useful, but they're generally not useful in the way that they have been historically. A couple other words that

Brian Skripac  04:52

that stem from that approach too are trust and transparency. A lot of the the technology that's out there now allows us to bring. Together multiple different entities in a way that we can visualize and see their work. And, you know, make sure that we're coordinating better and working together. And, you know, reducing the latency of design changes. We can see things more immediately as updates are being coordinated and brought in. And we can rely upon that information in a different way, the way technology has allowed us to work within more integrated platforms as we move forward. You know, much more so than, like you said before the pandemic, which was certainly an accelerator to how we use some of these collaborative tools,

Neetha Puthran  05:33

exactly. And I think we were very concerned about, like, who had the model, who had the documents, what were they doing in it? But if all of that is tracked on the cloud, right now, our risk is very minimal.

Brian Skripac  05:44

You can manage that risk with access rights to things that are on the cloud too, right? Who has visibility? Who has edit rights? That starts to manage that and say, Hey, I don't have to be worried about the architect moving one of my structural steel columns. If I'm the engineer, they don't want that to happen, but you want the architect to be able to see that information? Hey, we changed it from a W whatever to to another size, and boom, it's immediate. So being able to rely upon it but not edit it, that's really valuable. Both

Aaron Wagner  06:13

of you mentioned the pandemic. And you know, as bad and as terrible as it was, and I'll never say that it was a good thing, the silver lining is it really forced us to kind of explore these other areas, like I tease people that I worked from home since before it was cool, before it was the thing to do. But in that time, when we're all in lockdown, we had to figure out a way to work together, even on the job site rotations, where you'd have people working in the morning, and then people working in the evening hours. You know, people had to be separated so they wouldn't make each other sick. Hopefully, that really forced us to figure out a better way to collaborate. And then it built in that transparency that you were talking about, Brian, like, hey, if, if I do produce things in a more transparent format, or if I have that transparency from the rest of the project team, then my date goes a lot more smoothly. And hey, I can get through things a lot quicker, and things aren't going to blindside me at 4:58pm when I'm trying to get out of here, or things that could be, you know, life safety or even quality related blindsided information.

Erin Looney  07:19

Are you interested in sustainable design and construction practices, but concerned about profitability. Us. CAD, an Archons company helps forward thinking. ENR, top ranked AEC firms in mitigating risk and driving profit through digitalization, using Autodesk AEC technology to learn more. Contact Us. Cad.com/dbia, for a free 30 minute consultation. That's uscad.com/dbia,

Erin Looney  07:53

all of this reminds me of we went through a similar thing, and kind of still are, to some extent, in communications and in journalism, where somebody would have the edited version of something and they'd send it, and then you're playing with the old one, and it sounds like you have found an effective way to manage that in a similar way that other fields might be dealing with. But we're not talking about other fields. We are talking about architecture, engineering and construction, and specifically design build, which we know is all about collaboration. So let's talk about some best practices to keep everyone aligned from the start. Well,

Aaron Wagner  08:29

I think the key there is just how important design build is to the industry. We found our contractual silos that are comfortable for us, and again, as a business, we want to protect our stake, and we want to just deliver what we're contracted for. Well, what happens is you diminish that value to the customer, the client or the owner, by kind of having the segregation. And guess what? Owners have caught on. So now they're demanding some quality practices. They're demanding some collaborative practices, even the way safety information is tracked or part of the bid process for a lot of owners these days, is what's your EMR rating? Owners are becoming more and more sophisticated, and that's where providing an environment where everybody can safely work together, understanding, yes, you have this scope, and you have this scope, and it's totally different, but guess what? It's to that same end goal. And it even reminds me, too, it's kind of timely watching football. I have, you know, all these things that I was trying to get to, and I have way too many.

Erin Looney  09:31

Are you talking about American football or the real football? Oh, yeah, sorry,

Aaron Wagner  09:36

American football, NFL. I have way too many streaming services. So one of the things that I'm trying to do is consolidate that, and specific to this one NFL provider that happened to be showing the team that I care about seeing more than the others, my current provider and then this new provider that would give me this consolidation. They're both the same price, but my current one is. Gives me more throughput, more transparency in my account, more security. And there's a couple other bells and whistles that probably didn't take a ton of effort on their part, but it adds that value enough to where it's saying, You know what, I'm not going to go to this other provider, even if it could help me consolidate because of the value I get from this one. Going back to this discussion is, what is that value that you're projecting onto the honor, are you creating a value of desperation and conflict? Or, yeah, we can. We can get together. We can find a way to collaborate and be more effective for those final project outcomes.

Neetha Puthran  10:33

I don't know very much about football at all either one, but I will say that, like, you know, there's going to be a lot of architects and job contracts that will absolutely disagree with me and like, die on this hill, but I agree that it is all about the owner and what they want, because at the end of the day, we were hired to do a job, and we were hired to do it well, and if we want to keep winning work with that same owner, we have to start differentiating ourselves and doing a Better and better job. And what's of utmost value to them is the GC and the architect collaborating very efficiently.

Brian Skripac  11:06

That's a big difference with design build, right? You're transitioning from that three parties and two contract structure that you have with design bid build or CM at risk, to transitioning into design build, where you have the owner and the design builder who's warranting both the design and construction of the project, which helps streamline everybody going in the same direction. You have that leader now on the team who's saying, This is what we collectively need to deliver for the owner, and this is how we need to contribute holistically into doing that, not to mention that there's an opportunity where the owner doesn't, I mean, they're minimizing some of the risk, right? They're no longer warranting the construction documents, right? There's not that transition from design to build. It's all already there, and that's a win and a big value opportunity for owners out there.

Erin Looney  11:57

Talk a little more broadly about how technology has helped streamline communication across the members of the team. We've been talking about items and processes and tools and things people need on the project, but talk about how that communication with the members of a design build team can be improved through some of these techs.

Neetha Puthran  12:19

So I think inherently, just having that CDE as that foundation, it means that more and more people are plugging their data, their documents, in, live information, into that cloud environment. So once we have that data and access to that data in that cloud environment, we're not waiting three months to get a set from the architect or the engineer or the GC and that really that real time collaboration communication starts to improve, I

Aaron Wagner  12:44

guess, as an analogy. So Aaron, you know, we talked a little bit about your your sports, so you're active athlete, and you know, you have an extensive background with soccer, so not American football,

Erin Looney  12:55

but was an active

Aaron Wagner  12:58

athlete. But you know, if you kind of think about that, in whatever position you're playing, imagine if you're required, and you're expected to play that position well, but you know, you've got one eye one foot, and you're just sort of got blinders on your one eye that's remaining. You can't see the entire you can't see the entire playing field, but you're still expected to do your part. That's where not having a common data environment really does inhibit how these project teams function together, is they're sort of working in their lane with limited vision of what they need to do their role properly and effectively. Whereas, if people do kind of get into this, this culture of collaborating and allowing everybody to see the playing field, seeing some counter offensive strategies that might otherwise be happening on the field, seeing where your other teammates are, so you can pass the ball. It's still called passing in soccer, right or whatever, whatever you do with your foot. So you know how, how do you know who to pass to, or that are they the right person? Those are things of having a common data environment or not is really an analogy of how the project teams can be impacted by that. So day one, start collaborating. Feel safe together. Let's work on this project together and communicate so we can see the entire playing field.

Neetha Puthran  14:19

Imagine staying in your lane for like, three months, and then all of a sudden you get that information back. None of it makes sense, none of it fits together. And now you're you're moving back one month, and it's starting that process over again.

Brian Skripac  14:30

It's that accessibility, I too, like the way you said that you're seeing the whole playing field right. There may be a conversation going on that doesn't directly warrant your response or approval or direction on but it could have impact somewhere downstream, and I think the other outlet is being in tune with what's going on on the project and not well, Did something come in my email? Did I get a text message from somebody? Was it a message from software platform? A was it the builder's platform? Was it the. Designers platform? Was it the owner's platform? No, we have a common data environment. Everybody's there working, and you have that access to the information and do just like you said, having that visibility and, you know, maybe being able to contribute to something that wasn't directly aimed at you, and that really helps build that team aspect. Tying

Aaron Wagner  15:18

it to your question, Aaron, let's say we're all sort of running together, and then you've got the ball, you don't really have a good vision of the rest of the playing field, so you say, hold a minute, pause the game. Nitha, tell me what I should do in this scenario. So you have to kind of hold everything up. The defenders are probably swarming around you. And then, okay, thank you. Can you ask Brian that question instead? So she's got to pass it to Brian. And then eventually you get the information, and then you can trot along with your ball. That's the disruption that happens. And so if you start with collaborating early, it's going to create this likelihood that your people will have fewer questions along the way, because they can already see that whole project data.

Erin Looney  15:57

So I have to give you a lot of credit, really commend taking on a sport you admittedly don't know a whole lot about. It. Sounds like you did pretty well. It's what I do every month in this podcast, you mentioned RFIs requests for information, little background in 2013 the Navigant construction forum estimated the average total cost per RFI review and response was $1,080 and nearly 6400 hours expended per project. Now, since then, technology and processes have evolved in design build where collaboration and early involvement for all the team members are central. How then have platform technologies like Autodesk construction cloud impacted the management of RFIs.

Neetha Puthran  16:45

It's not necessarily on how to manage RFIs better. It's really about minimizing RFIs inherently across the project. And when we first started RFIs, they served a purpose. It was a really clean and efficient way to change that contract, and we had no other way of doing it. But nowadays, now that we're getting so much more, we're seeing this information real time, this collaboration is happening a lot more. So a lot of the customers that we're talking to, they're seeing a 10x amount of RFIs that they were pre pandemic or five or six years ago, and so they're having trouble managing it, versus some other customers that we work with, what they're doing is, is minimizing RFIs, inherently, by just focusing on confirming RFIs, if they need to absolutely change the contract in any which way the architects and GC are agreeing it's going to be a handshake, versus what we historically did, we just pinged it back and forth until it got resolved. It was like delay the project schedule cost everyone a lot. That became the reason for these antagonistic attitudes,

Aaron Wagner  17:46

those numbers that you said, Aaron, that's not surprising. So how can we diminish that number or reduce those impacts? I'm thinking about this one experience on a project. It stands out because there's such an expensive delay. The steel erection team came and they did their own thing. And then we had the elevator installers were ready. And then, you know, of course, the other trades that were adjacent to that were kind of ready to go as well. We eventually had to put all those trades on hold, create information about this, generate an RFI to send it back to the design team. Hey, there's this, this unforeseen condition. What do we need to do about the steel and everything else that's already in place, as well as all these other people that they're already scheduled to work so they're sitting on standby. So that went to the architect, the structural engineer, and then we got a response and a call to action back to the general contractor. That took about two and a half weeks of people sitting in their trucks waiting to be told what to do, but they're still being paid to sit in their trucks. Now, with ACC it's accessible virtually anywhere. So there is the mobile app, so we can generate RFIs, we can take photos, we can track issues and punch lists notify people of safety issues, all kinds of things at any given time, the iPad or whatever just needs to touch data or Wi Fi, and it goes out to the people that need to go to. So if that same thing happened, I could essentially take a photo, mark up the drawings, put it into the system. By the time I got back to the trailer or my office, it would have already been in the design team's hand as a reviewer on that RFI, all the data is all together in that common data environment. It's really creating those kinds of impacts by giving people really that flexibility to capture data from wherever they are, yeah, the

Neetha Puthran  19:31

flexibility to respond to in a different way versus previously, we've only had, you know, a single project management software that only was able to do RFIs. Now we have multiple different ways to actually capture that information. Aaron,

Brian Skripac  19:43

as you're talking through that, you're bringing up horror stories of past methodologies where can remember, well, we just email it. No, you have to fax the contractor on the job site, like I can remember when that had to be the process. And you know, you think, oh, maybe there's a digital camera. And then you have. To go back to the office and download the photos, find the one that you took from there, grab it off the network, put it on there, type it up in the RFI form and send it or fax it, and then the whole back and forth changes to be able to do that now from your phone in a common data environment on the fly, because you have cellular accessibility, Wi Fi accessibility, the tools to do it mobily, without being hardwired into something, not to mention the confirming RFI like Neva talked about, which is that's a much more collaborative way of posing the thing right, not to be wrapped up in semantics. But hey, is this what we meant? Yes, go. Okay, now you're off to fix the problem. Right? It's not the whole cycle of pathway of communications like we had in the past, Brian,

Erin Looney  20:43

you just made me tired with the fasting. All right, I we're done today.

Brian Skripac  20:51

I remember that man, it was painful.

Aaron Wagner  20:54

Nitha sometimes likes to remind me how old I am. And in one meeting, I remember, I remember one meeting when I said yes, and you reminded me of a lot of memories too, Brian, but one meeting, I said, Yes, we used to literally copy and paste. That was an actual thing. Print the photo out, copy it, put it onto the RFI log, send that out to Xerox, copy it again. So copy and paste was a real thing. I don't know if you remember that conversation. I do actually

Neetha Puthran  21:23

now that you probably

Brian Skripac  21:29

remember the RFI you had to, you had to copy it on a different colored paper on your as built, and you would go tape it over the old detail with the cloud instead of just clouding it. So you had to build up your as builts, which are all these literally inserted drawings taped up. Yeah, the stack of drawings went from this to this thick by the end of the day, rolls of tape just being destroyed, updating an addendum.

Neetha Puthran  21:54

Like, not this past 10 years, right? I did have one instance where an owner wanted to put in a change, but they didn't want to, like, push out a bulletin or an ASI or anything else. So basically, as you know, as a GC, they kept sending us RFIs and saying, Hey, confirm this change. We're like, well, the owner needs to make that decision. So we kept sending it back to them. We sent this RFI back and forth, I think, literally, for six months. Goodness and safe to say that we actually did have to get a change order, an official CCD eventually.

Erin Looney  22:29

This brings up memories of actually splicing tape, the actual reel to reel tape, if you remember what that looked like. Yeah, there are lots of professionals today I've worked with who do not know what I'm saying when I say that, usually I just grab my walker and leave the room. Slowly my tennis balls. So after all of this, how would you say design, build, plus the right technology? EG, a common data environment can reduce the time or the cost, or, as nitha mentioned, ideally, the frequency of RFIs, and keep that project moving.

Neetha Puthran  23:05

What I've seen that has proved pretty effective, whether it's a design build project or not, is that architect and GC coming together and saying that, hey, this is the format that we're going to choose on this project, whether the owner is backing it or not. And that can be as simple as resolving every piece of confusion or clarification on a spreadsheet, managing it that way, I think ACC does it a lot better through unified issue management, because it makes it really easy to track exactly when we've seen it, when we've interacted with it, who's changed it, what they've said.

Aaron Wagner  23:36

You mentioned ACC specifically doing it and so, I mean, we talked about VDC being a component of the CDE, and there's other different workflows there. There's enterprise management platforms, some that focus only on construction management. And Autodesk won't ever say we've got it all, but they do have this ability to kind of integrate with these other systems, to actually find that there's a risk, or identify trends and things like that. You really have to be part of those processes and really pay attention. Whereas ACC is just kind of more of this organic mechanism where, like, hey, I can work in my area. I can see these relationships that it has to other parts of the project.

Neetha Puthran  24:16

Yeah, in order to really claim common data, environment status, you do have to do more than just design, or more than project management. So I think that's one thing it does really well, the design,

Brian Skripac  24:26

build specific portion of that, right? You're You're mitigating those silos, right? You don't have that transition from designer to owner to contractor, vice versa, or subcontractor to contractor over the designer. You're a team. You're having those conversations, and you know you've planned that out from the outset, and your your means to share information and coordinate things at the outset are different, and you're hopefully mitigating the quantity of those requests for information that come up, because you're evolving the design and construction of the project together, not. Being separated, so it really becomes a multiple layers that are driving that improvement. So

Erin Looney  25:06

let's, let's now talk about super villains. If you involve the contractor, early that involvement, early on in the process, can that help mitigate the potential for RFIs being used as weapons, and how

Aaron Wagner  25:20

think actually in that study with the Navigant one that you had referenced earlier, they talked about some of that weaponization that happened. And even nitha talked about that cycle, that six month cycle of RFIs, nobody wanted to kind of take the blame, understanding that everybody's got their own role and stake in the project, and they're going to do their part to contribute to kind of that end value to the RFI. They're sort of already in this mindset of, hey, we're working collaboratively together. The information is still it's all right there in front of you. You know, not to say that there are no conflicts, no risks. Risk is just a part of the job, but it definitely reduces that likelihood. I

Neetha Puthran  25:56

definitely agree it's not like a silver bullet, but I think that starting starting that project off on the right foot and on the collaborative end is is definitely the right move, because that establishes relationships right away. It establishes where we are, where some potential gaps might be, and and it's much more difficult later on to come in and be like we didn't see that, like sending a large change order,

26:19

all right, what

Erin Looney  26:20

about some lessons learned? What can our listeners take with them any project teams in any type of project delivery can use to improve their own RFI management process, particularly through what we've been talking about, this common data environment,

Aaron Wagner  26:35

I'll tell you kind of a real scenario. I can't mention any names. There's a data center that the GC on that project, from what I understand, they weren't super collaborative, but now the project is over a year delayed in its completion. And going back to that weaponization, I think there's just so much conflict and strife that's happened historically in projects to where one of the early stages of owners building their sophistication and awareness is to build in a clause around liquidated damages if you don't complete my criteria by this date, or you know, this budget, then we're going to charge you to fulfill these things on this project. In other words, over the course of a year, they're spending an insane amount of money, probably all of their profit margin and more just to get the project done per contract, and had they used something more collaborative and more just conducive to inclusion in the entire team, that likelihood probably have gone down,

Brian Skripac  27:31

regardless of what the project delivery model is, is to find a way at the outset of the project as much as possible of how you're going to collaborate and communicate and share and distribute information. Certainly it's it's much more of a challenge in some delivery models as compared to design build, but the last thing you want to do is have the design professionals hosted common data environment, the owners hosted common data environment, and then the builders posted common data environment, and I'm sure, I know I've lived that many a time. I'm sure nitha and Aaron have too. But that's how things start out, when everybody's siloed, right? And now you're duplicating information back and forth, and who's really got the source of truth? But you know, that's, I think that's one of the differences. When you start tying all this back into design build, you have a collective team at the outset saying we are going to use this common data environment to deliver this project for the owner, and that sets the stage and level, sets the conversation, so everybody's working from the same baseline moving forward. So

Erin Looney  28:38

then let's distill some of these horror stories and even the good ones, to some practical tips that you would give teams, the owners, the designers, contractors, everybody involved for better managing project insights through CDE platforms.

Aaron Wagner  28:53

A lot of it goes into kind of building those, those SOPs collectively, and kind of even collaborating on that to where you can build a structured project to provide the whole project team access to it, even if it needs to be separated a little bit, which you know, Autodesk construction Cloud has the bridge tool to help people at least communicate two different projects, but give people the structure that they need in order to be successful in their role. And then, of course, you can build in workflow, dynamics and permissions and things like that, just to kind of keep people in their lanes, but still respect to the whole platform, going

Neetha Puthran  29:35

back to the earlier comments that we had around all this, leading back to the owner, I think sometimes, as you know general contractors and architects, we forget that we can actually influence that contract with the owner. It's not set in stone. We can actually, like influence how this process and framework actually gets built out, whether that's adding BIM execution plans later on, whether that's adding in language around technology. And then once we actually get that technology, it's a. Out fully trusting it. And I know it takes a long time to fully trust anything, but it does have to start with getting your data into the cloud first, making sure that it's accessible to everybody. And we can start from there.

Brian Skripac  30:12

You know, we started off both nitha and Aaron talked about people, right? And nitha just brought that up again, right? We have to communicate document, you know, standard operating procedures. We're going to do this. When are we going to do it? Where are we going to do it? How are we going to do it? Talk to your teammates, talk to your collaborators, get everybody on the same page. Somebody's got to lead that conversation. And that'll be an opportunity to drive success on the project. So being able to have that planned out at the outset, becomes extremely valuable. Shameless

Aaron Wagner  30:42

plug for us. CAD to our implementation framework really supports that effort to guides them through, not only just being champions of of the software and that they can comfortably administer projects and people get to where they are, but along that path, we also kind of help support what those SOPs should be and and help them develop their own best practices and things like that to really drive that outcome.

Erin Looney  31:10

So let's say your team has the technology. They can rebuild him. They can make him better than I'm sorry for anyone who gets that pop culture reference. That's an age tell us what challenges then arise when contractors and designers don't the tech exists, they have it and they don't fully leverage these shared platforms. What are the challenges and what advice do you have for maximizing that collaboration first?

Aaron Wagner  31:35

Like kind of going back to the people being the first component, finding some ways to diminish any kind of toxicity or combative practices. You know, a supervisor that shows up to work every day that just makes everybody dread going to work, that kind of diminishes productivity, and you have people getting sick or calling in sick anyway, or layovers and things like that, because the projects can't perform. And so now you have to kind of lay people off. I think removing that is one side of it, and I don't know if technology can really solve that, but I think for the executives identifying those practices and finding a healthy way around it, I

Brian Skripac  32:11

think one way to bridge that gap with technology is to look at it as I think people have their experiences from before, and they bring them to the new projects, but looking at the application of this technology in a way to collaborate in project delivery methods like design build, should really be seen as an opportunity to move from risk avoidance to risk management. I think that's a big job. We don't want to share a model, because we think somebody's going to find something wrong with it that I didn't intend it to be there, and there's going to be a miscommunication or something like that. Think this is an opportunity to manage expectations and communicate how we share information about a project moving forward. So I think that's one of the big things that technology merged with project delivery allows us something to achieve. You

Aaron Wagner  32:57

know, adjacent to the toxicity thing is really finding a way to meet people where they are. You know, I remember from my history and architecture, there were different levels of experience and passions and things like that. There was a superintendent. He was a 30 year veteran in that job, he threw his flip phone at me, and he swore at me and said he'll never, ever touch an iPad, because he didn't even know how to use that. And I think he felt threatened that we're trying to replace him or tell him to do his job better when we really weren't. It's like you have 30 years of really valuable experience. Let's use that as a contributor to how the SOPs and the processes in this project are going to be developed. He's one good example. Just meeting him where he was, how can I save you five minutes today? How can I save you a few hours this week and just, you know, kind of nurturing and supporting him through that transition with him. Now, he takes that iPad everywhere he goes, because he understands that, hey, this doesn't tell me how to do my job better, but this saves me so much more time. It makes me more productive. And he sees that value. So I think that's one key, is allowing the technology to really meet people in their present state, not

Neetha Puthran  34:09

necessarily a challenge, but a consequence. You know, if we don't do it, it's the fear, budget overruns, schedule delays, there's, there's a lot of other problems that come up, and

Erin Looney  34:19

that segues very nicely into the next question about keeping a project on time and within budget, which we know is a key for success in design build projects. So how does using this common data environment for project documentation, communication, errors, change orders? How does that keep the project on track, financially and schedule wise, and then how does it keep the design from getting lost or compromised?

Neetha Puthran  34:45

It's more about now that we're tracking everything, like every decision's being tracked, every movement's being tracked on the cloud. It's more so we're less worried about covering our backs and and making sure that we're finger pointing to then moving to actually. Get the problems resolved. I

Aaron Wagner  35:01

was working with this general contractor before we implemented ACCO, and the questions that we asked them is, how do you know that your project is performing on budget and your resources are managed effectively, and your contracts and things like that are going well? And his answer the senior executive in the room, his answer was, we have a pretty good idea of how the projects are going like so you're staking your multi million dollar business on pretty good so essentially they had zero insights. And that's really what having silos of information does, is it creates this inability to have proper insights. So how do we reduce these errors and even hopefully reducing change orders, part of our implementation was just encouraging that communication in the project. So if it has something to do with the project, usually when we communicate, we pick up the phone and we send a text message or an email or write a letter down and give that to an admin to pass around the block, all external to the project, so only a couple of people are aware. The rest of us are just waiting to get blindsided by this, this information, whereas, if we're communicating in the project, everything that we see, all of the tasks and activities that we're assigning out, and all the not so good news too, like, yeah, we have this delay because of this thing that happened, or we're encountering this challenge quite a lot. Even documenting those creates better insights overall, but we can only do that because we're in one collective system.

Erin Looney  36:29

So final question, it's time to pull out the tea leaves and do our wild speculation exercise. What future trends do you see in project management and delivery that could further streamline collaboration between the members of design build teams. One

Brian Skripac  36:46

of the big ones that this, I'm not going to go out too far into the future, but more immediately, I think it's the conversation that everybody else is talking about, which is AI machine learning. How are we going to take that now that we have common data environments, we've digitalized our information about design, information, engineering, information construction. We have all this information the computer we're learning about how structured data allows us to utilize that data, and if we have it in that common data environment, now we can mine it and use it for moving forward, whether that's actively on a project, or being more predictive about the construction sequence and schedule, there's so much opportunity that's going on in that realm that's going to allow us to really have another brain on the project, working alongside of us and providing insight. And I think that's going to be huge. All of that information sitting in a common data environment is just ready to be accessed by that and giving us feedback and opportunity.

Aaron Wagner  37:45

I think a lot of people are scared of AI and machine learning right now. Oh, gosh, is this computer going to replace my job? And I don't think that's the intent. It's more how do we make us more efficient with what we do? I mean, everybody, most people these days, carry around a smartphone, whereas, you know, 20 years ago, most of the world probably said, No, no way. I'm not going to carry it around a computer on my hip. Now, everybody can live without it. What we're doing is we're just helping people get through life in a more efficient way. So how does AI support that? Like I mentioned too earlier, owners are becoming more and more savvy. They know of the things that we hid behind a tarp, or swept under the rug or cleverly avoided in our documentation that we sent to them, and not in like a big brother, really a awful way, they're kind of saying, hey, if I see more of these insights and I'm able to kind of help through the project with being more involved and getting my team to be more involved and providing me key metrics, then we all stand to benefit from it. I think we're going to see more and more owners investing in tools that really bring the better insights to their projects.

Erin Looney  38:53

There's your promise from a couple industry leaders that AI is not, in fact, coming for you, so you can rest easily now. A big thank you to nitha, Aaron and Brian for sharing their insights on how technology is shaping collaboration and design build. Thanks as well to Fred Yi who edits and produces the show. So it sounds great, and thank you for listening. And of course, thank you to us, CAD for letting us borrow these experts and for their continued sponsorship. Learn more at uscad.com/dbia now to round out the rest of 2024 next month, we'll talk to some young professionals about DBIA membership. In November, we will recap the upcoming design, Build Conference and Expo. You can still register for that at our website, dbia.org and finally, in December, a look ahead to 2025 with DBIA CEO slash Ed Lisa Washington and our board members subscribe now to be the first to know when new episodes of the design build delivers podcast and bonus episodes go live. You.