Transcript: Bringing Clarity to Pre-Design and Accelerating the Test Fit Decision Making Process

is obvious when you walk on just about any job site across the US. The construction industry is an industry that has not developed as fast as other industries. But the piece within the field is kind of half the equation. We can shorten that cycle. Think about the front half of the design-build equation process.

So if we can take the front half, shorten that cycle, and we can get better productivity We're able to shorten the second half because we're much clearer in what we have to build. Hello and welcome to the Constructor Podcast, the best way to build it. Episode number 79. I'm your host, Brittany Campbell-Turner, and this podcast is dedicated to helping property owners have certainty in their decisions about their construction projects. We talk about fostering trusting relationships, help you to understand how to lower risk, be under budget and on schedule, and most importantly, exceed your end user's desires.

Last episode, we spoke with Vic Bangia. He's the founder and CEO of Varam Consulting, a corporate real estate strategy and operations consulting firm, where Varam is Latin for truth. He also serves on the Global Board of Directors for Cornet Global and the Board of Rebuilding Together Twin Cities. Vic and I spoke about how to hurdle some of the obstacles around internal organizations carrying out their corporate real estate goals and talked about how the adoption of technology and collaboration in FM, HR, and IT can help with that.

We also spoke about how to make the RFP process fun again and touch on the future of smart cities. So if you haven't listened to that episode yet, check it out at constructor.com slash ep78. In today's episode, we are speaking with Todd Burns, who's the president of the Project and Development Services and General Contracting Units at JLL in the Americas. He is the chair on the Global Practice Board with responsibility for the Americas representing and ensuring that the organization provides similar processes and results globally. He's responsible for driving strategy and growth of the organization with operating control of over 3,800 employees in 30 major markets in the U.S.

We discuss a new product that Todd and his team developed called Insight. Insight pulls in cost data that JLL has collected for their office fit-out guide and allows project teams and their clients to see instantaneously how changes to the plans can actually impact their budget. We discuss the importance of leveraging data from previous projects across the globe, taking that history and the lessons learned to support smarter decision making. We discuss culture and what the future of the industry looks like. With that, let's get into the interview.

Todd Burns is the president of Project and Development Services and General Contracting Units at JLL in the Americas. He chairs on the Global Practice Board with responsibility for the Americas representation ensuring that the organization provides similar processes and results globally. He is also responsible for driving the strategy and growth of the organization with operating control of over 2,800 employees in 30 major markets in the U.S. He is also responsible for business development and relationship management. So Todd, welcome to the Constructor Podcast.

Thank you. It's good to talk to you, Brittany. Yeah, it's good to have you on today as well. What I understand about you, just from doing a little bit of research here, you really enjoy the people at JLL and that's what drives you. You believe that you have the brightest minds there in the industry and they challenge you to be on your A game.

I'm really excited to talk with you about that particularly because you guys have what is called a DaVinci Award. What I understand about the DaVinci Award is that this has been part of JLL's innovation and product development platform for a while, but it really promotes continuous innovation driven by employees, which is super cool. How did this program even come about and what about JLL's culture has prioritized a program like this? What's interesting at JLL, one of our key, if you will, hallmarks or fundamentals is about innovation and continuous innovation on behalf of our clients and is a program that spans across our globe.

So people are really excited to have the opportunity to present the ideas almost like in a shark tank like Atmosphere. And this year there were over 120 different submissions and we have two essentially gold winners every year. People like to participate in that because their ideas then get exposure and funding and it's a way for us to take ideas and further them. What does the process look like? What's the criteria for them to get selected for the next steps, if you will, in the program?

The way the program works is ideas that get formulated really go through a small vetting process with local management, if you will, and then it's a really simple process of all of those ideas have to be submitted in a written and describing it, what sort of problems are being solved, what the costs are that have been put forth to date, what the return on investment is for that product. Those submissions then go to essentially a board, if you will, or a committee that then reviews the submissions, takes it to a order list of about 10.

From there then there's a physical presentation in front of executive management of the firm and then selection is made. Do you have the opportunity to review them since you're on board there? I will say I've had a chance to sit in and participate in the review of those a couple years. It was different being on the other side, actually being one of the presenters. It's been a lot of fun.

Okay, so you're actually one of the presenters of Insight. I didn't gather that. Okay. Yeah. That's great.

I just thought you were one of the spokespeople. Okay, that's great. Technically, I'm one of the spokesperson. The product was developed by a couple people on my team and myself to be candid. And so they did the majority of the presentation.

I did a little bit of the, I'll say clearing the path to get it into the process. With that being said, I wanted to dig into Insight specifically. The Insight product that we have is really a response to what I would say is client or market demand for the ability to get information quickly and to be able to use that information to make decisions faster, to short the process. Right? Think about an owner who has a whole host of opportunities across the city of Chicago, for example, and wants to understand what their requirements would be in a building, what the cost of that would be, and what their space would look like.

And we've been able to take this tool along with our data over 40,000 different projects to come up with some cost data. We can couple with some of our proprietary algorithms on how people use space based upon hundreds and hundreds of different clients' research to be able to put that into a single tool that allows a client to say, let me look at myself and then put together a program for them, a space program that is, to say what are their needs, and then to test that in specific buildings to put cost data against it as well.

So now, basically, a matter of minutes, a client can say, I need 42 offices and six conference rooms and drop-in spaces and these sort of other ancillary spaces, and what does that cost look like in this building? So it's a really cool tool to help make decisions much faster. So that being said, how could this now shorten design time? Because you're now instantaneously seeing this impact to this space, and what other risks do you think are reduced that come with this type of work? Here's what I really like about Insight is it helps clients shorten the upfront building selection or site selection process.

And especially if you think about an interior tenant fit up, again, owners or clients have a multitude on a given day about where they may position their facilities, whether that's they're going to move to a new building, they're going to evaluate, they're going to renovate within their existing space or potentially build a new building. What Insight does is in a matter of minutes, it's sitting down and capturing the program for a client. How many offices do I need? How many workstations do I need? That sort of criteria.

How many conference rooms, huddle rooms? What do I want my space to be? A really traditional space with a lot of offices or a more progressive space that's much more like a tech zone, if you will, or free addressing. And then to use some algorithms that we've created. And now to be able to tell a client, client says, I have 150 people and I need these sorts of spaces.

What would that cost me in a building that has this sort of circulation factor and this sort of square footage? We're able to then tell clients, this is the square footage you'll need. This is a budget cost estimate, and this is how it breaks down. So now a client can get through the selection process much faster and understand what their space may take to build a series of different scenarios. So all that upfront site selection process is shortened now dramatically.

That's excellent because understanding visually from a client's perspective or anybody who is just not in the typical mode of reviewing plans or even just walking into a space and envisioning what it looks like. What you've done then is given them the opportunity to express what their needs are and see that visual representation quickly and then see what they should be budgeting for relates to that. So I think that's hugely valuable. This would be a really simple handoff now to architects and designers to make sure that the plan that's been laid out can be your test fit.

And then you have the capability to actually do 3D walkthroughs as well. What's nice, and you've alluded to the fact that we can now hand off information to architects and designers much faster. So now with this information, this program information that we've done, we're able to do test fits in a matter of hours as opposed to days or weeks as it has taken in the past. And then to be able to take that information and turn it into 3D walkthroughs and isometric drawings, clients can really get a better chance to visualize the space.

And again, what that helps in architect's scenario is they now have some more data on what a client's expecting out of space and how spaces are supposed to work. Test fits become more accurate because now we're really understanding the spaces that go together as opposed to trying to do a quick test fit and take a guess at what sort of spaces are supposed to be used. 3D test fit process is something that I think we're all seeing. There's a lot of different softwares out there that allow clients to begin to utilize their space.

Some of the dangers with some of these things are if you have the wrong people, if you will, When doing the test fits, people that are non-technical often run into code compliant issues. Think of dead-end corridors or think of egress issues. What we're able to do with this process is to be able to get information to technical designers, architects, and planners to be able to plan more accurately so you don't over-promise something to a client. Kind of fall in love with a test fit and now using insight in this process, schematic design gets short.

So I like how you combined then the 3D capability. What you've done also is checked it against code compliance, which is probably easier at the end of the day because you'll be able to pull that into, say, a Revit model and your test fit is starting to reflect what the design is actually going to be developed into from your SDs, DDs, and your CDs. I wanted to quickly just run through an idea with you. Say for instance, I was a client who was interested in, this is primarily office fit-outs, and I'm a tech company.

I want to do 20,000 square feet. I want to set up something where I know I can do activity-based working, which could be anything at this point, and I need an assessment to be done of how the people are working in my space, but I want to at least give them a number of different types of spaces. What would you recommend for me to start with? Just kind of walk me through the process. Sure.

How do you know you need 20,000 square feet and how do you know you don't need 16,000 square feet or maybe 22,000 square feet? So the first thing I'm going to do with you is I'm going to sit down and using the insight tool I'm going to ask you what are the sort of spaces that you want and how many people are you really solving for. If you look at true demand in a space, there's tons of data out there and there's tons of different companies that do things that put sensors on chairs or in lighting systems to be able to say what spaces are being used, when and when they aren't being used.

If you get to true demand of the space, you might only need 16,000 square feet or 18,000 square feet. Then the second thing I'm going to do with you is after we really determine the types of spaces you need, then I'm going to ask you about what sort of space you're looking for. Now you talked about kind of activity-based working and I believe you said more technical type Silicon Valley. So I'm going to think about you more as what we would call a progressive type space, right?

More benching type workstations. After a couple of those scenarios of what that looks like, and we talk about some of the activity spaces you want or what I would call community type spaces, then I'm going to plug that information into insight and we're going to look at a couple different buildings and say the Blue Cross Bushield building or the Aeon Center and I'm going to plug in the circulation factors for those buildings and then we're going to determine what you need in square footage. That's going to now enable you to go to market and understand better what the true space is that you need.

If that kind of fits with you, then I'll move you on to test fits. But all of that that I just described is something that we can do over four or five different buildings in a matter of an hour. What that used to take us to do, that was a week-long exercise of just gathering the space requirements from a variety of different departments to determine a minimum program. I think that gives a really clear explanation of actual scenario might look like. Thanks for laying that out for us.

The only part I didn't add on that is once we get those spaces and we look at those series of buildings and say, then you want to look at these buildings in Chicago or do you want to look at this building in Milwaukee or do you want to look at a building in another city and I can give you a cost scenario for each of those cities across the country. There's probably 60 or 80 different cities that are in the US that we have cost databases for.

It helps clients decide where they want to go much quicker. And you're going to get your cost per square foot values when you're identifying those budgets in those markets, right? Right. I mean, we look at scenarios like where is Amazon's next fulfillment center going to go? Where's the headquarters, you know, next headquarters going to go?

Always the things that we're sort of monitoring for these larger companies. And I feel as if this is the type of thing that could really be valuable. So I think for our owner audience, that scenario is really helpful to review. If you want to know a little bit more about the tool, one of the other things that it does that's really nice. Let's say you're a suburban user of space that owns a big portfolio, two million square foot campus or a million square foot campus, and you have different departments and you're talking about moving departments around on the campus.

You can now do some scenario modeling really quick to say, okay, they need X amount of square footage. Here's what the cost of that is. And we're able to plug in their standards into this tool. And now if I'm a corporate client out a suburban campus someplace, now I know for me to move the accounting group or the marketing teams around in my facility, what does that cost for us to move those people around? And then it helps me to do capital planning on a given basis for a year.

Now I know I'm going to move these six departments and the cost is going to be X million dollars next year. That's another benefit of the tool. Absolutely right. From a larger campus perspective, just taking in the overall view, that's really helpful to say, okay, well, how do I restag? How do I reshuffle?

What places do I phase out? And then which ones do I now acquire? That's a great opportunity to do that review again quickly because who wants to take a few weeks to get this done anymore? There's always an urgency behind people making decisions like this. Whether it be an acquisition, merger, or whatever the case might be, I think that these are the types of things that really make an impact to a business.

These capital dollars, they need to get spent in some way and they want to make sure that they're making the right investments. I wanted to touch base with you about just the overall industry. Wanted to get your feedback on this productivity problem that McKinsey keeps talking about in different reports that they issue. I see JLL as sort of a vertically integrated company that you do your best to maintain consistency across all services that you're providing. I just saw this report early last week or a couple of weeks ago now.

Flora lost 1.85 billion in a day because of their construction productivity issues. And I think they're trying to implement say advanced work packaging, they're trying to implement modular construction. And I'm just curious as to how is it that JLL is approaching this issue? I think all organizations who are working in this industry, we're trying to figure out, okay, well, how do we improve productivity on construction projects? But how do we even start earlier on?

Because it's about gaining clarity, right? Earliest on in the stage of the project, which of course, insight supports. But I'm curious as to from a broader perspective, how are you addressing these concerns around productivity? You're hitting on a really interesting point in our history today. While I'm not familiar with the specific McKinsey article that you're speaking about or floors, that's a big number that gets a lot of people's attention.

It is obvious when you walk on just about any job site across the US, the construction is an industry that has not developed as fast as other industries. Think of manufacturing industries, right? Where we know that there's been a lot of Six Sigma lean to reduce time and cost and waste, if you will. And while the construction industry is making some advances, it's one that has not progressed dramatically and is really ripe for disruption overall. The thing you have to remember about the construction industry as well is that you have a variety of smaller, if you will, think of the subcontractors that are small industries, small institutions.

I think there's some space in the construction industry for a bit more consolidation. And some of the bigger players are beginning to do things through BIM, especially in Europe. If you look at Asia, where BIM is going, I mean, there's quite a bit of productivity savings that occur where now spaces are being planned and built in that technology to enable ductwork to go in and have less conflicts with things like sprinkler piping, electrical and telecommunication services. So I think that's one of the ways that we're advancing productivity.

But piece within the field is kind of half the equation. What Insight does is think about the front end, the front half of the design-build process. So if we can take the front half and we can shorten that cycle and we can get better productivity there, we're able to shorten the second half because we're much clearer in what we have to build for our clients. So I think there's some advances being made across both areas. Think of Insight in the first half as an example, but overall still an industry that actually needs more disruption to continue to improve its productivity.

I would agree with that 100%. I'm really glad that you mentioned lean and what I didn't mention to you prior to the interview is that I would say one of the best practices that I found as I was really investigating, okay, who's doing it right? I found that the Lean Construction Institute is doing it quite well and I interviewed quite a lot of people from that community. And what is not talked about much is how to do design in a lean fashion. And I think you're really hitting the nail on the head, Todd, when you talk about doing that design process more efficiently upfront and really combining the technology of BIM and getting that carried all the way through to the build, actually constructing of this space.

My last couple of questions here are going to be based around the future and what your thoughts are around adopting a mindset, address this productivity challenge that we are facing as an industry. I'd like to just clarify, I mean, you're wanting to stand from me the culture for how we continue to advance productivity. Is that fair? But to clarify, I think it's the mindset around addressing challenges, the productivity challenge and or just working together better as an industry. I talk a lot about building more trusting relationships and I think in turn that improves productivity.

I'm curious as to whether you think that's valid, one, and then two, if there are other ideas that you have around progressing the industry so that we can address productivity specifically and any other challenges that you see we're up against. And I'm going to try to touch on a few of them. You spoke about working better together in the industry and what I would tell you is there are some tools that are in the marketplace that I think are going to begin to take off and they're really collaboration tools.

And if you think about some of the software that's in these portfolio project management systems, they are comprehensive tools that are really creating a community for the architect, the contractor, the owner, the engineering firm, the audiovisual consultant, the civil engineer, et cetera, all to be able to collaborate in a common space and to be able to share information faster and to be able to thus make decisions faster. I think that's going to help our industry and take some of the noise out of the system. The collaboration piece is going to be big over the coming years.

I do think there has to be some work that's done in how we price projects. And when I say that, we put a lot of pressure on our design and construction communities, our architects and our engineers. We monetize them to some extent, as well as our general contractors. And I think the whole supply chain work needs to be looked at from our material suppliers through our installers, our subcontractor trades, through our general contractor. I think looking at that and how then you price around that is going to help the industry to some extent as well.

When we begin to get that right, begin to move much more towards the products that become more persistent. And I think you'll see much more modular work being done because product is specific, it's complete and thus furniture wall systems and those sorts of things to be installed, as opposed to most clients looking for space like a custom home builder. And I think what we're going to see is much more of the semi-custom home. And I know this feels like a dirty term when you say tracked home builder for clients, but I think you're going to see clients attract home builders.

Go back to the early 2000s, it's a home developer that very small choices to make. You can pick your carpet, you can pick the finishes in terms of the cabinets and you get to pick maybe some paint colors. But otherwise, there's homes that are built that are standardized homes. So I think what you're going to see is that the move from in commercial space from all of this custom office building to much more tracked type builders for offices. So again, what you'll see is you'll come into the office instead of a client customizing their space every time.

You're going to get much more modular building within the office space. So you mentioned some technological solutions like project management software to improve that collaboration and really a bit more standardized approach to customize designing, if you will. That's really interesting. I do feel similarly, I feel like we do need to improve our collaborative approach. And I do think that technology is going to help us a great deal.

And I think that it already is starting to, which is part of the reason why I'm investigating blockchain specifically over these past few months. And modular absolutely is right behind there. Now, it's great to get your opinion on that. So with that, did you want to add anything else, Todd, before we wrap up the interview? First of all, thank you for taking the time and putting together podcasts like this that help educate people who are interested in our industry, whether that is owners who are in the marketplace today, or whether that is the continuing development of young professionals who get into our industry.

I think what you're doing with Constructor is a really neat idea and a cool way to help people learn more about our industry. Well, with that, thank you as well for being on the podcast today and sharing with us your thoughts about the industry and sharing with us about the awesome technology JLL's developed in-site, a bit about the culture there as well. Could you please tell us the best way for people to either get in touch with you or the JLL team and learn more about what you guys are doing with InSight?

The best way to get a hold of me is through our JLL portal. You can access me through that. My email address is listed in there. The second thing is to learn more about JLL is if you go to JLL.com, we have quite a bit of information in terms of research that we're doing, white papers that we've published for our clients and general happenings in the industry. And I think that's a great way for people to continue to learn about our organization.

So I will include the links in the show notes so that people will have easy access to being able to contact you and also find out more about your research. Well, with that, I'd just like to really just thank you again. I appreciate you being on the podcast today, Todd. You're welcome. Thanks for listening to this interview with Todd Burns.

Find out more about Todd and what he's up to at Constructor.com. If you learned something valuable in this episode, share it with your friends and colleagues. You can also let me know if you enjoyed our discussion. Connecting with me on Twitter at Brittany underscore CT or find me on LinkedIn. You can just email me at Brittany at Constructor.com.

I'm pretty excited to share with you guys next week's episode. It's because of three very cool reasons. Number one, it is the 80th episode of the Constructor podcast. Number two, it is the second year anniversary of when the Constructor podcast was launched. And lastly, it just so happens to be my birthday.

So we're going to celebrate with a Constructor audience by doing something pretty special. I'm going to share with you guys 10 things that I learned from doing this podcast for the past two years. And I'm going to circle around some topics around personal growth, but also things that I've learned in the industry. I look forward to sharing that episode with you guys next week. If you haven't already subscribed to the podcast, you can do so at your preferred podcast player.

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