Transcript: International BIM and IPD with Nathan Wood

Hello, I'm Brittany Campbell-Turner and this is the Constructor Podcast, session number 15. Hello and welcome to this episode of Constructor. I'm Brittany Campbell-Turner and this podcast is dedicated to helping property owners have certainty in their decisions about their construction projects. I want to help property owners foster trusting relationships with your project teams, help you understand how to lower risk, be under budget and on schedule in your construction projects, and exceed your end user's desires. Hello everyone, thank you for joining today.

Thanks for listening to Constructor, the best way to build it. If you like my content, please subscribe to Constructor.com. I just want to encourage me to keep providing you with interviews with excellent interviewees. When you subscribe, you'll be getting an email from me every week letting you know when a podcast is released and you'll have a link to the contact directly from your inbox. So today's podcast, I am interviewing Nathan Wood.

Listen in. As founder and chief enabling officer of Spectrum AEC, Nathan Wood's primary goal is to teach team collaboration and the utilization of technology and design and construction by solving the human barriers to new process and technology integration. Nathan and I have met through the lean construction community in person and the LCI Congress and again on social media. But without further ado, I bring to you Nathan Wood. Thank you very much, Brittany.

So how are you? How's your day been so far? Good, good. I am happy to be working this evening with you. I'm still amazed that you do your entire day job and then do this podcast on top of that.

So kudos to you. But no, I had a great Monday. I got to catch up from a week of holiday and then it was a week of Autodesk University before that. So I had a bunch to catch up on today. That's great.

Well, how was Autodesk University? I've been wanting to hear a little bit about that since you told me you were attending there. AU is always definitely a sight to see. I mean, if you get the opportunity to go, I highly recommend it. And definitely try and be a speaker because if you do, they give you a free registration.

Oh, nice. No, it's a really great place to sort of get the pulse of where the industry is at as far as technology and innovation. And really, a lot of the focus the last couple of years has been on kind of the human element of their machine learning or artificial intelligence and how I think some folks get scared. I think some folks get excited and really just realizing how big Autodesk is. It's so much more than just design and construction.

They do a lot of stuff in cinema and other industries that we don't even touch. Well, I didn't realize they touched the cinematic industry at all. Oh, yeah. That's pretty cool. I mean, anything in 3D visualizations and graphics and then they get into automotive and manufacturing.

So yeah, they have a very far reach. Nice. So I take it you were a speaker. What topics did you cover? Yeah.

So Chris Lingisa and I, he's with Styles Construction. He's a BDC director down there in Florida. And we talked about the democratization of data through BIM and how really all the technology is ready for us and that we've got sort of some process and some incentive barriers and some kind of data translation barriers that are preventing really the free flow of information that we need to drive all this efficiency that technology promises. And it is interesting how the conversation at these technology conferences is shifting less and less away from where the technology is failing and more towards where the people and the process are failing.

So that was sort of the focus of ours. And then another one on sort of some success stories on how we were creating integrations between SmartVid.io is an interesting new company that does, they will post process photos that you can upload from whatever project management solution you're using or Procore or they can build other API integrations with anything that's an open API and they can scan photos for anomalies or for certain elements like a duct or a crane and sort of like Google Photos does but more sophisticated, more centered towards the construction industry.

So it's a really cool technology but it's more of a great solution still looking for the right problem. So we're trying to show examples of really those use case problems of where it's a good fit and where we can justify that added need for kind of a backend post processing, which is yet another technology that I think we never seem to have enough budget for. Yeah, I think I spoke with someone with SmartVid a few months back, definitely trying to get a more connected relationship with them.

So that would be cool. Maybe we'll talk about that a little bit later. Yeah, Josh Kanner, the CEO, he may be someone you want to get on here at some point. He formerly was the CEO of Vella Systems, which got sold to Autodesk and became BIM 360 Field, if you've heard of that, which is sort of a field tracking platform. And so he's now CEO at SmartVid.io.

But yeah, very, very smart guy up in Boston in Massachusetts. Sweet. Oh, yeah. Thanks for giving me a little synopsis of what you were able to talk about. Those are awesome topics.

Yeah, we can talk about that for days. But yeah, you'll have to help me stay back on topic. No worries. Let's hop right into the interview questions I have here. I want to know a little bit about how you came to learn about BIM, how you got involved with it, how you got started.

Yeah, so BIM sort of fell into my lap. I was with DPR Construction, which coming out of school out of University of Texas, had just heard everyone raving that they were sort of the most innovative and the most technology forward. And having done some internships in their Washington, D.C. office and down in down in Austin, wanted to go to the headquarters, be in the Bay Area, sort of see where, you know, be at the heart of everything and happen to land on a very innovative integrated project delivery contract style, which is the shared risk and reward for Sutter Health and landed in a BIM role, even though my my traditional coming into the company was a project engineer.

I sort of had a knack for technology and figured out on screen takeoff pretty quickly. So they said, yeah, I want you to start doing BIM for our self-performed concrete group. And so it was it was really what was an interesting kind of petri dish in scenario that led to the innovation was this combination of the recession and really being on the bench. In fact, my start date at DPR was postponed about six months during that recession in the 2008 time frame. And coming on there, I couldn't get that traditional project engineer role.

So they say, well, here's a spot in BIM. And through that, started to learn and understand where we were finding all kinds of challenges in the exterior skin design and how they're trying to use design assist and prefabricated elements. But they're also trying to do BIM coordination and the technology didn't talk to each other. But I picked up this new structural tool called Tecla Structures. And we were doing rebar modeling and structural steel modeling and creating these digital 2D fabrication drawings that I was plotting out and giving to the guys in the field that had exactly the information that they needed for mechanical inserts and all the structural hangers so that we're not having quality issues.

And they're showing 10, 10, 15 percent productivity increase and higher quality. So it was amazing just the direct return on investment that we were seeing from BIM because it was this firsthand right at that 100 foot level from model it in the computer, understand the complexity of it, come up with that solution and then figure out how to build it in the field. And the ROI was just it was we didn't even have to track it that much because it was so obvious that. But fortunately, we did have a bunch of college grad students and they were like to study hours and hours of film and showed a lot of great metrics and studies that are out there if you Google it on just the productivity increase of this combination of collaboration, shared incentives and lean process and integrated BIM.

So let's talk a little bit about lean process and what you're mentioning as shared risk, shared reward approach. Tell me a little bit about that. Yeah, so IPD integrated project deliveries, it's been around for over a decade at least. Howard Ashcraft, sort of the godfather of it, with with Hanson Bridget in San Francisco Bay Area. And it's traditionally been just between an owner and architect and a contractor that says, you know, we will share equally in this risk and reward based on the pool of money that we put into it, how much skin we have in the game.

And there's certain levels of contingencies. And for that shared risk and reward, the owner kind of protects that same team. So if they go over that number, that at least they're not their profits protected, but their feet, at least their basic costs are protected and there's certain coverages. So that's where a lot of the challenges come in with it. But ultimately, it is the theoretical motivational system that we need to create the true collaboration and interactions between designers and engineers and builders to solve the very real challenges earlier on in the project, because too often the legalese that we sign early on end up catching up with us down the road.

And usually the incentive is to kick the can down the road rather than solve the problem up front. And what I learned is that IPD really does flip that on its head and creates those to say, no, we need to solve this now because it's going to hurt us more later and it's going to hurt all of us. So let's solve this now. And as long as the team understands and it's very clear that that is the mindset, you can solve amazing problems. And that's where they they were able to save 30 percent on their overall design and construction schedule, which was what drove them to do IPD in the first place.

But it's sort of a two-edged sword because you have to make sure you have the right culture to go with the shared risk and reward. So quick question, then I'm just trying to think through what Sutter Health may have been thinking when they decided to go with this approach, to go with this IPD on steroids model as it showed on the E&R news report here. So I what why did you said they they had 30 percent reduction on schedule in their design and construction? How did how did they even track that?

Tell me a little bit more about that tracking mechanism. Well, that was more of a wake up call realization that was actually driven from a top down mandate because anyone who's built health care in California knows the word OSHPOD, which isn't exactly four letters, but it might as well be a four letter word when it comes to state inspections for health care and it's for all the seismic requirements. And they've got some had a lot of new mandates that were rolling in. I think it was January 1st of 2013 was when the project had to be the doors had to be open.

And this was back in 2007. So at that point, they already knew based on their historical data that they were going to have to build this and get it open and be compliant 30 percent faster than they'd ever done it before that early. And so they knew that at the time, a traditional model which was going to fight and drag out and be in lawsuits and time won't matter, won't work. They have to do something where the time is the most important aspect of it. So they'll take on that risk of an integrated product delivery.

And they had trusted partners and had had success with them. And this wasn't their first time around. So they didn't dive in everything head first. It was the first time taking this level of IPD at the 11 partners. But it was with trusted partners like DPR that it had previous successful BIM projects before that were not IPD to say, hey, we can do this and let's take the next level of risk.

And the way we'll do it is with this new carrot called IPD, where if we just saw the savings on the last project that you didn't get back because it was guaranteed maximum price without shared savings, you know, then they are. I can't remember exactly what it was before, but it was it was, you know, not as incentivized. So it made sense at the time for all players to to go into that. And I think the story is it has to be the right situation. I don't think IPD is the answer for every single project, but I do think it is the answer for a lot of projects that don't necessarily give at the time of day because they may have heard a horror story from someone else.

OK, so I'm just I'm trying to tease out the risks here now. So, you know, right. So from guaranteed maximum price, right. I guess what were the issues that that were glaring before that really made sense was that the office of statewide health planning and development, I think, is what it stands for. And it's the it's it's like if you've ever built airports, the FAA is extremely strict there.

OSHPOD is I don't know, it'd be a toss up on who's more strict between OSHPOD and FAA. OK, fair enough. So we know schedule is a restriction. What are the other challenges or glaring issues that that pushed, you know, shutter to go towards IPD? I mean, just the nature of health care in general.

I mean, health care, you typically find is one of the most progressive segments in the market when it comes to BIM purely just because you're packing an entire manufacturing plant worth of pipes and tubes and bed gas and pneumatic and whatever else. But then, yeah, it still needs to look like a five star hotel. And so that's extremely complex and very expensive to not get right. And when the technology is available, you're going to pay up for that when the cost benefit analysis makes sense. And so a lot of the stories that we tell, you know, even in our spectrum workshops, is that just because the reason why I use BIM at DPR on the Sutter Caster Valley project isn't necessarily why a contractor in the Midwest is going to use BIM.

You know, there are a lot of different reasons why. And it depends on the type of projects you're doing, who you're working with, what contract you signed, the unique complexities of the job and other factors. So it's really never, unfortunately, going to be a one size fits all. OK. All right.

So potentially there's just the same amount of risk and a guaranteed maximum price and design build approach. And, you know, it's potentially and it's just a matter of understanding the contractual model. Is that what you're saying? It's definitely not a one size fits all. Perception, right?

I mean, you can sign a lump-sub job that says that your risk is protected. But at the end of the day, at the end of the job, when everybody's defaulted, then you're paying at the end. And all of the risks show that traditional models, you know, we've seen the stats, we've seen the productivity, we've seen the consistent failure rate. To say that the new thing is too risky when doing the same thing is absolutely risky. You know, we just have to ask ourselves, what is risk?

And really understand how best to manage risk in an industry where, you know, that's all we do is manage risk. So, you know, I think having a strategy of shedding it isn't necessarily smart. It's about knowing what risks you're better at managing and which ones you're better at passing to someone else that's better at managing it. I think that's a great way to look at it. Because I've constantly looked at different ways of explaining the difference between an IPD contract and the risk associated with it.

And I think that's a great way to describe just, it's really what are you capable of managing and how do you learn more about it and manage it better, ultimately. I mean, I think my utopia contract, you know, if we're talking to owners and this is our audience, you know, would be some sort of a modified, you know, digital construction manager role, you know, that does the audits, that does the data checking, but can be a pass through to a ton of individual guaranteed maximum price to all the different, you know, special skill sets that the owner wants to keep within, you know, their understanding of the risk and that it's actually worth them having more direct contracts and having more sort of referral agents that act as these sort of construction managers and kind of influencers and enablers between them that it won't necessarily be this happy-go-lucky

IPD. I think there'll be somewhere in between a GMP with shared savings and an IPD. Okay. No, that makes a lot of sense. You sort of need that transitory space, if you will.

Yeah, it's sort of, you know, what it is. And part of it too is that I'm even trying to do that with how do we pay for technology and, you know, does the owner really know what they're paying for with technology and what's hidden behind numbers, what's transparent and at the end of the day, if the owner's paying anyway, you know, why shouldn't we just reestablish what technology should cost on a project and reestablish that baseline? Because right now, you know, according to Gartner, we're one third what the across industry average should be and, you know, about one seventh what healthcare is right now.

Oh, wow. Yeah, that's incredible numbers, quite honestly. Yeah, so I mean, I want to just dig a little bit deeper on your initial experiences so that we just get a better understanding of, you know, what your involvement with BIM was and then IPD. But I do want to get back into, you know, the story of, you know, how you were involved at DPR as a project engineer, and then, you know, basically the journey of how you got to where you are today. So I think we dug in a little bit.

It's a good place to pick up because I think my role was sort of this this rogue BIM guy that I wasn't the traditional MEP coordination, Navis works would be what a general contractor would typically be doing. I was focused more on the core and the shell of the building and rebar and exterior skin coordination and was able to do some again with that Petri dish and that opportunity at Castor Valley, did some pretty cool things and submitted, you know, won some awards through the techless software that we were using and ended up winning their global BIM award.

And they actually flew me out to Finland at one point to sort of talk more as sort of an end customer and help their marketing team with, you know, understanding more about how the US customers were using their software in ways that they didn't even realize it could be used because it's, you know, more of a canvas than anything. So, you know, from that, I took that same skill set over to the sister project for Castor Valley, which was the AltaBates project. And that was a similar, it was actually 12 parties instead of 11 parties.

So had all the designers, all of the engineers, and all this and the major MEP trades all signed down together, as well as the structural steel contractor into another integrated project delivery. Unfortunately, that project was not as successful. But we had a lot of really interesting lessons learned and it was a much more challenging project. And I think we're actually trying to write a lean academic paper that is really kind of this root cause analysis that doesn't try and look for blame, but really looks to understand, you know, why did this IPD project that was so great and so awesome, you know, in the center of Castor Valley and how E&R portrays it, and then a project that's supposed to be the exact same contractors, the exact same contract, the exact same technology and the same process, yet a very different result, and trying to

understand why and not just say, you know, IPD is bad. So, you know, that's really been a lot of my passions trying to understand why one project was successful and why one wasn't. And after that, took my way actually into DPR's corporate innovation team. So then I got to visit, probably close to hundreds of projects over the last three or four years with them, seeing different contract styles, different motivations, different personalities, and different ways that technology does and doesn't work. And was just amazed at how certain projects were able to make a technology work that another project team was throwing in the garbage and trying to figure out why one was working and one wasn't.

So it was a really eye-opening experience and was also where I got that opportunity to go out to the Middle East, like you said earlier. Oh, so you were able to then primarily study BIM then, it sounds like, when you were traveling on the innovation team, is that correct? Yeah, that was very much, again, understanding why DPR uses BIM in California for healthcare as a coordination tool. And then going to the Middle East where a very large contractor on a very large airport project, Consolidated Contractors Company, they use BIM in a very different way because it's more of a construction manager at risk style contract, I believe, or that's a lot of what they do.

And they are very disciplined in the way that they use quantities from BIM and create models in the very beginning and are constantly comparing their model-driven quantities to the bill of quantities, which, again, because they use a British Commonwealth system that's based on a standardized bill of quantities and a unit rate, they're much more incentivized to focus on quantities and production rates. And so they've done the whole 5D, which if 2D to 3D is BIM and then 4D is the 3D plus time, then 5D is 3D plus time plus schedule so that you've connected your cost and your schedule and your models all together to create a movie of how your cash flow.

And they would have amazing histograms of plan versus actual. And within two weeks, it became very clear that there was no way DPR could ever do that because there wasn't an incentive to do it that way. And it was going to take so many bodies and so many people and so much of a cultural shift, but they really were doing what they said they were doing. And half of it was just a fact finding to find out if they were actually doing what they said they were doing.

So the British Commonwealth system, I'm somewhat familiar with it just because of where I work at MACE. They're based out of London, so definitely BIM, when they describe BIM, it sometimes is quite a bit different from what we describe BIM here in the US. And you're mentioning the addition of the schedule and the cost, correct? The bill of quantity. So it sounds like to me there's a bit of standardization that comes with even how the work is executed.

Is that true? Is that how it goes? Well, I'm glad you brought up UK because the reason why they're doing BIM and a big motivation I think comes back to this acronym that I keep going back to of WIFM. Have you heard of WIFM yet? I feel like I've seen it on Twitter or something like that.

What's in it for me? Yes, WIFM, yes. So let's go back to Sutter. So Sutter, what's in it for me is we need a 30% schedule compression and we just proved in our last job that BIM saves us all this time and money through the coordination side, which is much more geometry driven. And that's why in the US you see BIM use in total stations, much greater use in the supply chain through mechanical and electrical plumbing firms and general contractors than you do in architects, engineers, because unless you're working for GSA or another government agency or a client that requires intense BIM standards, there's not really incentive to follow it.

And in the UK everything is now about this top down government run BIM data mandate and this you should do BIM and you won't get paid if you don't do BIM. And so the burden of that very much falls on the architects and the models that they deliver. But at the end of the day, I think that the true question becomes how well does that information flow downstream? Because if you look at with them, I just I don't see an incentive to follow what BIM level two says you should do until they have some very significant changes to their contracts.

Okay, that's so interesting to me. You know, there is this divide across the pond, right? And you know, there's definitely this, there's a lot of integration of BIM and LEAN. And it seems sometimes that there's so much innovation, but at the same time we're taking what we think makes sense here, but ultimately all of it makes sense, right? It comes back to incentivization, but it's understanding the risk, right?

Because if you understood the risk, that would be incentive enough, quite honestly, or the risk reduction. And I think the whole point with BIM is not to look at it holistically, but to understand that, you know, I don't think I'd do a presentation without this slide that, you know, BIM is just a tool. That tool is only as good as that person using it. And even that person can be only as effective as the process allows them to be. And again, we get back to contracts, we get back to incentives, and we get back to, you know, skill sets and training, but not just training.

I talk a lot about the difference between education and training, because in this day and age, technology is becoming so much easier that it's more about how do we, you know, figure out quickly how to use the technology, but understand more about the ins and outs of how it works so that we can train the technology to do our jobs better than we can. And that's really what machine learning is all about. And until we, you know, stop being afraid of machine learning taking our jobs and realizing that it's only as good as the power of our brains, you know, then we'll really take over the industry and fix our productivity issues.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. We're like-minded in that. And hopefully, the business owners that are listening here see that AI is on the horizon, right? I mean, it's truly here. It really- Yeah, it can be garbage in garbage out as well.

So- Exactly. ... sword. Oh, man. So just kind of getting back on track here.

You know, complete the story of, you know, you said you went and traveled over to Abu Dhabi and you were learning about, you know, how to utilize BIM on that end of things. Yeah. So I mean, that was, again, a great opportunity, great perspective. You know, got to visit with DPR as a BIM subsidiary company in Pune, India, that actually a couple former DPR employees that were, one of them was the BIM manager above me, Saurabh and Durga. They have a company out there.

So I got to visit them in India and see their team that, you know, it was, I think, at 1.8. Now they're up over 70 folks now, which is just great to see how much that's growing. And really, it sort of talks to this globalization of BIM and of BIM services. And while I certainly have seen the byproduct of BAD, you know, BIM out of India and Malaysia, where they're more or less just copy and pasting, you know, from old drawings or, you know, doing backwards workflows.

I think there are some good opportunities to leverage kind of this 24-hour work cycle and create successes. So, you know, that was a cool opportunity to learn about, you know, what they're doing out there. But most of the time was spent in the U.S. just connecting between offices, trying to spread as much, you know, best practices, lessons learned, knowledge between different projects, and, you know, understand just the differences in the landscape of, you know, how important owners are in the process, how important the architects are in the process, and even, you know, within DPR, that from project to project, that just team cultures sometimes depend on the right, you know, chemistry of leadership, you know, across the team.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I'm just kind of thinking through here. You know, you were able to get all these experiences and travel across the country and understand the best practices to implement, and you did a lot of sharing between those offices just because you were able to travel as part of the innovation team. How did you find the buy-in when you were traveling around to different offices within DPR? Would you say that DPR was pretty much acculturated to BIM and Lean at this point?

No, I mean, I think with any company, well, any company that has more than a couple regional offices, you'll find that there's certainly a cultural difference, you know, across offices and, you know, even within regions. And so you learn a few tricks of the trade, especially in a construction industry or in a business like the construction industry. And I often refer to them as Jedi mind tricks to sort of get some of the folks that you know just walking into the room, you can see their face, that they're going to be resistant to anything that they're going to do.

And I think that's a good thing, because they're going to be able to see their face, that they're going to be resistant to anything that's not the way that they've always done it because they're proud of whatever they need to be proud of. And that's fine. And I want to help them understand that they have a huge legacy, a huge amount of knowledge that they need to share, and that even though they're going to be resistant to the technology, that the guys below them are somehow impart their knowledge and their information and their lessons learned on the next generation, that they're giving away their value and they're giving away their IP.

And so I think that's really where I'm hoping that the culture of sort of this baby boomer generation, a lot of the superintendents that are retiring now, that they're recognizing that just because they're not building with their hands anymore doesn't mean that there's not a ton of value in their heads that can be translated through technology and partnering with them with younger millennials that pick this stuff up lickety split. Tell me your top Jedi mind trick. I want to hear. Well, I don't think it's ever a specific trick.

It has to do with questions. You can't ever be right with someone who has to be right. You have to tell them that they're right and then continue to ask them questions until their answer to their question either contradicts themselves or makes them sound silly. And so that's usually the holistic trick is a series of questions, not to give too much away, but I think that is the point is that we should be curious. We should be thinking it's not just if this then that.

We should really be figuring out why and how, especially in an industry like instruction where it's all about understanding constructability and unique situations and one offs and imparting that knowledge. And the only way we're ever going to have big data is if we start collecting the data out of the heads of these great minds. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, I'm always looking for ways to lack for lack of a better word, convince people, you know, that this is the mentality that you should start having. Yes, the industry is changing.

You need to jump on the bandwagon. This is how you do it. And I'm always looking for what do you call Jedi mind tricks to to convince. Well, part of it is even saying, you know, you need to or you should. And I always asking why should you?

I think the whole power of Uber, of Airbnb, of any of these sort of design thinking, you know, that matchmakers that say, well, of course, the taxi driver didn't care about the rider and the rider didn't care about the taxi driver. But now all of a sudden you got this Uber that actually cares about both sides and, you know, wants to make that as fair and equitable as possible. What is the version of that for this industry? It's not an app. You know, it's something more on a human level.

So I like that you just mentioned something more on a human level. I know that in the past you and I have spoken specifically about addressing the people first. I know that's, you know, pretty much one of your your biggest goals of your business to address the people first. So tell me a little bit. I don't know if you want to tell me a little bit about Spectrum AAC now and how you got started there.

Yeah, no, actually, it's a perfect segue because I think you're right. We met at the IGLC in Boston was a year and a half ago or a little over a year ago. And that was I was still at that point, but it was both going to the Lean Conference in Boston and then the very next week was the BIM Conference down in Orlando, the BIM Forum. And just having these conversations with the two different sides of the aisle of sort of the process people, the lean folk that put on the lean hat and then the technology folk, the BIM folk, and put on the BIM hat and that both sides are sort of saying, you know, hey, this is really about the people.

This is about developing the process and the culture and technology was saying the same thing. Hey, we got this BIM stuff, but we really got to figure out this process. We got to figure out the people and the culture. And yet if you talk to any of them about, hey, what do you think about lean? Oh, no, no, I'm BIM.

I'm not lean. Anyone that asks about lean, oh, no, I'm lean. I'm not BIM. And we're very dismissive of the other side and almost it almost felt like high school clicks or something. And recognizing that we need to break through this stigma.

And I think I understand why and really why Spectrum's trying to bridge this gap between what technology and what BIM says we should do and where the lean culture that sort of says, hey, we should get down to the grassroots, understand how these guys are working, help them be more efficient. And a lot of that, the technology isn't there. It's not most efficient for what they're trying to do. And it actually impedes their efficiency. And so by my experience of recognizing both sides, that to me, technology is amazing, but I can also see the frustration in it and that sometimes it is just easier to write something on a piece of paper or use a whiteboard.

It doesn't have to be digital. And taking that approach is how we try and develop project delivery standards, how we try and develop BIM standards, trying to recognize that we're trying to solve the productivity dilemma. We're not trying to solve the BIM data dilemma. That's one part of it. And that will be a great benefit when we get to that.

But we've got to help people be more efficient. And we've got to help them be more efficient by getting digital. And different people like to be digital in different ways. And just like everybody's got their favorite map app or chat app or anything else, I don't think that that preference is going to go away. So how do we develop a language just like an HTML, but for our industry that's more of a construction HTML that helps us talk between all these different platforms, all these technologies that we'll let them compete with each other, but we've got to establish what our language is going to be.

And we want to help develop that through the workshops that we do and technology integrations and all those sorts. If you don't mind, just kind of give me a sense of the type of services that you would provide at Spectrum. I know we talked a little bit about the coaching method. But give me a sense of how you would roll out working with a client. Yeah, so every client is always going to start with what we call an A3 workshop.

And A3, from the lean world, is the size of the sheet of paper. And it goes through the background in different conditions, which we do follow that. But for us, A3 represents assess, align, and advance. And it's really a three-day workshop where the assessment phase starts with visiting job sites, understanding the language of how the team is communicating, where some of the communication breakdowns are or technology or workflow breakdowns are, bring that leadership together to discuss it, to understand, to break the ice, and to point out where some of those process breakdowns are that we want to change and see what barriers are within our control, which ones are out of our control.

And then on that third day, really come up with a tactical action plan that can start on day one and have that 90 plan to establish some key performance indicators. What are the things either inside as an organization or within a specific project team that we're going to change, that we're going to make better and measure through these key performance indicators? And sometimes it takes technology integrations where we're referring in other technology consultants or systems integrators to do that sort of work. Sometimes it's a new technology that the team wasn't aware of, that we're just referring out that technology.

We're not trying to do the technology side, but we speak it very well and really trying to stay on the strategy side and support through the education, through the training and the measurement of those so that we'll do those 30, 60, 90-day check-ins, ensure that everything is being adopted the way that it's expected to be, knowing that you're going to have a little bit of a dip in productivity through that learning curve before you get back up and that we'll measure through that so that people don't get discouraged and quit on it halfway through.

I think that's a great mechanism to track regularly how it's working for the client. I mean, for our clients, oftentimes they like to ensure that whatever money they're investing in consulting or in software, that it's definitely getting the rate of return that it should. What are the metrics that clients are typically looking for? If even it's not the same, do you hear something that's typical among some of your clients? No, I mean, I'll answer your question in a different way because you brought up a perfect point though of the difference between return on investment and a key performance indicator.

Because a return on investment would say, I guess, they assume that by collecting data and analyzing that they can reduce their current waste by 50 percent. But I think the question becomes, how many of these companies actually know how much waste they're creating? Because usually they don't track it in the first place. Part of this is how do you change the culture and how do you recognize that this investment is, I don't like to use the word disruptive, I prefer to use transformative because the people are willing it to happen, not being pulled into it happening.

But it is this ripping a bandaid and needing to go through this coaching a new habit to track things more in a more disciplined way, to establish certain checkpoints that say we're going to have good tracking and good data and we're going to look at it and we're going to measure it to learn, not measure it to blame. That's the hardest part for executives because they start seeing waste and they want to go point people out. All that does is create people's incentive to hide that same data that you just collected.

How that is approached in the very beginning is a critical step. We want to help coach again through that and what is this new lean leadership that is required when we do this level of measuring that say we're here to make you better, not here to whip you if you don't do what X, Y, and Z says in this user manual. That's one of the biggest challenges through this is again, is the culture. That's where our tagline at Spectrum AEC is we build people because we want to be there at the forefront of the people that develop the right process that pairs with the best technology knowing that there's plenty of lean experts out there that can talk theory for days but usually a lot of it comes from Toyota, it comes from manufacturing that doesn't exactly understand the same cultural challenges that we're going through.

There's also a lot of great BIM folks that come from data and computer science that think they can solve the problem but they again forget about that human element. By bridging that gap between the two sides, I think we can really solve some interesting problems that can create some very synergistic innovations and hopefully some significant ROI. It's about executives and owners recognizing that there's going to be that dip in productivity. We're going to see things go down before they go up so let's measure it down and then measure it back up and then after 12, 16, 18 months we'll start seeing those ROI's but if we're too focused on that in the beginning you'll end up not getting what you want.

Yeah, I can see how well that will work especially with utilizing the A3 model, especially if you're doing the plan, do, check, act process at those checkpoints reviewing their key performance indicators. I think that's a great approach because you really do establish that foundation of, okay well where are you now? If you don't measure where you are today there's no way you can understand whether you've even approved or gotten worse. At the end of the day the key performance indicators should either be around time savings of the individual that's supposed to input data and what is the quality of the data that you're receiving.

Those things don't directly correlate to ROI but they certainly indirectly correlate to ROI and so by focusing on those first and not over emphasizing ROI in the beginning we'll end up at a much higher reason. That's all the Harvard Business School and John Cotter and all those studies of how to overcome these organizational change efforts is through that sort of an approach. Tell me what you love most about being a coach at Spectrum. I mean obviously the founder, you're the CEO but what do you love most about being able to help people in this way?

Oh man, definitely this whole not having a boss thing. You were talking about the co-working in the last one and I definitely feel like I'm this guinea pig for trying to be freelance consulting and coaching in this industry that needs a lot of it but isn't used to this approach. It's been an interesting year just trying to describe what the heck Spectrum AC is and where it fits in this industry because there isn't currently a spot. If you talk to Barb Jackson with the Design Build Institute, she talks about this role of an integrated project leader and I think a lot of what I'm trying to do is establish this role of an integrated project leader and a lot of times it shouldn't actually be someone that's on the project day in and day out.

It should be someone that has another job, has a day job but then does these sort of check-ins and can keep this accountability from this sort of outsider unbiased standpoint. Again, to me there's so much in this psychology of how to get designers and engineers and architects that are different personalities that don't generally enjoy hanging out together to argue and to truly collaborate which involves conflict and debate and not worry about suing each other but actually having an opinion and standing for it and at the end of the day the owner needs to make a decision if they can't come to one themselves and it's a much more involved process but it's a much better product at the end of the day.

No, yeah. I get really excited when I think about people being forced to kind of think group. Group think is a bad word but because you don't want people to think aimlessly but I love the idea of getting people to think aimlessly and I think that's a good because you don't want people to think aimlessly but I love the idea of getting people to think at a higher level and collaborate at a higher level. That's something that excites me so much and I think that- It's worth paying for the time to do that.

Paying for that experience is something that- Absolutely. And so we can't pay for the technology let alone the experience part of it. Yeah, so I mean it's one of those things that you can't see the benefit of getting people to to really think on that higher level until they're in the room doing it sometimes. And I guess, how do you convince? Who's your primary client?

Is it the contractor? Is it the owner? How do you convince people that this makes sense? I know I'm asking you all your tricks, your Jedi tricks but- I mean part of the whole reason behind spectrum is such a wide spectrum of this industry and really it's the two opposite ends of it that have I've seen the most interest and attraction and I knew at the end of the day was where there was the most incentive for a role like myself and so that would be the developer, the either multi-family commercial style that didn't really have a need for BIM before but now it's gotten to a price point and market penetration where they can see the value of it even though they're not as complex as manufacturing or a hospital and they can really start to take advantage of the kit of parts and

the data side of it but they're also facing this realization that the industry isn't as far along as the technology guys are telling them that they are so that's where those who recognize that would bring me in to help address and understand building those partners locally with them, working with them to establish requirements either at a project level or at an organizational level that are pragmatic but will get both sides results that are needed so I think there's a lot of opportunities there. Okay awesome, no that makes a lot of sense.

You're really starting up starting upfront with developers and establishing those guidelines if you will. Yeah and then on the opposite end would be okay you know the owner doesn't care or it's hard bid or it's you know stay and we can't control it and then let's go all the way to the opposite side down to the subcontractor especially you know the mechanical the plumbing contractor that is becoming much more sophisticated in owning their own supply chain of design information and engineering drawings to you know fabrication spool sheets to kit of parts modular fabrication and delivering installation so but it's still there's only a handful that are really taking advantage of that and that's something where even in an old school adversarial contract they actually gain benefit out of that because their ability to control data to control impacts and to track all of that will

usually help them in their argument at the end of the day because it was usually their lack of ability to track that was how they got taken advantage of and so they've got more again skin in the game and a reason why they would want to track that data and want to invest in it whereas you know the more these gmp contracts for for general contractors or kind of these gmp style for the architects it's it's too much of this relationship business and not enough incentive to take the risks that are needed to invest in technology adoption awesome okay no that makes that makes a whole lot of sense okay great um no it's great to learn about your your your business and and kind of where you fit right now and the potentiality of what this could be right once people understand the value of basically the

you're really that connection point right between technology and the people and and the process ultimately yeah well and one you know one last thing i should talk about too on the process side and globalization so one company that i've i've met recently out of sydney australia is uh it's ridley and their their ceo josh ridley great great guy super passionate about coming over here and helping solve what they've solved out in australia because once again they're more like the british commonwealth and more like a uk that would have top down mandates on them and data and requirements and and they've actually had been doing it longer than the uk has so they've actually adopted it fairly well and these guys partner with architects you know either very high-end design architects or with small architecture firms and they're the kind of technical executive architect that will do

all of the drawing sets and all of the revit models and manage all of the database and and be sort of that middle person that glue between the design the designer and the contractor and so again like what contract model do you sign up for that you know creates them as this middle person between them you know i don't think we've fully defined that yet but um i could i could see where that would fit in and those are opportunities where you know we're just looking for the right owners that see a need for you know hey we're going to build a lot of um you know a lot of different properties a lot of different locations and we'd rather we want to keep consistency in the data of how our designs and and operations of our facilities and but yet you still want to

get a different design and feel for each location you know i think this this new separation of the design architect and the technical architect is only going to continue to happen and i think it's actually a good thing and they'll actually end up taking up more of what general contractors are currently doing with them and they can focus more on the cost and the schedule and the constructability but we'll also be BIM savvy and we we create sort of that checks and balances that is needed in the industry so no i i'm gonna i'm definitely gonna check uh josh rodley out yeah he sounds like he's doing that uh ridley co um yeah ridley.co oh i'm sorry ridleyco.com yeah r i d l e y c o dot com is uh is their website and um yeah they're they're doing some really interesting things in

uh penetrating the market up here with sort of their style of executive architecture and digital BIM management okay yeah no yeah i'll definitely put that in that link in the show notes um and i know previously we talked about the the enr issue um that talked about the stutter health project so i'll make sure to include that in the show notes as well great um just to i guess wrap up um i always like to to ask the question like how do you recommend um someone who doesn't know very much about BIM or lean um to just start implementing something right right away or or or learn as much as they possibly can right away is there something that you would recommend i mean of course hiring you would would be one option but just to just to get their feet wet right just start you know getting yeah getting something you know going how how would you

recommend doing that there are fortunately some great media platforms out there that are you know delivering the right message um i think uh internationally right now the the one that's one of my favorites is the the B1M and i think it's it's just the b number one m.com and you can follow their twitter handle and Fred Mills is is their founder i actually got to meet him out in london and very passionate guy uh you know very passionate to change the industry and move things forward and and their youtube channel has just a ton of uh one great examples of of cool BIM uses around the world but more importantly sort of these questions of you know why even use BIM in the first place you know what are what are some of the countermeasures they get very much into the the nuts and bolts of it but in a very you know condensed way so um that's a great one

another one would be uh you know the structure uh platform which uh is uh it's it's uh through the through blue beam but uh Sasha Reid uh runs that program and um they they create some great videos and great understandings um they did a great segment with Barton Malo uh which is a general contractor here in the U.S. about the role of sort of symbiotic mentorship and and some of what we were talking about earlier of the um the experience of the superintendents and sort of the youth and the the ideas of the millennial engineers and you know how they can work together to really solve that many more problems and another great platform to to gain good information um and then you know of course your podcast and all the other podcasts out there so it's it's great to see more media out there uh that is talking about the things that need to be talked about in this

industry when it comes to BIM. Absolutely. Yeah begin with the same line but take it one step at a time you know it's it's uh it sounds like you're not asking more on but um it's uh yeah it's it's it's it's easier said than done but uh I think we have to start somewhere and uh just like anything it's I feel like coming off of Thanksgiving it feels like trying to go on a diet you know it's like everybody hates doing it but once you get into it then you always start to love it.

That's right that's right. All right so my last question for you how can people get in touch with you? Oh man uh so uh the the Spectrum AEC website is www.spectrumaecforarchitectureengineeringconstruction.com and I also do have a personal website um because I I do you know speaking engagements and other you know sort of thought leadership and so you can find more of those videos and other things on my personal website which is Nathan C as in Charles Wood so NathanCWood.com and then same with the Twitter handles uh Twitter handle is at Nathan C Wood for Spectrum it's at Spectrum AEC and um yeah I try try and be as vocal as possible although uh I'm not not as good as you are uh try try to get all the followers up and and play the social media game but um I'll always try and be out at the the different technology conferences and and

keep those uh conferences up today on the website so um definitely look forward to anyone reaching out or hopefully seeing at a conference coming up soon. Great thanks so much Nathan this was an awesome discussion we had here and um I hope that the audience is uh as excited as I am to to have to listen to this as much as I had fun just interviewing you so no this was great. Awesome well thanks so much Brittany I really appreciate the opportunity. Awesome we'll talk soon thanks Nathan.

All right thanks a lot. Alrighty. I hope you enjoyed this interview with Nathan it was a pleasure to interview him and he's overall just a fun guy to chat with. Please find the show notes at Constructor.com and don't forget to subscribe. I look forward to sharing my interview with Spotter, a company that has a product that helps companies increase productivity in their construction sites as well as improve the safety of their workers.

That will be in episode 16. Looking forward to sharing that with you next week.