Transcript: The Business Case For BIM: Visualizing Real Estate Assets for Building Owners and Operators

One of the things that I think is sometimes overlooked may be the physical, the comfort or the functionality of those buildings, right? And the reusability of those facilities, right? In the future, because if we're trying to get to a point where we wanna build a building, if we want these facilities to last 50, 75, maybe even a hundred years, we really have to think all the way down how these facilities and how these buildings and really how we're going to work and live as a society.

Hello and welcome to the Constructor Podcast, the Future of the Built Environment. 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. In this episode, I speak with Ian McGaw, VP of Technology and Innovation at ENG Works. He is an experienced advisor and technologist for process management and technology integration.

I actually met Ian at a Built Worlds Building 2.0 conference. He was actually on stage doing a Q&A when I first saw him. And I said to myself, this guy knows what he's talking about. He's deeply versed in BIM and knows quite a few frameworks to build a successful VDC delivery. His educational background is in computer science and international business, and he works with owners to optimize their business operations, setting them up for success in their approach to asset tracking.

But with that, let's get into the interview. Today, we are speaking with Ian McGaw, VP of Technology and Innovation at ENG Works. He is an experienced advisor and technologist for process management and technology integration, and he has an educational background in computer science and international business. First and foremost, Ian, welcome to the Constructor Podcast. Thank you very much for having me.

My pleasure. So what we're going to talk about today is VDC and BIM. And you have had the opportunity to work with owners to optimize their business operations, and you've been doing this for some time now. So in your experience, what are owner-operators looking for when it comes to VDC and BIM? Yeah, that's a great jumping off point.

And it really depends on which owner you ask of what they're looking for, right? And that's usually where we start is we say, okay, well, do you want to manage your spaces? Do you want to manage your assets? Are you interested in energy management? A lot of the times we just get a lot of those nodding heads in the room and things like that.

So we start to dive down into how can we create sort of an asset standard? Is there a need to create an asset standard even for an owner? And I should preface that we work with a lot of healthcare owners as well as data centers and some institutional bodies as well. So larger campuses, larger and more complex facilities is really where we focus. So I've been doing this for about 15 years now.

And of that 15 years, about 10 of it has been focused on the BIM to FM side or specifically owners. And so around the advent or rather, COBE is pretty old but we started picking it up about 10 years ago and applying it into our light engineering models. We're actually an engineering firm here too. So we've got our hands kind of in the entire life cycle for the VDC and BIM to FM sides. And so to get back to your question about what's really important for owners, if you think about from an asset management perspective, certainly not every piece of equipment needs to be maintained, whether that's virtually in a database or physically.

So we usually focus on the larger ticket items, your MEP systems specifically. So things like chillers and rooftop units, pumps, even all the way down to things like fire extinguishers, we're tracking those in terms of when they were last charged or maintained or checked to make sure that they're still there and viable. When we look at space and move management, and those are a lot of the corporate real estate groups that are very interested in those aspects of being able to track space from the beginning, from design or even earlier than that, sometimes in capital planning, so that they can estimate and really then get down to a finite cost because in so many healthcare organizations, they have to report back to the government.

So they have to have very, very accurate counts on their areas, their spaces, and how much they charge for those, because that directly impacts their funding, of course. So it's highly important for those things. So we'll of course, and I'm talking about these sort of in broad strokes, because I think we'll dig in a little bit more to of the specifics to those things. Those are the two main categories, but as you get down and start to understand how an organization wants to utilize the data for spaces and assets, we can really start to get into different things like the internet of things, right?

So we can start to look at how we're placing sensors on our air handling units to measure things like vibration, sound, temperature change, perhaps energy usage, which leads me into the next part of energy management or energy analytics as well. And so we've been lucky enough to work on a few projects where the owner wanted us to go through an entire facility, place different sensors around, whether that's day lighting or the few that I had mentioned already, and actually pull all of that real-time data into a dashboard or a repository that we could run some machine learning algorithms on.

And so we were very easily able to understand exactly how their facility was running. And in one case, we actually found that an air handler was both heating and cooling at the exact same time, and they had no idea that this was going on. Oh my goodness. Yeah, so it's really interesting. And one of the things we're doing with those insights now is we're actually connecting them back not only into the various IWMS or integrated workplace management systems that this owner has, but we're also pulling those insights all the way back down into design so that the architects and the engineers can leverage that information of the true facility and how it's running to expand it or to renovate that facility.

So I've been having lots of conversations about the beacon sensor capability to collect data around operations so that owners can make smarter decisions around efficiency, utilization of energy, air handling units, chillers, and things of the like. I have also been encountering a topic about occupancy and collecting that type of data through these same beacon sensors. Is that something that you are also encountering at this time? We are, absolutely. We're actually working with a data center now, and we've positioned certain proximity sensors in their data rooms.

And this actually provides us two very interesting avenues. One, we can understand exactly where and which employees are interacting inside of this very restricted space, but also we're able to tie those proximity sensors or beacons to, we're actually using BIM 360 Ops from Autodesk in this case, but we're tying those beacons to the actual locations. So if a employee walks up to server rack A, and they don't want to hunt and pack to find out exactly which servers are in there, this proximity sensor will actually open that location, and it will show them a listing of the five or 10 different servers or battery backups or whatever they are in that cabinet.

So they can quickly and easily see, oh, okay, this switch is connected to a server B or something like that. And I think that's just scratching the surface with some of these proximity sensors, some of the things that we can do as that technology becomes faster, more prevalent and really smaller, right? Some of these proximity sensors can be decent size and kind of an eyesore. So we'd really like to see those start to be integrated in different pieces of equipment. I think that's really interesting.

Just a simple thing of the air handling unit cooling and heating at the same time. I mean, there's lots of efficiencies to be gained just simply based on that. So you talked a little bit about COBE and agreed this is an old standard. What's your process now for improving standards that might be a little bit outdated? And last but not least, how does that feed into your recommendations around setting up a BIM execution plan?

Yeah, and I'm glad you touched on the execution plan because that's near and dear to my heart. But to jump back to COBE there, I'm of the opinion that COBE is a very viable standard and that it really has its place, especially for owners or facility managers that really don't have a standard there today. And even still, what we'd like to do is if we're working with an owner that doesn't have a standard, we certainly start with COBE. And then over time, we sort of evolve that into the customer's own standards, right?

I'm still a firm believer that it's easiest to understand our assets if they're related to a spatial volume. So COBE does that very well. And as a basis, I think we can move from there very quickly. But every owner has a different data requirement and vastly different data requirements if you look at different facilities there, right? Because a high-rise or an office building is nothing like a hospital to manage and operate in either the assets or the spaces.

We like to see customized standards, but we have to understand too that they're only so extendable, right? And one of the things that I like to look at is making sure that whatever we develop is future-proof, right? That it's viable, you know, not just a year or two years down the road, but five or 10 years down the road as well, which really leads us into the execution planning. My view on an execution plan is that it should cover the entire life cycle of a building.

We've worked with many different architects and they all have fantastic execution plans. And many of the contractors out there have really great execution plans, but there's really a gap right in the middle. And then certainly, I would say on the backend as well, right, because those two are not joined together. It was six or seven years ago, we started creating for owners these different life cycle execution plans that encompass both design, construction, and operations, and not just the turnover, but the utilization of information during operations as well.

And so we've created some really lengthy execution plans. Some of them were, oh gosh, I think about 60 pages. And that's when we had first started, just not knowing how to really whittle it down. But now most of our life cycle execution plans are between about 10 and 15 pages. So still a lengthy document, but much more manageable to utilize.

I really like the fact that you're calling it a life cycle execution plan. And it's just something really simple that you've done with changing the nomenclature from BIM to life cycle, which is really exactly what we're trying to do. It really gets you thinking smarter about setting up how you want to utilize the technology and what your intentions are. It really puts you on a bit of a trajectory that's much better, where you can actually start design smarter. I think that's amazing.

You mentioned that you would start with COBI as a starting point, especially for companies who haven't really built out a more unique or bespoke standard. So because I know that you worked with Mercy Hospital specifically, I'm curious as to what your experience with Mercy has been and how setting up of standards might have been. Could you share a little bit about that? So we've been working with Mercy, which is based in St. Louis.

I know it's confusing because there's a few different Mercys, but we were working with them for about six years now. And we actually, we first began by creating a life cycle execution plan. And at the time, little did we know, they had five different IWMS platforms across their divisions. And just the divisions we looked at were the IT division, the clinical engineering or HTM. HTM stands for health technology management.

And then of course, planning, design, and construction and real estate. A lot of different moving parts, a lot of reentry of data. And we didn't find that out until much later. But what we did in addition to creating this life cycle execution plan is we actually walked them through six different pilots. And three of those are still ongoing right now.

And so during those projects, what we actually did was we sort of worked in hand in hand with the owner's representative. So we didn't focus on just designer or just construction or just operations. We really watched kind of the entire data process overall. And so we were working with the architects and the engineers to initially develop the spaces and the room data sheets, as well as the initial asset registry. And then we worked in smoothing out that transition between the design team and the construction team.

And I will say too that several of these six pilots were design assist projects. So our contractors and subcontractors were involved in the project much earlier than a typical design bit build, which did smooth that process a little bit better and helped us hand over that information a little bit quicker. But what we're also doing is towards the end of these projects. And the first one that we accomplished was the Mercy Hospital Jefferson. And that was a four story patient tower addition, as well as cancer center and a few other renovations around their campus.

I forget the exact dollar amount for the contract on that one, but I believe it was somewhere in the area of about five or 600 million. And so what we were able to do when we got to substantial completion, or effectively day zero, is we had all of the documents, the assets, as well as some federated models, all loaded into their IWMS, so that their facility management group or real estate group, or even their clinical engineering group, were able to utilize and leverage that information without having to spend the time to punch all of that in.

Yeah, I was just gonna say that it's really excellent that you could do that from day one. Is there anything that's really significant that stands out to you, that's really falling outside of the COBE standard that Mercy or any hospital might need? Yeah, that's a great question. So on that project, we really implemented what we would call as COBE light. For instance, we weren't tracking systems and a full set of attributes.

We were really focused on a minimal set, because at the same time, we were working with Mercy's management to understand exactly what assets they wanted to track and what information they wanted to track about those assets. But thinking about it from a healthcare perspective, I would have to say that simply the quantity or the number of components that we were dealing with and the variety of different asset types that were there really lends to the complexity of these facilities. And obviously, there's a lot of different teams, a lot of different remote teams, which wasn't always easy to manage.

But I think we've been doing this so long that I just glossed over, oh, the complexity factor, you know? Yeah, I was just imagining all the different types of equipment that might be needed specific to cancer treatment and things of the like that would obviously need to be tracked in that type of facility. It's so much more than what an average corporate real estate project might, I'm imagining it would be incredibly complex and detailed. Yes, yes. Well, just in the cancer center alone, there was a large machine and we can liken it to an MRI machine.

It's a bit more complex than that. But essentially, they needed to build about a 16 inch concrete wall around this thing because of the radiation that it gives off. That concrete had to be within, I think it was a 16th or an eighth of an inch tolerance so that the equipment would fit in there and not resonate through the concrete. And so we were able to track, and actually in that large MRI, we tracked the subcomponents of it so that if anything did break, then they quickly were able to replace that and understand the maintenance required for it.

That's really fascinating. Could you share a little bit about how working with Mercy was given that there are so many stakeholders that you've had to work with and how that collaborative process took place? And how did you ask for their needs early on and make sure that they're met all the way throughout the project? I have to say, I mean, Mercy has been an absolute pleasure to work with over the years, you know, and you're right. When we first started working with them, there were many different silos for these different divisions.

And I'd like to think that we were able to break down a lot of those silos and really garner that information out. And really the way that we did it was we were working through this initial pilot and we were showing the different groups at various stages. Here's what we can get, right? Here's what's easy, here's what's medium and kind of here's what's hard. So we were scaling these things for the future.

When I look at standards, whether that's, you know, for BIM or for construction or VDC or operations, I always think of three main things, right? The people, the process and the technology with my focus mainly on the people aspect of it. So I always believe in just open and frank conversations and not to say that we didn't run into anybody that was resistant of wanting to chat with us about what we were looking to do in terms of tracking all of this data. But you know, a lot of these conversations happen face to face and it's much easier, I think, to really understand someone's pain points when you're face to face as opposed to, you know, four or 500 miles apart via a WebEx or something like that, right?

And it really instilled, I think, a level of confidence that when we were complete with the first pilot, that we did turn that data over and that we did meet their expectations and actually exceed them a little bit. One of the great things that we did throughout the project, and actually it was one of our partners that did the majority of this, but we were able to latch on, was they were leveraging drones to do weekly site flyovers of the site. And then we were able to compare that to the actual construction in Navisworks.

So we were receiving those down to point clouds and really bringing them in. At the time, there weren't really any softwares out there to do this automated check. So it was more of a visual check for us. But to play off of the visualization side, we also did a lot of virtual reality to show not only the operators and the people in planning, design, and construction, but also the doctors and the nurses and the people that are going to be working or that are working in these spaces.

So we did several different design and construction charrettes where we would have our Oculus Rift or our HTC Vive set up and these stakeholders could come in and essentially walk around their space. We also were able to limit the number of physical mockups that were built. So oftentimes in healthcare, we always have to make these mockups out of cardboard so that the doctors and the nurses can go walk through there and understand, oh, okay, well, if I need a pair of gloves, I've got to turn over here.

And maybe that's not in the best or the optimal position for me to do that. And actually one great case of this was the headballs in the Mercy Hospital Jefferson. The architect had designed and applied a materiality that was on brand with Mercy. However, when we saw it in some of the animations and some of the virtual reality that we did, it was very apparent that the headwall was almost an eyesore. The materiality was kind of a dark brown and really made the room feel a lot smaller than it was.

And so, and I believe if I remember correctly, this was sometime in the middle of CD we were able to find this out. So it was far before anything was even built or a shovel was in the ground. But we were quickly able to tone that brown down and came much closer to a tan and kind of a white color scheme. And I must say those rooms, they make you feel right at home. And I have to say it's one of the better patient rooms that I've seen design.

Really excellent examples about where you're really gaining efficiencies and the opportunity to collaborate. I think that that side-by-side comparison of the drones and the flyover, that's doing a couple things. It's not only showing that the progress is taking place as expected, it's showing what you envisioned at the start and doing that comparative process. It's establishing reputation. I liked that you talked about the pilot project and how you concluded at day zero, substantial completion.

You really handed over everything that you needed to get the buy-in and get a confidence level from the entire team. It really set you guys up for success for the next projects that followed afterwards. Yes, absolutely. And we've had five pilots since there where we're constantly evolving our process. And we've been lucky enough to work with some of the same stakeholders and contractors and subcontractors on some of these subsequent projects.

And they've all been very open to this collaborative method. I think we've all been on projects where it's sort of the my way or the highway route. And I don't really subscribe to that. I think we can all learn from each other as well as from other industries. I love looking at what, for instance, heavy manufacturing is doing or pharmaceutical manufacturing or even airplane manufacturing, right?

Where everything is built offsite in very remote locations and is trucked together and the final connections are made. And actually on a couple of these projects we've been fortunate enough to be able to prefabricate and kit some of these main systems, whether that's typical restrooms or head walls or even some corridor racking possibilities, right? We were discussing a project actually where there wasn't a lot of skilled labor where this project was going to go up. And one of the options that we looked at and was strongly considered at the time.

But one of those options was to essentially build everything about an hour away and then truck it down and then make the final connections very similar to that of an aircraft. Unfortunately, that didn't happen, but it is something that I keep my eye out for because I think as we move into the future, we have to become more nimble with our technology and with our building and in whatever way possible. And I think modularity and prefabrication really get us there quickly. Yeah, so I'm glad that you mentioned that.

I've seen sort of an uptick in that sort of interest level. I find that my hospitality and medical colleagues here in the industry, they're thinking, hey, I have this room type that's repeatable. And from a design sense, it really makes sense to maximize that. And just like you mentioned, there are areas around the globe that do not have the amount of labor to support the construction that needs to take place in a particular region. And last but not least, there are some sustainability opportunities with modular.

You can certainly improve your wall composition conditions. There's just so much opportunity to really improve efficiencies across the board. And there's opportunities to improve quality and schedule with manufacturing. Oh, most certainly, yes. You have full control over your end product, or I shouldn't say full control.

You have much more control over your end product there. And actually, I think that leads into something that we really try and focus on too. And it loops back to the people perspective is that we think of sustainability mainly as using sustainable materials, right? And being able to create a living and breathing facility. But one of the things that I think is sometimes overlooked may be the physical, the comfort or the functionality of those buildings, right?

And the reusability of those facilities, right? In the future, because if we're trying to get to a point where we wanna build a building and let's just call it a high rise, right? And we wanna build it sustainably with some great pressed timber. But if we want these facilities to last 50, 75, maybe even a hundred years, we really have to think all the way down how these facilities and how these buildings, and really how we're going to work and live as a society, right? And not just today and like I mentioned, and this is kind of my long-term vision is, how do we get to building something that will outlast us?

Yeah, and I think that ties right back into that life cycle execution plan, right? If there's a company who has clarity on how they want to manage the life cycle of their entire real estate portfolio, then this really should be feeding into their overall plan. Well, and if you're also investing into real estate, you're obviously planning on maximizing your investment into your capital asset, but there is the notion that if you do indeed ever lose or leave the facility that you've invested into, you now have the opportunity to have the data tracking alongside the actual asset.

You can establish the value of the facility that much more on what the operations look like, and do even better with your real estate transaction. Imagine the return on investment that you can get out of that. Exactly, yes. I should say too that I'm a proponent of, I think that models are wonderful, and the data that we can inject or extract from them is excellent, but just like you said, Brittany, I think that the data is really what we're driving at, and so oftentimes what we're finding is that we're segmenting the data and the models at this, which really goes against kind of that federated, unified BIM database or BDC database, right?

And finding that we have to do this often because the tools, there's an interoperability problem between our design and construction sides of the business. You know, in design, we'll utilize Revit and we'll get these great insights and we can do our engineering calculations, but then when those models are passed over to construction, oftentimes they're pulled out of Revit and then they're pulled into AutoCAD or the fabrication suite, which certainly has its own viability and reasons for doing so, and I do know that it's something we look at almost monthly is how to leverage the fabrication tools inside of Revit.

And there's been huge, huge strides in the past couple of years, and if we look at the Revit 2020 version, it really gets us close to being able to extract our spool drawings for the contractors out of Revit. I think there's still a few speed bumps there, but it's really getting close, and so I think when we have a good answer there, we'll be able to better turn over a holistic model and be able to then leverage that, and for whatever reason, as you mentioned, for visualization.

You know, one of the things that we're looking at too is the use of augmented reality, right? So the use of the HoloLens or another headset called the HMT-1 from RealWear, and the HMT is more from a industrial application, and it's built to military specifications, so you can really beat these things up and they keep going. But the reason that we're looking at these is from the operations perspective. So we're essentially providing navigation, as you would have on your phone from Google Maps, but in a heads-up display, and showing certain baseball card previews of issues or of information as you walk a facility.

And so I think that that holistic model just feeds that entire ecosystem and that entire process so nicely. Yeah, that's something I'm really interested in learning about. I mean, how many owner-operators are looking for that type of operability? Yeah, yeah, and it's not a great number, right? Because not many of the owners know that that's even a possibility, right?

Most of the time, we are brought in very late to the game to help an owner transition from, whether that's design into construction or from construction into operations. And sometimes by that time, it's a little late to throw all this great, shiny object technology at an owner, because we have to be very careful about how we implement this technology. You can get very deep very quickly. And so what it ends up being is it's more of an evolution, I think. The first and foremost thing is we have to provide a very valuable and pleasing experience for these owners.

Many of them that I've talked to that have done BIM previously, often have a sour taste in their mouth. So I always try and put the client first and foremost, right, and obviously a lot of people do as well. But I always want them leaving a project thinking, oh, that was the greatest project that we've ever done, and how can we advance that further with just the tools that we've already been given? And so that's where I see being able to really inject some of those newer technologies.

And also, I think as these technologies become more consumer facing, things like the Magic Leap headset, as those begin to disseminate into the market much more and are much more prevalent, I think that the barrier to entry really drops pretty quickly. And then we start to see, okay, well, I can find out where the conduit is behind this wall or all the way down to very small, particular. Well, it changes your mentality around like, where do I find the stud? I mean, we actually know where it is.

You don't need a stud finder. You can actually use the system that we have on hand. It does sort of switch your way of thinking, you know? I mean, it's interesting because we do utilize technologies like you mentioned, specifically augmented reality. We utilize GPS.

I mean, the kids, they have been playing, I don't know how much lately, but they've been playing Pokemon Go. And then, you know, you have IKEA, for instance. There are lots of opportunities to sort of get used to what this technology looks like in a more mainstream way. And what excites me is that there's an opportunity for owner-operators, no matter what their focus on business, servicing might be, whether it's hospitality, whether it's medical services, whether it's just simply corporate real estate, it doesn't matter. It's more tangible to them because they've seen it, they've touched it, they've utilized these different technologies that should start becoming more second nature to them.

It should really help with that sort of bridging, if you will. Absolutely. Well, and one of the great things that I've seen, maybe in the past three or five years, has been the advent and implementation of newer IWMS platforms. You know, historically, some of the larger IWMS or asset management or even space management platforms have been relatively slow to adopt them and these VDC processes. But with some of the newer ones that are available, some are built on really tried and true technologies or existing platforms, others are completely homegrown, but they really have that VDC centric focus of being able to pull that data in and then extract it out into whatever way.

It was about five years ago, I was actually the interim product manager for a product called UBIM, which is still around today in quite a different form, but it's effectively a BIM to FM bridge. And we had developed this platform at the time where the larger IWMS platforms like Maximo or Arcobus or Planon or whomever really didn't have a BIM integration. And so with this platform, what we were able to do is suck all the data out of our Revit models and our CAD files and aggregate it and normalize it and then push it into these variety of different platforms.

So the technology is moving at a breakneck pace at this point, with the addition of even machine learning and AI decision trees into these IWMS platforms, it's really exciting what's going on. And you're really finding these issues in a facility preventatively as opposed to having a break fix mentality in the building. Yeah, I'm really amped up about what's happening. And I'm sure that you're getting the same way when you're seeing what the opportunities are and what owner operators actually like grasping for at this moment in time.

It's really nice that you're in a position to bring awareness and really bring exposure to these different types of technologies. As we're talking about building awareness and bringing people together, I wanted to ask you, would you share how Revisto is working as a collaboration and document sharing tool? Sure, sure. So we had started using Revisto, oh, it's about five or six years ago now. And it's just a fantastic platform.

And just to give a quick high level of what Revisto is, if you're not familiar, it's essentially an asset tracking platform that aggregates Revit, AutoCAD, Navisworks, and a few other tools together. So what we've seen it be able to do is actually increase the design and construction stakeholder conversations. So being that it can connect into Navisworks, if a contractor is running coordination and identifies a collision perhaps between a piece of steel and a segment of docks, they can flag that and send it back to the engineer or the architect and say, hey, can you guys take a look at this?

And then that architect or engineer is able to actually open that issue directly inside of Revit without having to leave the platform. And so it's very, very powerful on the issue tracking side of things. But what's also wonderful is that it has a great visualization tool built into it as well. And I believe it's based off of the Unity viewer. But what it allows us to do is take these great 3D representations and actually attach our details or our floor plans directly to those models.

So you can section up and down and see exactly where that detail was cut from. And so those are two of the main things that I see the greatest benefit from. Of course, Revisto can also push via one button to some of the virtual reality platforms. And you still have the same functionality of creating issues and navigating through your models in VR. And so it's really, I think it's a fantastic tool.

I can't say enough great things about it and how it's really been able to help us throughout this project or projects. And Jefferson was the first project that we had used it on, but since then we've used it on a myriad of different healthcare and institutional projects. One of the really nice things too is the team over Revisto is very open to conversations about different use cases, right? And identifying different ways to improve their product or to use their product even. And so that's been quite a pleasure to work with them on that as well.

Yeah, very cool. So let me ask you, did I miss anything that you see that's happening as a trend right now that maybe we didn't talk about already? You know, there's a lot of buzz and I mentioned it a little earlier around machine learning. And while it is, well, there's really two things. The first is machine learning.

And while I think it's great, you know, we kind of need to trust but verify with some of these tools. I think the lowest hanging fruit at this point is probably being able to kind of find a critical path schedule or a crash schedule using some of these machine learning algorithms. I think we'll be surprised in the next couple of years of really where that goes. You know, the opportunity is there for AI or machine learning to help us design better buildings and not just generative design for the shells or space planning to find the optimal use of natural light but also our engineering system.

If we think of our structural systems, right? What really can these materials take? Well, a computer or a machine can really figure those things out. But additionally, I think that the MEP systems have a lot to gain from being able to sort of be auto-designed. If you know what the heat load is in a specific space, perhaps this algorithm can duct it out for you or size the final unit for you.

So I think there's, and rightfully so, there is a lot of buzz around machine learning. But the other thing that there's a lot of buzz around right now I think is blockchain. And everybody I think is fairly familiar with blockchain in terms of cryptocurrency as really the sort of start of the digital economy, right? Or the full digital economy. What I'm interested in with blockchain specifically and what we've been doing some research here on is how to leverage kind of distributed data sites.

So you've got these nodes of different bits of project data where our blockchain is sort of the backbone of that project and everybody is inputting and polling from that centralized ledger. Now we'll see the true viability of that. I'm sure here shortly we're just dipping our toe into it at this point, but I think there's gonna be some really great things that come out of people like Procore who have a fantastic really project management suite that goes soup to nuts. And I think they might be one of the first along with some of the others out there to really endeavor into the encryption of our project data and having kind of that single registry.

Yeah, it's a shame you didn't get a chance to stay for the presentation that Bassem Hamdi and I did. No, unfortunately. At the Built Worlds Conference where we met, we obviously spoke a little bit about the opportunities with blockchain and the built environment. And Bassem has a product previously called BricksChain and now Brick that supports the, really the handover from construction. Actually, I think they have a partnership with Procore that allows for that data from the project management system to really get handed off through assessing the data via blockchain and giving them the digital asset of the O&M manual.

And last but not least, I think they're utilizing AI as sort of a lessons learned model, the data that's coming out of Procore and other project management softwares. So yeah, I've interviewed Bassem some time ago. So I'll go ahead and pull in our interview and make sure that's in the show notes. Absolutely, yeah. And it's really great to hear your perspective on what's trending, what you see, right?

Particularly to machine learning and blockchain. But just in general, what people should be looking for. I think for me and likely for you, it's the same that it's really important to just get in front of people so they can really start to understand the viability of technologies that we're talking about right now and really build that awareness. And not just on the technology itself, but the focus on people and what it can really do to improve the lives of the individuals who are obviously being serviced through these spaces throughout the entire lifecycle of these built assets that we build on a day-to-day basis.

I couldn't agree with you more. Yes, completely right. Yeah, well, Ian, I want to thank you so much for obviously doing this interview with me. And I wanted to ask, what's the best place for people to find you, learn more about you and get in contact with you? So the easiest way to get in contact with me is probably on LinkedIn.

You can just search Ian McGahn and it usually comes up. To find out more about some of the things that we do as a company, you can find us at engworkschi.com. We will absolutely put those links in the show notes. And with that, thanks again. Yes, thank you very much for having me.

If you liked this episode, find out more about Ian in the show notes at constructor.com slash Ian McGaugh. That's I-A-N-M-C-G-A-W. If you learned something valuable in this episode, please share it with your friends and colleagues. You can also let me know if you enjoyed our discussion by connecting with me on Twitter at britney underscore CT or find me on LinkedIn. You can also email me at britney at constructor.com.

That's B-R-I-T-T-A-N-I-E at construct double R.com. Don't forget, if you haven't subscribed to the podcast, do so at your favorite podcast player. I look forward to continuing the constructor journey with you next week. Thanks for watching. I'll see you next time.

Bye.