Convergence Solutions Harnessing Data, Sustainability and Talent Trends

ALEX PENA: All righty. So thank you everybody for joining us today. Our course is "Convergence Solutions Harnessing Data, Sustainability, and Talent Trends. We have to my right Amy Marx, the queen of prefab herself. You know, she's blessed us with her presence. [LAUGHS]

AMY MARKS: Woo

ALEX PENA: Directly to my right, I have Darren Young, director of construction and technology, UMCI, and Tiffany Bachmeier, director of global M&E and advanced manufacturing, Autodesk. My name is Alex Pena. I'm the workflow analyst on the outcome engineering team at Autodesk. We'll sort of give everybody a chance to read through this, [INAUDIBLE] regarding all the content that we're going to be presenting today. And we'll have Amy kick us off today.

AMY MARKS: So, Alex asked me to come. And many of you came to my earlier talk today. And it was recorded. So if you want to see the longer version of convergence and industrialized construction, that's available digitally. But I thought it'd be great. I said Yes to Alex and Paul, who originally asked me, because I think it's so important that we think about this beyond just industrialized construction.

I like to live my life by this formula for change. And it's [INAUDIBLE] formula for change. And she told us that in order to have change, you have to have dissatisfaction multiplied by a vision of what's possible. But then you have to have, first, concrete steps of action. And all of that has to be greater than resistance. Mostly we're talking about internal resistance at people's companies when they're trying to change, but also for external resistance.

And why do we need this right now? So you saw a lot of what Andrew talked about on stage of how things are changing. And I'd like to talk a little bit about convergence and the fact that things are melding together, that they're blending together, and that technology is blending with lots of other things. And I will give you this challenge. Once you hear about convergence and you see convergence in life, you can't unsee it.

So we have technology that's converging. I always say [INAUDIBLE] my phone. It's actually-- it could be your matchmaker, your babysitter, your entertainment. But it's not just a phone anymore. So we see technology converging, process converging, the fact that we talk about design build and EPs. Different things are going on. Actually, it's funny. My daughter says, when she watches TikTok, that she sees this guy that does this chocolate work, and he does it with machine tooling. She's like, look, Mommy, technology, manufacturing, and baking converging.

Once you see, again, process convergence, you'll see it everywhere. But industries have converged. And they have been converging for many years. It's one of the reasons why my title is industrialized construction. I always say I've been living in the future state for about 20, 25 years right now. But the most important thing about convergence is that business models are changing.

And so as this is going on, think about the business that you can be in today versus your business 10 years ago versus what your business will look like 10 years from now. I like to think of what platforms look like when they first start and begin. I think about my Apple phone as a platform. And on it, it used to have Apple Maps. But now there's about four other-- I use Waze, actually. But Google Maps exists on this platform.

It used to just have Apple Music. Now I listen to Spotify. So it's an open environment and ecosystem, where we may have the same phone, Alex and I, but we use it very differently. And so platforms are important in convergence. And we think about humans and machines and how we interact because of convergence. So, I just met with a company earlier today, and they were, like, in eight years we want a dark construction site, like dark data centers.

We don't want any humans on there. What do we have to do in order to get to that future state? And I thought, wow, we're really going to have to think about how you're going to use the data for the convergence factor. But how are you going to think about that data when you have exoskeletons on people, or now it's no people at all? And you just have robotics on that jobsite and gantries.

So we have to start thinking about humans and machines as well as sustainability because digital waste exponentially leads to physical waste. So we have to think about how to reduce digital waste in order to remove the 40% of construction waste in our landfills. So that's really important for us to recognize as we think about convergence.

And just as a primer about industrialized construction, many of you came to the meetup. What a great time. Who came to the meetup in here? A couple of people. I see. It was a really good time, wasn't it? We learned a lot. We talked about a lot of things.

I like to use this as my guide for industrialized construction because a lot of people say, oh, I see. That's like modules, right? And I go, well, not exactly. You know, we're talking about the application of manufacturing techniques, everything from technology enablers. Look, we're in a highly instrumented world. Just look at the back of your Autodesk tag.

We know where things are, where people are. And I always use the example, I could order a pizza today and know where it's going to be in the oven and to my door with the license plate of the driver before it even gets there. Process enablers-- and yes, building information modeling is very important. But we have to move to make the I more intelligent in BIM and things like manufacturing informed design.

And not just design for manufacturing and assembly-- sorry, not moving. There we go. We have to think about the data for manufacturing and assembly. And we can't rely on the architects to get that data from their desktop in a static format. We have to connect the makers to be able to define what products are available and made out there and to inform design so that we can have a myriad of different physical elements on that continuum.

But right now, we're doing a lot of prefabrication. And most of my contractors are trying to productize things to be more like manufacturers. The guys and gals that are in the first seat of winning are the manufacturers right now because they have products with actual data around what is made and how it is. If you're a contractor-- raise your hand if you're a contractor. How many of you are manufacturers? How many of you are architects?

By the way, you've raised your hand for three things. No, no, no.

TIFFANY BACHMEIER: It's awesome.

AMY MARKS: That's proof-- that's proof that convergence has happened right there. Architects and engineers? Owners? Academia? So listen, we've got to move towards a product-led approach if we think we're going to actually do things with the shortage of labor that we have. And I know we always say that Autodesk is a design make company. I actually like to say we're operate, make, design, and form.

I like to turn it on its head and think about how can we connect the makers with what is actually being done today so that we can have things like robotics and automation and additive manufacturing. So there's a lot more at the show about convergence. Before I hand it to my friend Darren-- by the way, the reason I invited Darren is dissatisfaction is a gift. [LAUGHS]

DARREN YOUNG: I'm blessed.

[LAUGHTER]

AMY MARKS: And I believe that. I believe that we have to hear from customers and from our ecosystem about what's working, what's not working so that we can move change quicker. But before I do, we decided we're going to ask a few questions. Yeah. For those of you who've heard me talk today or any other day, we have a mic right here. I'm not as scary as most people think. Challenges, questions, insights, feel free to step up to the mic. Maybe how convergence is approaching-- how you're approaching this in your business.

Feel free to step to the mic if you have any questions. If not, we're going to move forward. But-- anyone?

TIFFANY BACHMEIER: If it's scary to step up to the mic, I'm happy to run it to people if you'd rather just do it in the audience.

ALEX PENA: Yeah, we can do that.

TIFFANY BACHMEIER: WE just need to fuel it back into the recording, so that's why we need the mic.

AMY MARKS: Anyone?

TIFFANY BACHMEIER: Do I need to run it? Do we need to test it?

AMY MARKS: I don't know.

TIFFANY BACHMEIER: I feel like--

ALEX PENA: You want to do it, go for it Tiff. Nobody has anything like--

TIFFANY BACHMEIER: [INAUDIBLE] processing questions.

AMY MARKS: How about this-- show of hands. Have you seen convergence, the way I just described it, happening in your businesses? One. Only one? You raised your hand three times. You have to, like-- right?

TIFFANY BACHMEIER: We're going to bring that guy up here.

ALEX PENA: Yeah just say if you have any.

[LAUGHTER]

I feel like you're the target audience.

AMY MARKS: Yeah. Do you think anything I've said so far-- raise your hand if you think there's truth in the fact that we're seeing processes and technologies converging and changing the way you do business. Raise your hand.

TIFFANY BACHMEIER: Oh, I love it. That's awesome.

AMY MARKS: OK, great. So maybe it's not as much of a question because it's just a known fact. Right? So I believe, by the way, just adding one more thing-- I've been challenging everyone that I talk to for the last few months, change your expected experience. I just described to you how I order a pizza. I know online. I can do it off my watch. I can see when it went in the oven. I can figure out who's driving it here, see the license plate before the doorbell rings.

I do everything in an expected experience, whether it's ordering something on Amazon or Alibaba or any e-commerce site, where I set the parameters of what I want. I have access to everything that's available. I can see analytics, buyer, seller in the carts. I can put things on my wishlist. I get marketed two-for discounts. Gosh, all you have to do is say the word sneakers in my house, and sneakers show up everywhere in the world.

Whether you like that or not, it's very efficient. Right? I know that, if the world of convergence and connected data looks like cake and you want to eat cake, right now we're holding eggs, flour, sugar, water, cocoa, and baking soda. We're not quite making cake yet, but we have all the ingredients to make cake.

How many people believe that that expected experience in our world will exist shortly, that you'll be able to do things like I just ordered a pizza in our world, in AEC M&O? Raise your hand if you think it's coming. I agree. I think it--

ALEX PENA: Maybe the question is, how quickly do you think it's coming?

AMY MARKS: Yeah. How many of you think it's happening in the next two to three years? Raise your hand. How many people think in three to five years? How do you think five to 10 years?

DARREN YOUNG: How about now?

AMY MARKS: How about they think it's possible now.

ALEX PENA: No one.

AUDIENCE: So I think small doses.

AMY MARKS: Small doses. I think disconnected small- by the way, how many of you have a Revit button that you've built, or a plug-in I should say? What happens when I want to search across all of your plug-ins to get the right combinations of things that you all sell? How do I do that. now? I can't, right?

What if I could? What if I could get Andrew's products and your products and understand how they work together? We do that all the time. It's called-- on Amazon, it says you should buy-- Amy, you love those shoes. By the way, you should buy those shoes, that dress, and this necklace. That's called bundling. Right. It's really generative design. If I wanted them to work together and make sure that they're right sizes. Right?

I think anyone who said 10 years or more, I think you're living in the past. I personally am in the two to three year category because I already see the ingredients being mixed, mini-marketplaces, mini-combinations of-- everyone getting their data in order for that future state. By the way, I can go in any one of your plug-ins and get all the data I need on configurators and configurator products.

You know, like when you go on Amazon, and you can go into-- or any of these, Alibaba, and it goes into the Yeti store. And I can make a Yeti cup with my name on it, and then it goes back out. Like, I believe that will happen one day. And then it says you should buy this Yeti, this coffee because I love coffee. And we should do these services for you.

By the way, you liked this coffee last time. And 400-other-thousand people like that coffee. You should buy it. I don't think that far away. And the people who said 10 years or more, raise your hand again.

ALEX PENA: They're afraid to--

[INTERPOSING VOICES].

AMY MARKS: That was like-- three years ago-- I'll give me an example, right? Three years ago, Amazon, as an example, did 145,000, 150,000 private-labeled products under 45 different brands. I put those products in my mouth, on my skin, and on my hair. And as people have heard, I put that in my kid's mouth, on her skin, and her hair. How long do you think it's really that important that a pipe spool doesn't make it there? How special is a pipe spool that I'll be putting things in my kid's mouth, comparitable right? That will go quicker than 10 years, I think, because we already have that expected experience and the risk associated.

So with that, I'm here afterwards. I'm happy to-- if you don't feel comfortable-- I know a lot of people of neurodiversity-- step on up.

ALEX PENA: Yeah.

AMY MARKS: I know a lot of people don't feel comfortable talking in public. I'm more than happy to have a one-on-one conversation afterwards as well. My neurodiversity allows me to talk in public, unfortunately-- over-talk sometimes.

AUDIENCE: Thank you for the insight. This is great. I'm Chase Roles with Mortenson. And my question is. What is the best example you've seen-- when we talk about the factory setting but within construction, not necessarily within a car manufacturing plant or Amazon warehouse. What is the best example that you've seen? Because I know you integrate-- well, all of you probably do. I just-- I've seen your presentations before. So when you've been talking to other firms, whether it's GCs or architecture firms or maybe manufacturers within the AEC space, what's the best example you've seen?

AMY MARKS: Like, who has the best factory?

AUDIENCE: Not necessarily the best factory, but any construction site where you've seen, wow, these folks really are pushing the boundaries. They're pushing the limit when it comes to industrialization or productization and et cetera.

AMY MARKS: That's a tough one. You're asking me to, like, pick favorites almost in a way.

AUDIENCE: Well, you don't-- maybe you don't say the company name, just say the--

AMY MARKS: Yeah. I'll tell you the characteristics of what I think the best are. OK.

AUDIENCE:

AMY MARKS: First of all, if I've ever toured your factory, the first thing I say before you give me the show is I'm, like, what's the flow here? Can someone explain to me, where do things come in, and where do they go out? The second thing I do is I look down on the floor. And if there's garbage on the floor, I have to pick it up. So if your thing is not orderly and clean, I kind of instantly in my head give demerit points off for the characteristics of what manufacturing looks like. Because I would like to see the cleanest, less congested manufacturing facility ever.

The other thing that I note every time I walk through, and you'll know you're doing well, is that, if you're productized, by the way, up front in your process-- nobody wakes up-- I always say, your test should be-- it's called the generator test in my head. If an architect thinks they can come up and redesign your product by making, instead of having a 200-horsepower generator or 250, and they're like, today I don't care, I'm going to make a 217 and 1/2 in my design, you're not productized. If they feel they have to design around your product that I see going down that line, and there's very little customization that isn't enabled through the model itself and through rules and constraints in the model, not necessarily a model that can be stretched to make it manufacturable.

So if you're truly productized-- like it's funny, I walked through a factory recently, and they were like-- everything was on the TV screens because I always look for this. I go and talk to the guys. And I'm like, what are you doing? And I go-- I go, what are you writing down? Well, I have to do these calculations. I go, doesn't that come off the model? And they go, no, most of them, but not this. I always have to write this. I go, have you told them that?

So I look for guys that actually don't have paper on the stations, guys that don't have to write something down. They don't have notebooks. They didn't draw on the wood-- on whatever the material is. So I'm looking for people that the jobs are easy. And I actually like color coding and visuals very much.

I used to put my guys, when I owned a shop, in different shirt colors. And I didn't do that to see if they were running away from their job. I was like, why does that guy have to go so far to get that tool. That's my fault. You know what I mean? He shouldn't have to go that far. He's in the pink group. Why is he all the way over in the green group over there?

I just look for order and cleanliness and completeness of the data so that it's easier for everybody there. I don't look for faster, cheaper. I look for easier. If things are easy, and there's flow, and it's clean-- think about anytime you sat down to study for a test. You first sit down, you clean your desk, you get-- you're fed, you're clean. All right. It's like, I look for that. It gives peace to the workforce. And I think it gives certainty to the data around them.

AUDIENCE: Maybe Oh, go ahead. Sorry.

AMY MARKS: Does that makes sense?

TIFFANY BACHMEIER: I was just going to ask, or say, I think adding to what you said and to answering your question. You can probably speak to this further. But as you can tell from my title, I spend more time in M&E and manufacturing. But actually, my degree is in architecture. So it's a special place. But as we've worked together more on the industrialized construction side of things-- and I have to say this carefully because I don't-- to answer your question of "best," I don't know if there's necessarily a best. It's about maturity levels across all the different customers and what, as Amy will say and she will-- I don't even know if you've said it yet today, but I know you've heard it in other things of, what do you want to be when you grow up? How do you want to get to where you want to take your company?

I think there are different levels along that spectrum. But when I think true-- when I see industrialized construction in my head at a pinnacle of sustainability and life changing in the workforces that we have of skilled labor--

ALEX PENA: Diversity

TIFFANY BACHMEIER: --and the ability to do this in remote places, I think of the-- and I know we're not-- we probably can't give names, but the factory in a box. To me that was one of the most powerful stories of being able to have everything so much down to the kit of parts, that you literally can click connect with colors to colors and not following the specs that we all have to follow when we're buying put-together furniture-- and could literally build that in a remote space with somebody who's never built anything before. Like, to me that is true power of that.

Now is that everybody? That's why I say I don't like to say that that's the best.

AUDIENCE: No, it's fine.

TIFFANY BACHMEIER: But I think that that's a powerful statement to where we can take things.

AUDIENCE: Just to close briefly, like maybe a better question is, what industry do you think within the AEC world will see the quickest transformation in the-- data centers, potentially E&I, solar, et cetera, commercial?

AMY MARKS: What market application is moving the fastest?

AUDIENCE: Yeah.

AMY MARKS: I think data centers are moving fastest. Semiconductor and manufacturing are probably, like, somewhere after that. Look, data centers are easy to get there first because it's a simple building with only pockets of complexity. And you only have to really impact six owners, let's say. You know what I mean? It's not that hard of a building. It's like the toaster ovens of prefabrication.

So in reality, they'll probably move fastest. And they have the most to gain. They all have to sign a sustainability pact. Like, if you look at what's going on with iMasons and stuff. They're pretty easy. That's an easy group, right? Simple product, the capacity is worth more than the building, and quite frankly, uptime is more important than any money you can save them on tiles.

So I think that will probably move fastest. They have heavy MEP and structure only pretty much. So that's moving quickest. I think that part-- I thought you were asking me a different question at first, which is I think you have to be really careful if you're not providing value and you're only getting paid on waste, that your time is probably up in less than 10 years before this world changes. That's a different question. That's what I thought you were going to ask.

But I think anyone who has heavy MEP and hardened structure, that the value of what they put through those buildings is worth more than the building and who values operational consistency and certainty, they go first.

AUDIENCE: Got it. Thank you.

DARREN YOUNG: That means me?

AMY MARKS: Darren.

DARREN YOUNG: MEP? I'm going second, even though we're going first.

AMY MARKS: Buckle up. Brace yourself.

[LAUGHTER]

DARREN YOUNG: So, Darren Young, director of construction technology for UMC, we're up in the Washington State area. So a lot of people don't realize this, but MEP has actually been fabricating from 3D models for 20, 30 years. So--

AMY MARKS: How many people knew that? I got to ask. How many people realize, for 20 or 30 years, MEP shops have been fabricating like this for 20 or 30 years? Raise your hand. How many didn't know that? Raise your hand. It's maybe an easier question. A lot of people don't realize that.

TIFFANY BACHMEIER: It's powerful.

DARREN YOUNG: Seems like old hat to me.

AMY MARKS: Does that shock you? Does that shock you?

DARREN YOUNG: No.

AMY MARKS: OK.

DARREN YOUNG: But I've spent 30 years with one foot in manufacturing and one in construction-- 15 in building product manufacturing, architectural precast, commercial case work, dimension stone. You talked about how-- why productize? I saw that almost 30 years ago with a stone fabricator. They were very large. They did a quarter million pieces of stone every month. Any stone in the building-- in the United States or globally, they would-- it's their stone more than likely. They were that big.

So people would send them things to get specked, quoted on, just to qualify the bid. And they closed maybe 25%, 30% of those bids. But they were big enough and old enough, they were specked very often. And when they were, they closed, like, 80%. People aren't going to look for-- well, here I've got a hammer. Oh, I want one with a yellow hammer. Let me go look around for-- it's here. I'm just going to use it.

Looking through your software, you're probably just using stuff because you already have it, even though it might not be the best. But that's, to me, why you should productize. So here's some examples of some things we did. There was a presentation yesterday by SLI. They're doing modular prefab wall systems. It's manufacturing for them. We design the plumbing systems for them.

On the right there, wall carriers for toilet batteries-- they all look similar. Are they a product? I say no because we don't have a catalog and a brochure. So we're not there yet.

AMY MARKS: It is generative? That's what you have to ask yourself. Is it like a generator?

DARREN YOUNG: Yeah. In my mind, it's not a product unless you've got a catalog and your marketing's involved. But our goal would-- we always run into issues, where architects don't leave enough space in the wall, or they put a beam underneath where vent pipes need to go. And we're complaining about architects left and right. And it's like, have we ever told them what to do, what we need and what we expect? No.

I want to put that design in the architect's hand so that when I get their model back, I can build that and automate my fabrication. So if you go in the exhibit hall, there's a-- what is it-- manufacturing informed design section in the Autodesk. They're doing some cool stuff. It's like-- so when can I get this? It's like, well, we're not even in beta yet. And it's like hurry up.

[LAUGHTER]

I want this.

AMY MARKS: That's my old team, by the way. I'll tell them.

DARREN YOUNG: So one of the things we're doing, we're trying to do more manufacturing approach. We're in a new facility. We moved to shops and a warehouse into a combined facility. The warehouse delivers all the materials. If it's within two days of starting fab, the warehouse starts picking the material, delivers it.

If we don't have the materials in-house within five days, somebody gets alerted, and calls the vendor to try to find it's coming. They understand, hey, do we have some of the material, all of it, none of it? Have we started fab? We're trying to build-- we've got a visual manufacturing strategy in our plant. I would have got pictures of it, but it's-- we're still in transition, moving yet.

But there's signs that show where the work cells are, the flow of materials. So my head space has been in internal logistics and supply chain. So when you talk convergence, everyone's thinking like businesses starting and others going out of business and things you don't have control over. And you kind of feel like they're just going to happen to you. There's stuff you can actually do today that gets you towards and prepared for those types of things.

So one of the ones that I deal with all the time is data. There we go. So if you look on the left, those are some of our departments. We've got an estimating department, detailing department, purchasing. And on the right you've got different types of deliverables and information. There's products and systems, real high-level stuff. Now, it just looks like I connected everything together. But I didn't. If you look in the lower right, there's a few less lines.

These are legitimate-- hey, do these guys really need that information? This happens today. It happens with emails, phone calls, duplicate entry repeated people. Anyone want to guess what this looks like when you start layering in a tech stack? I've got 130 connections. How do you manage that? How do scale that?

Now you're going to add a new business model into that. So this is why I like Autodesk moving to a platform, where it's product agnostic. It's just data. I don't care. So if you look at how they're starting to use Power Automate inside of Revit to help tie these things together. This is a nightmare to manage.

Now, I've got to change my business model too? What does that look like? So one of the ways that things I see is just here's what's-- I've tried to describe internally of why we need to change. You've got technology is evolving. There's tools to connect to the systems. So one of the things I usually shock people on, it's like I'm not implementing anymore software. I'm done. I'm implementing systems.

Never in the history of an MEP contractor have we ever sold a project by sending a customer a box of a sample of fittings, valves, and a couple of sticks of pipe. Here you go. This is what we're going to build for you. You don't do that. We sold them on a system, a comfort environment. We sell them on those types of things-- papers going to-- electronics, spreadsheets, the databases. On the industrialized construction side, stick built to prefab, modularization instead of on-site, machines to automation-- these are the things that I'm thinking about.

And where I see convergence the most is in data. Trying to solve this and have those conversations, we were having-- we're trying to modify our logistics app internally. And we had some people ask us, well, when that package goes out-- and they're talking about fabrication package. Amy is familiar with that. It's like hang on, we're in one facility now. "Package," to the warehouse people, is a FedEx. You can't just say "package."

And even something like shipping, is that a status? Is that a location or is that a process? It's kind of all three. Well, it's a status. Is it the status to tell you what to do next? Is that the thing you're doing or the thing you just got done doing? Or even something as-- everyone knows what a backorder is, right? We check a box, it's backordered. I got 5 of 10.

Well, when the other five come in, do I clear that checkbox? It's not backordered anymore, right? But it's also a historical event, if I want to track vendor performance. So I see that all this data from these different business models coming in. And even as us, mechanical contractors are not one company.

We've got a service division. We do engineering. We do energy services. We've got a manufacturing group. We've got a fabrication group. We've got major projects that does maybe a dozen big projects a year. We have an industrial group. Our special projects are thousands of projects. And you talk to a special projects guy, what's an RFI? And you explain it to him. Oh, yeah, I get it. I'm never going to use that.

Their PMs are running 20, 30 projects concurrently. They're very small, fast track. You've got to build a system for that and the major projects guys that have all this-- they've got a lot of documentation to back up. So I see a lot of this data coming in. And with the business models changing and the software changing. You've got to start looking at even just data. What do these terms mean? That term means this-- you're right, it means that. And it means that.

But we need to be more explicit now because you start converging these things, and everybody's confused if you don't look at that properly.

AMY MARKS: What did we say earlier? We're like, describe what you mean. I always say, don't say the word. Say the word-- when I say what do you want to be when you grow up, and a CEO says, like, I want to be a doctor. I'm like, describe what a doctor looks like. Is it a dentist? Is it a orthopedist? Like, what parts of the body do they work on?

Same thing like data. I have to say, what do you mean? What do you need? What's important?

TIFFANY BACHMEIER: Details.

AMY MARKS: What's the taxonomy that you've decided to use.

DARREN YOUNG: A simple term means multiple things concurrently. And everybody has a different take on what it should do.

AMY MARKS: Right.

DARREN YOUNG: Nothing is as simple as it seems anymore, with all these things happening. And then you layer on the different tech. That's why, if you can standardize and consolidate your tech stack or automate those connections, those data exports and things like that-- you see people frustrated sometimes with some of the Autodesk products. But they're people that are used to desktop products. And Autodesk isn't a desktop company anymore. They're a platform company.

And this is why they're doing that. Are they-- do they have everything built we need? No. But they're getting there. It's getting easier. Things are connected.

I sat in a class today that talked about Inventor to Revit workflow and content, that it's like-- I tell you. If you want to be a salesperson and make a lot of money, buy feet because our industry shoots ourself in both feet. And what we do? We look to buy more.

AMY MARKS: [LAUGHS] Buy feet.

DARREN YOUNG: You know, that's what we try to do. But we've got to start looking a little bit smarter and having a bigger discussion about what data means and what the terms mean and what we're trying to get out of it. You're just not going to magically get analytics out of something unless you had that in mind when you implemented it.

Anyway, that's all I have. I don't know if anyone has any questions, or move on to you, Alex.

ALEX PENA: Yeah. Do we have any questions, or do we want to [INAUDIBLE]

AMY MARKS: You must have questions for Darren because that was so awesome.

DARREN YOUNG: I'm the director of devil's advocacy.

AMY MARKS: No, I love.

DARREN YOUNG: Self-appointed.

ALEX PENA: So if anybody had any positive outlooks, we can hear those as well.

AMY MARKS: Yeah, if anybody--

ALEX PENA: You might have a different opinion.

AMY MARKS: Love that. Anyone have questions for Darren, or comments, or Amens because I feel like it's an Amen. But any kind of, like--

ALEX PENA: DARREN YOUNG: Any folks in the MEP space.

DARREN YOUNG: I'm pretty reachable. If anyone sees me online, just look for a snarky post. It's probably mine.

[LAUGHTER]

And I-- you know, people have helped me along the way. I'm happy to help anybody. You know, that's how I learned too. I only have a perspective that's narrow within our own company. Hearing from other people is where I learned.

AUDIENCE: What's your biggest struggle right now, because it seems like you've mapped out a lot. But I just figured--

ALEX PENA: So what I'll do is I'll just say the question again so we can have it in the recording. She asked what's his biggest struggle right now, after mentioning everything within that presentation?

DARREN YOUNG: Getting people to slow down, I think, and think about data differently. You mentioned any term, and immediately it pops into somebody's head what that means to them. But there's these other converging forces that are blending what that definition means. Oh, that means something different to them, but it's the same term.

And expedite is another one, you know. We flag material orders that are-- to an expediter, when they don't come in on time. So he calls the vendor. So things that are deviations from norm go to an expediter. Somewhere else in the system that we built, which I'm trying to correct, is when things get with the two days of fabrication, the materials get flagged to get picked and moved along. We're expediting the materials.

Well, that's everything going properly. Well, expedited actually applies in both of those scenarios. But we're using that definition. One is the exceptions, things that aren't going right. And the other is everything is expedited, even when it does go right. So getting people to understand, it can be a difficult conversation, just because people have been non-converged in their little worlds for so long, they're not used to thinking that-- along those lines.

So I think that's my biggest challenge, it's just hang on. This thing that seems simple, it's going to bite us if we don't step back and look at it a little bit more critically.

ALEX PENA: Anything else? So I guess I can get off my portion. My name is Alex Pena. I'm the workflow analyst on the outcome engineering team at Autodesk. For folks who don't know us or what we do, we're kind of instrumental in leading Autodesk to shift to go to market strategy to be led by outcomes.

We're trying to help and lead that conversation and reshaping the conversation with customers around individual products and their functionalities, to more about the outcomes they're ultimately trying to accomplish. And in order to really get that conversation going, it has to be led by data. Data is like the integral part of that. Now, I do want to say, for our presentation, we were going to talk about the platforms. We didn't know Andrew was. He kind of beat us. He stole our thunder.

But I promise we had this in the plans all along. He did announce yesterday around the design and manufacturing sort of Fusion platform. Architecture and engineering construction is going to have that cloud platform. Then [INAUDIBLE] entertainment's going to have flow, all built on what was formerly Autodesk Forge and now Autodesk Platform Services. But what this is going to allow us to do and the way that I think of it is that data is now going to be-- this is the level one, if you will, the first implementation that's going to allow folks to have these cross-industry workflows.

The first folks that are going to be implemented by this platform are folks in convergent industries, as opposed to thinking about, hey, I'm working in AutoCAD, and I need to get this to Inventor or to Revit, to this. And now we start thinking about how do we get just from industry to industry, discipline to discipline. This is going to enable folks to just work a little bit more effectively. And as we have this platform in place, the thought is we're going to, in a sense, that an industry standard for best practices, as opposed to thinking about, hey, we really want to implement these best practices for ourselves. But we have to consolidate certain portions of a drawing or a model just because we don't have the means to transfer it over to another product.

This is now allowing folks within different industries to have their best practice set as they transfer data between these. Once we start getting this platform implemented, then the main thing that most folks don't know, or what we're working through right now, is what's that main vehicle? What's going to allow us to actually go from a desktop to a platform company? And the main thing is really the Cloud Information Model.

As it's mentioned there, it's an accessible data foundation that, over time, will become a source of true for multiple-discipline design-make data. But really what it is just an open source data model that's going to basically standardize the interoperability between different products, whether they be cloud products or desktop ones. How can we get all these products working the same and talking the same language?

As opposed to having to export to a particular file type, now you're able to create an API or an extension, a plug-in that you can communicate with a different product that isn't currently in your ecosystem or outside of it, for example-- one created by us or one created by the multiple-content creators here, including Darren Young. So the thought is, this is sort of the basis or that connection piece as to how that platform integrates.

And then once we start thinking about that, the main next thing is really how do we then approach this to scale? How do we standardize this and start thinking about what an actual solution is? Where before you had-- in my perspective, when we were defining some of these solutions, we always had to think about Autodesk products. How would we accomplish a model co-authoring? Or how do we do digital delivery integrated factory modeling with Autodesk products?

But now we have a different conversation that we can bring to customers. It's, hey, what do you currently have in place in your ecosystem? And then how can we accommodate to that? How do we-- when I think of this solution definition, the biggest thing of intersection of our customers' business needs and Autodesk technologies can be deployed to align and complement. The align and complement is really the big thing that the platform is going to enable for us.

As opposed to saying, hey, buy this collection, now we can approach customers with, what you have currently in place, and how do we work around that? How do we better define your current solution and get you from where you're trying to be to your future state, for example? So the platform is really going to be the main driving force for a lot of converging customers.

And when we think about a solution, this is an example of where we can get. I think Amy spoke to it a little bit earlier-- going from a fabricator to a manufacturer, your current state to a future state. And solutions can help drive that.

The first thing will be a maturity assessment to understand where you're currently at, for example. You can't go-- you don't know where you're going until you know where you're at. And that maturity assessment is going to let us know what solutions are your industry leading at? What are some that you might be-- that can have room for improvement, for example. And this process will, in a sense, once that maturity assessment is established, we can now put in guidelines for success metrics, value metrics, tangible items that we can speak to.

When we understand where you're at, we can say, hey, this is where we can expect you to be. This is the investment that it might take. This is all of the success metrics things that we can, in a sense, speak to that can show that, hey, we're invested in this process with you. But also, we can speak to the improvement, the value that you're actually receiving.

AUDIENCE: A question.

ALEX PENA: Sure.

AMY MARKS: Up to mic, if you don't mind.

ALEX PENA: Yeah, I was going to say.

AMY MARKS: It's fine.

TIFFANY BACHMEIER: I can run it if we-- I feel like if people want it, it's hard to get.

AMY MARKS: [? Oh, Bridge, ?] do you want to run?

TIFFANY BACHMEIER: Yeah, [? Bridgit, ?] do you want to run?

AMY MARKS: We're going to co-op one of our coworkers to run mic, if you don't mind.

AUDIENCE: It's a quick question. Can you just please define CDE, MID, and IFM.

AMY MARKS: Yes.

ALEX PENA: Yeah sure. So, CDE is Common Data Environment. IFM is Integrated Factory Model. MID--