Plan with Everyone: See into the Future of Digitized Work Planning

SHANI SHARIF: Hello, everyone. Welcome to our Autodesk University class. Our session is titled "Plan with everyone. See into the future of digitized work planning." Today I'm joined by an amazing group of industry experts from DPR and Miller-Davis companies, which I will introduce them in a second.

Next slide, Samir. Just before we start, this is our Safe Harbor Statement. We are showing you a tool that is in beta at the moment. So we want to make sure that we cover the legal terms on that. OK. So today I'm joined by Cory Hackler, the lean manager and expert in short term planning and construction planning.

He has been collaborating with us for many years at DPR Construction and starting the process on lean construction for over 10, 12 years right now. Then I'm also joined by Ariel Castillo and Howard Williams. Ariel is a strategic process and VDC specialist. And Howard is the project executive at Miller-Davis.

They are also very engaged in the scheduling and planning process in construction and how to do the best practices in the field. Additionally I'm also joined by Emily Edelstone, our technical solution executive, that she will help me in giving you an introduction to our new production planning to work plan.

My name is Shani Sharif. I'm the senior product manager here at Autodesk Construction Solutions and the product manager for the workplan team. So today we will give you an overview, a quick overview of what is the short term planning? What is the purpose of this talk. So making sure that we are all on the same page.

Then we will go to DPR and hear from Cory, that he will talk about the last 10, 15 years experience at DPR implementing lean construction. What they have learned and how they are going forward to the future of this process. We will then give you a quick demo of the work plan tool, which is in beta at the moment.

And both DPR and Miller-Davis are participant in the beta program. Then Miller-Davis will give an introduction into the process, an overview of how their company has adopted lean construction and how they're improving their process by adopting the best practices.

And at the end, we will have a panel discussion on the best practices and how we should move forward to better improve this process of planning for the future and also for the industry in general. OK, so now I will give you a quick overview of the project lifecycle, long-term planning and short-term planning.

These are the two terms that we hear very often that is used by most major construction companies. So we have the long-term planning tool, which is defined early on in the process of project planning. This is used mostly for managing the resources and getting an insight over how much time do we need and how much resources do we need for a project.

But as we start going to the field and start the construction process, the project teams need to start defining it into more detail and that's where the short-term planning comes into play. The project members on site, they will get chunks off the master schedule and break it down into details of what they have to be doing in the six to eight weeks of work.

Which they call it the look and the pull plan of phase planning, and then they will look at the work that is two to three weeks of work, which they call it they look at planning, and add more details and get the commitment from all the contractors that are on the site, and they have to perform the job.

As the work progress, as they review the progress of the work, and then they do the updates and adjustments as necessary to both short term plan and also the master schedule. And the process goes on till the project is over. And then there are different team members that are interested in different set of documentations and processes that are generated as part of both long-term scheduling and short-term planning.

The goal of the long-term scheduling is to define the entire project and to create an overview for the entire project. It has every aspect of your project included, but as you can assume there is a lot of speculations also built into it, because it is usually defined before even the start of the project.

And it would be very cumbersome to add all the details and also inaccurate to add all the details of the long-term planning into the long-term schedule. So because of that we have the short-term planning that now the project members on the field, they can get the plan and start collaboratively cutting it into chunks and build the detailed task and activities that needs to be done by each project member.

They can review what are the roadblocks on the project at the moment. They will provide commitments to do the task in the next few weeks. And then the general contractors can review the progress and review the efficiency of the work. And then by removing the roadblocks, improve the process as they go on.

So if-- I want to summarize the benefits of short-term planning is that it can reduce a lot of time based on site. So because in the master schedule, there are a lot of speculations built into the plan and then also there is it's lacking the detailed specific requirements for each task, by doing the short-term planning, everyone knows what they need on the job site, what they need from other teams.

And then by doing this, they can reduce and eliminate the waste on the job site. And also by implementing the Lean Construction principles, the teams can focus on getting the commitments from the team and making sure this is the bottom up approach.

That everyone on the project is involved and their voice is heard and they know exactly what they're committing to and what they need from other teams. And this is a strategic way of ensuring that the expectations are met and the projects, we can keep them on track and we implement this process as we go on to the next projects and improve the overall productivity of our products and company as we go on.

And now I want to hand this over to Cory, that their DPR company has been implementing lean constructions for many years. And I also have to add that DPR has been a participant in the Work Plan Tool beta, which we released recently. So he will also give you some feedback on that part. Cory.

CORY HACKLER: All right, thank you, Shani. So I'm going to start off with just a little bit of a conversation about who we are as DPR Construction. We're a worldwide construction company focusing in these areas that you see on your screen, advanced tech, health care, higher ed, life sciences, and commercial construction.

Next slide. Think one thing that we want to share is that we're not just a general contractor. We have a whole umbrella of companies that we have underneath the DPR brand that help us to better service our construction projects on site. Few of those are digital building components, which does prefab exterior skin.

SurePods, which does prefab bathrooms, vConstruct, which does technology implementation. And then we also have what's called OES, which is similar to a Home Depot for our job sites. They do rentals and supply services. Next slide. So a couple of things that we try to expand our expertise and I'll just hit on a few here.

The big self perform work group, which does drywall, concrete and a number of different other things. The last couple of years have been really focusing in on prefabrication, prefabbing interior panels, prefabbing exterior skin. And then also really getting into design management and what we can do to better influence design so that construction can run smoother.

So similar to what Shani had brought up, where we started at DPR, where we started with the last planning system, which was similar to the graphic you saw earlier, which kind of goes from milestone planning to master planning, then, getting into phase, lookahead, which is two to six week look ahead, and then daily check-ins.

And what we did was we started with this, but we found that as our construction projects had evolved that we needed to do more. We couldn't just do what was considered the last planner. We needed to do more visual planning and more communication across the board.

So where we've gone now is we're trying to get to a 4D planning lifecycle that's driven from data that we've collected over the last 5 or 10 years on production rates. And so production rates for us in each region may be different. What we can do as far as pouring a concrete slab in California is maybe 20 days.

In Phoenix, it might be 15. So what we're trying to do is get to these standard processes and procedures that we know we can make to better influence our predictability and our outcomes on our projects. So imagine this is our future state, where we obviously want to go is we want to be able to have a model that's tied to a schedule, that then creates that database that we can go back to and continue to build on.

This is something in the lean industry, continuous improvement is key. And this system right here will allow us to get better and better as we go throughout our project lifecycles. So why did we kind of get involved in the Work Plan Tool? And what I want to do here is hit on a few things.

You can see our teams here are working on tracking performance, doing their daily check-ins, seeing where they're at with their PPC, which is plan percentage complete. And what they're doing is all manual and it's posted in a room. What the Work Plan tool does, it allows us to do all this stuff virtually.

So we can look at the plan anywhere in the field. We can update it as we go throughout the day. We can get a database and start getting that information that we need to be able to kind of build our performance metrics. So thank you. I'll hand it back to Shani.

SHANI SHARIF: Thank you, Cory. That was a great introduction and overview of what DPR has been doing over the last few years and where are you heading at, which is pretty exciting. And we'll get to that and more into the discussion section. As Cory pointed out, we are DPR and Miller-Davis are the participants in the newly released Work Plan Tool in Autodesk Build.

This is releasing the beta at the moment. And both these companies are helping us to validate the tool that we are releasing and hopefully we can have all of you access the tool pretty soon. What Work Plan Tool does is it's a short-term planning tool sitting on the Autodesk Construction Cloud.

The unified platform of Autodesk Construction, which as a tool, which is focused on short-term planning. It takes advantage of the platform system itself for the shared access. Everyone on the project has access to the latest and most accurate information on the project planning.

It is a collaborative tool. Multiple people can join our newly created pull planning sessions and create the phase plans all together, review the task, and review the requirements and roadblocks, and build the schedule together. Once they have this schedule, now they can look at the progress and the commitments on the project and the completion.

And the progress of the task overall on the project, which can be reflected on the metrics and dashboard page. Now I will have my colleague, Emily, to give you an overview of what Work Plan does. And we are happy to share more information with whoever that is interested to learn more. OK.

EMILY EDELSTONE: Looking at Autodesk Build here, Work Plan sits in between schedules and assets. It's a really great tool that we added here, and I'm going to start off by showing you our settings. In our settings here you can adjust the workdays and the non-workdays on your project so that the schedule works accordingly for how you're doing work on the project.

We also can adjust the locations and the work breakdown structure so that all the activities can be categorized and looked at within those categories. In the settings we also have the ability to adjust the PPC percentage for the project. Right now we're looking at the swim line view here, where you can see all of my activities that I have on this project, as well as the dependency lines between each activity.

The activities have different shadings in here for different things. So for example, I have the little eyeball on the inspection. That shows me that I have an inspection there. And a little truck for my delivery activity. And some of the other shadings show different things like, for example, that my activity is open, it is backlogged, or it is committed.

There are a lot of different ways to filter and view the Work Plan here and it's very similar to other areas of Autodesk Build, where we can filter and slice and dice all that different information that we have in here, which is really handy for those project teams that want to be able to quickly look at what they're working on, on the project. So some of the ways that we can do that is we can look at this whole thing by the company or by the work breakdown structure or location, as well as being able to click where it says default view and be able to look at different views for the project. So we can set up views for maybe a three week look ahead or different companies to be in there.

And you can actually set those views in there to have your own personal views versus project wide views in here. So that's really handy for all the teams on the project to be able to have that information. We also have a very handy shortcut button here, where it's going to tell you and identify all the different shortcuts that we have to be able to use in here.

So T brings you to today or L brings you to the last activity. And then we have a Configure button where we can turn off those dependency lines, close our empty lanes, and even change the lean density, which is a really cool feature that we have in here.

The next view that we also have in here is our list view, and this just gives you our entire schedule in a different way to view and understand the information that we have in here. All of the columns here can actually be adjusted. And then we can also come in and press on those columns and be able to sort by those different column types.

Again, giving the power to the team to be able to digest that information and put it to use. One of the things that I really love that we did with Work Plan here is we've actually added inline editing, which is really cool. So we can go ahead and start adjusting things like adding a person into the different activities.

So I'll show you in just a second here how I can go ahead and add in myself as the person that's responsible for this specific task. So that's a really great addition here to something that we have and another way to be able to adjust what we're working on. I really love this list view for it.

Next we have our planning view here, which is similar to our typical pull plan. Once we set up and do our planning view in here and we create our milestones and all of our different tasks, when we finalize that session it's going to bring all those activities into that swim lane view. So it's actually how we're populating that swim lane view.

There's a few other ways that you can populate it, adding them in each spot, but here what's awesome is that, I think Cory touched on it a little bit, is our teams can work digitally together. So, you know, we're not fighting for space over the wall and who can put up their sticky notes on the wall or moving each other's sticky notes very slightly.

Or the air conditioning coming on in the middle of the pull plan and knocking them all off the wall. We have them all digitally for everyone here to be able to work together. So everyone can log in on their own and add in their own activities. And we can also add things like our dependency lines on here and adjust and work as needed.

Cutting down the time that it's going to take to do that full planning session and the time on the back end to finalize that session. So it just takes one quick button to finalize a session rather than having maybe a project engineer or a superintendent put all of that information into a schedule at the end of the day. This is going to do it all for us.

And the last thing that I wanted to show here is our metrics board. And so the reason that we're adding committed and putting if our activities are complete or incomplete is so that we can get the data out of that schedule and know how we're working on the project. So we have our plan percent complete, our PPC.

And we're able to here to see say our seven day rolling PPC versus the project average PPC, as well as our activity summary as to how the activities are going on the project and are root causes. So what are maybe causing things to be delayed on the project, so we can start seeing trends.

And the support looks pretty similar to our insights dashboard for Autodesk Build. So for Build users, this is something that is already familiar to you. And that is a quick overview of our Work Plan Tool for the beta mode.

SHANI SHARIF: Thank you, Emily, that was a very nice introduction to Work Plan. Now I want to hand the discussion over to our other great collaborator, Miller-Davis. And Howard and Ariel are going to give us an overview of how Miller-Davis is performing their planning on projects and how they have experienced Work Plan beta so far.

ARIEL CASTILLO: Awesome, thank you, Shani. Well, just to give you a little bit of an overview, Miller-Davis company is a construction company located in Kalamazoo, Michigan. We provide general contracting and construction management services. We specialize in commercial, higher education, and government work as well. We regularly self-perform selected demo, concrete, steel and carpentry, and we are a privately owned Michigan corporation with all of the owners actively involved in the daily operations of the company.

HOWARD WILLIAMS: So good afternoon, everybody. As Ariel just mentioned, we specialized commercial, industrial, education, and government. We're very regional contractor. Our range of work is from Northern Michigan to Northern Indiana and as far to the East as Lansing, East Lansing, and all the way to the Great Lake Michigan.

And we do a lot of work for higher education, as well as K through 12, and really have found a good niche in those areas. So I appreciate the opportunity to be here with you guys. So I think I'm sort of going to reiterate a lot of what you guys have already heard about digital pull planning and how we've really been able to leverage this process, and it's really improved our internal processes as well as our communication with contractors.

About two years ago when COVID really hit hard, we started looking for ways to move from the standard pull planning process to a digital process. Pull planning, as you've heard mentioned already, really is a collaborative tool that brings all the contractors together at a table and talks through that Work Plan through the scheduling process, through the types of work that need to be done and the order in which it needs to be done in.

And being able to do that in a digital session allows contractors to be spread throughout. We don't have to be standing in the same room. We don't have to be working on the same board. We can look at doing that from a remote office and doing it together on the computer screen.

For us, we've really seen a huge improvement in productivity as well as the ability to maintain schedule by going to this process. Like we were talking about earlier with a bottom up approach, generally, historically let's just say, the superintendent would be the one who would be pushing the schedule and he would compile it.

He would send it out to the contractor teams, and then really push them to get that work done in that order. Pull planning itself is meant to bring those teams together and really do that in a fashion where they're describing their work, they're describing how long it's going to take and they're describing the sequence of that work.

So being able to do that digitally really improves the buy-in of the team members. And we found that it helps us hold contractors more responsible and accountable to their work and doing it in the right fashion the first time. So those are some of the big improvements we've seen and we look forward to continuing to improve that.

ARIEL CASTILLO: Great. So I just wanted to say that I love the images that Cory shared earlier, because we have a similar presentation where we show the whole process that it took, all these sticky notes and everybody collaborating, which is great, but also there was so much work that had to be done afterwards.

So I just wanted to share that out because it will take some time. And using this detail approach, well, obviously, eliminates that double entry. Anyways, but related to this question here why did Miller-Davis take part in the beta for Work Plan Tool in Autodesk Build.

It goes back not only into Work Plan, but more like when we were looking for a solution to innovate our project management department. One of the most important criterias for us was to identify a partner and not just a vendor. We wanted to make sure that we were supporting the development of the tool and not just using a tool that was coded and distributed to all the users.

If you go by the numbers, we are a small medium-sized construction company and we don't have the resources to have a team of developers in-house. Nonetheless we have a group of project managers and project engineers that are eager excited, motivated, you name it, to share the experiences, pain points, and ideas so that they can do their job better.

And that's how Autodesk became a great fit for us. Before joining the Work Plan beta, we have participated in multiple beta programs for Autodesk Construction Cloud. So as Howard just shared, our company has developed more interest in integrating lean construction techniques as part of our day to day operations.

And the ability to do it on the same platform, and be able to manage all the jobs for us was a no-brainer. Being able to do this lean construction approach and do it right on the Autodesk Build is basically what got us interested in doing this beta.

SHANI SHARIF: Thank you, Ariel and Howard. That was great to hear how you're performing your job and how you're digitizing the process of planning for your company and your projects. So should we jump into a discussion that we can dig deeper into some of these topics that you have already experienced.

You have so many years of skill and expertise built into digitizing your process. So I wanted to ask both DPR and Miller-Davis, what is your advice for other companies that they want to step into this digital world and start to digitize their planning process? What lessons you learned? What is the best practices? And where do you think they should start?

CORY HACKLER: So I can go first. I think that DPR Construction really, really focused on three things. It's people, purpose, and process. And I think a lot of the times, if we jump right to the tool, right to the process and we don't have the people or the purpose identified, we see a lot of problems. And I think there's a lot of discussion around data and how do we use it to our benefit within our organizations [INAUDIBLE].

HOWARD WILLIAMS: Yeah, I think that's great, Cory. I mean, really Shani, just to dive right into your question there. I'd say just go for it. It's an important process. If you want to do your job and you want to do it well, you want to serve your clients and your owners, you need a tool that you can communicate well with your team.

And a pull planning process, a digital pull planning process, the Lean Construction method, all really work to develop that team and to make sure you have buy-in from everybody. So that everybody understands the who, what, when, and where, and how we're going to get that done. So it's a very important process.

And what I would say, make sure that you're intentional about it and make sure that you do it often. Those are two key tools to make sure that it's a proper process that gets utilized and gets bought into by the contractors.

ARIEL CASTILLO: Well, I would like to add there--

SHANI SHARIF: Go ahead, Ariel.

ARIEL CASTILLO: I would like to add there that we're using the word digital and just to keep in mind, that's not changing your responsibility at all. The fact that we're using a computer now, we're not using sticky note, we are basically doing the same technique. It doesn't matter if we're using a computer or not.

So make sure that the concepts are clear, that you have a really good communication with your team, your subcontractors, and make sure that you support them if-- you know, not everybody can grab a computer and use it immediately. So if they need some support, don't let that segregate your team, because they don't have that ability.

Sometimes you have really good stuff that they can grab an iPad, they can grab any tools, and it's not a problem. Sometimes you're dealing with a different generation that might not be able to do it as quick, but they can still add value. You just need to support them in that process.

SHANI SHARIF: Exactly. And I think a lot of people are afraid of doing that leap of faith and going into the digital process. But once they are in the digital process and they have adopted it, they see that their life becomes much more easier and managing everything and coordinating it.

And talking about that, both of you helped us greatly by evaluating the Work Plan Tool in the beta stage. So I wanted to ask you, what was your experience? And especially in terms of how other companies can adopt such digital tools to improve their planning process in the future, how you would evaluate that tool? And where we are going to head, heading to?

HOWARD WILLIAMS: Do you want to take that one, Ariel?

ARIEL CASTILLO: Well, all right, I'll do it. I was waiting for Cory to keep the same pattern, but basically what I would say is it's important for you to understand what you're looking for. Understand what you were doing before. And again, going back into the digital question, we're not changing a lot.

So basically it's make sure you're looking for the same KPIs or the same information that you want, and make sure you can translate that into this new approach. Now, because this is a beta, obviously, there were some limitations, but also you wanted to do is make a list of those limitations so that we can provide them to the development team and make sure that the tool has been developed to fit our needs.

HOWARD WILLIAMS: Yeah, I'd say what Ariel said there-- sorry, Cory. What Ariel said there was really critical. I think Shani and Emily have done a really good job in their teams with implementing this beta to look a lot like what the lean pull planning process looks like. You have your milestones, you have your tasks, et cetera.

So you need to know going into it what you're looking for and what information you're trying to pull from that. So that you can help describe the process and you can lead your team in what kind of data you're actually trying to gather from that. That's really critical.

CORY HACKLER: Shani, I think the big thing for us at DPR was we had a really tight partnership with you working on, what did we like about the previous versions and what do we not like about the previous versions of 360 Plan, a Work Plan.

And I think the best part of that Shani, was working with the team to go through-- what's in it for me at the end of the day is what's most important, right? You got to make it easier for the people using the product. And I think Shani, through our partnership, we've been able to say, look, let's get rid of some of the double entry.

Let's get rid of some of the things that take our teams multiple hours, and also you're transferring information, you lose that information, you lose something out of that sticky or some understanding. And so for us to be able to do it directly in the platform. And I think kind of the third big one here too is that we are all crammed for space.

And if you have a planning board that takes up an entire conference room and people are using the conference room for other things, and you're still trying to look at your plan, now you can do it all in a digital format. You can do it from your desk. You can update it as you go. So I think we've made a lot of really great changes that I think people will start to see and realize, OK, it's much easier, it's much simpler for us to use.

SHANI SHARIF: So if I want to summarize what you all just said, one advantage is the tool is sitting on a platform, which means that it can connect to the rest of the applications that you need and the rest of the data. So you're reducing the double entry and you are reducing the chance for any mistake or error in the process.

The second would be that it's basically resembles the current planning process you do, which is a manual, but this is the digital format. So you make sure that the data entry is easier and also everyone has access to the latest updates on the product information.

And lastly, what we also really focus on was the ease of use for people. So they can start adopting this technology and all the benefits that you just mentioned, which leads me to my next question, which is, we know that in all construction companies some have employees that are more tech savvy.

And we have some other employees that are a little bit more traditional in the methods that they're used to do for many years. So how we can encourage, for example, our superintendents who are going to be one of the main users of the Work Plan Tool to start using and adopting these new technologies to improve the process overall for the entire company?

CORY HACKLER: So Shani, I can start with a story I have from switching an old superintendent that was all about using a whiteboard and a marker, to using a digital format. And using the one that we're talking about today is you've got to really prove to them what's in it for me. Again, is how is it going to make his life better and what does that look like?

And you've got to sit with the person and really kind of mentor them through the process. And in our lean leadership program, we talk about leading as a student and a teacher. And I think also influencing the older guys that, hey, you know what, some of the younger kids coming out of school, they can teach us how to use a lot of the technology, because they've grown up with it forever.

And so within our company we're trying to promote that. At the same time, you show a person why they need to switch and what's going to be much easier for them, they start saying, OK, now I get it.

And seeing that transition in this guy, I mean, he's been a superintendent for 35 years and now on this job he just went to, he's using all digital format, which is like kind of mind blowing. But it's just a win, right, when you see some of those difficult people switching over. And that's we're going to start seeing across the board.

HOWARD WILLIAMS: Yeah, I'd reiterate what Cory just said. I think you have to take away the fear factor. For a lot of those people, there's a fear factor there. If I have a process, I know it works. And would I try something different? So being able to team them up with somebody who is comfortable with that kind of process.

So a younger PE or a assistant superintendent who has already learned that and been through it, and maybe that's the only way he knows. That helps both people. It helps that senior superintendent understand that, hey, there is a different process. This is the way sort of the world and the industry is going and I want to get on board and there's advantages to it.

And it also shows that younger generation too that construction was done before we had this sort of stuff, right? So there's something that I can learn from it, and how do I take what I learn from that process and make my job better. So I think that what we've found in our company, most of those guys are very willing to take that leap, and to learn, and to try and get better, and to utilize that new equipment as long as they know that you have their back and there's somebody there to teach them how to do it.

ARIEL CASTILLO: Yeah, there's a term that we use a lot, which is digital champions. You want to identify who's going to help you carry that implementation. So you can probably look out there and you will find one or two superintendents that they are probably more interested or that they can get a grasp faster.

And you just come in and you say, hey, basically what's in it for me? You know, what's the benefit for you as a superintendent? If you don't do that you're basically-- the way they see it is that you're adding more work to them. So if you can show them what's the benefit and how this is going to alleviate his work or how this is going to make him a better superintendent, then again, identifying that person and showing them how he can be better, it's going to make it way more easier for you.

SHANI SHARIF: Maybe some extra bonus for them, at the end of the year? Those are great points on how we want to carry along like everyone in the company. And from the conversations I had with all of you in the past, I know that you have teams that are more tech savvy or they're early adopters.

And have adopted, like, for the scheduling, as Cory showed, or they have adopted digitized pull planning, as Ariel and Howard showed. My last question would be, what you're doing exactly to improve the planning process for the entire company? And then if you have advice for other companies that are on the same line as you and they want to improve the process for themselves, what would be your advice?

HOWARD WILLIAMS: I can start this one if want, Cory. All right, so I think I would just jump back to something I said earlier, being intentional about it and doing it often are two keys to scheduling. So you have to make sure that the project is thought through properly.

That you take the time right up front to meet with the entire team of contractors and explain the process and what you're going to do and what the expectations are for that. And then, make sure that you follow through. A lot of contractors, at least in our regional area, if they see that you're not going to follow through with the process that you're trying to put in place, then they're not going to either, right? So making sure that you build that team and you stay the leader of that team is very critical to ensuring that your scheduling process is functional and works well.

CORY HACKLER: Shani, I would say, at DPR, we're in that era of data and data driven analysis and information, but I think one thing that's, again, is really important is right around the corner is Industry 5.0, which gives back to people, right? And I think the digital information, the digital learning is all great.

But there's still at the end of the day it has to be people that are driving the processes. And so we're learning is that the last planner system and all of these ideas have been great, but I think we're starting to transition more into what can we learn faster by using visual management, visual tools, to be able to do those things.

And things like CAD planning and things like 4D planning, where we can actually see are we trade stacking our trades? Do we have a good flow across the job? How can we improve those kinds of things? And the more we can do that for our trades and the more they can see that they have a steady flow throughout the job, the more they're going to want to work with us.

Because they're not going to be stacking and inefficient. So we're really focusing in that direction, I would say, going forward.

ARIEL CASTILLO: You know, next time that we participate in a panel with Cory, I need to make sure I answer it first because then now I have to repeat the answer. No, I'm kidding. Yeah, I agree with both Howard and Cory. I like to use the word collaboration basically. Just make sure that this is not a benefit for my company.

It's not a benefit for my team, it's a benefit for the project, it's a benefit for all the stakeholders. And you want to make sure that they understand that if we can communicate better, and if we can plan better, it's a benefit for everybody. There's going to be less discussions on site. There's going to be less mess on site, because we are all on the same page.

And I know we say this all the time, but as you know, it's tougher to do it in practice than what it is in theory. So again, let's make sure that you are talking to your subcontractors and your company as well, and make sure everybody gets on the same page, and you'll see that the results that you get. It's incredible.

SHANI SHARIF: All great answers and great best practices. Thank you so much for sharing all of that. And also thank you so much for being our amazing partners and collaborators. We couldn't do what we're doing without your input and your insight, because we want to make sure that what we are building is useful for you and your teams and can help you be successful.

And also a lot of great insight I heard today from you on what's their best practices today and where you're looking into for the future of planning. Thank you so much for bringing all the expertise and the skills to this discussion. And I look forward to meeting you all in-person at the USO. Thank you, everyone.

ARIEL CASTILLO: Thank you.