Autodesk has been assembling their end to end construction solution for some years, and it is coming together as these pieces knit together as the Autodesk Construction Cloud. Matt Diesner, District Manager at Autodesk, walks us through the vision and reality of how Autodesk is seeking to integrate the construction process from design to build to handover. A fascinating view of the platform from someone who hears from builders every day.
Follow Matt on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattdiesner/
Learn more about the Autodesk Construction Cloud: https://construction.autodesk.com/
Matt Diesner
[00:00:00] Hugh Seaton: Welcome to constructed futures. I'm Hugh Seaton. Today I'm here with Matt Diesner, district manager for Autodesk construction cloud. Matt, welcome to the podcast.
[00:00:12] Matt Diesner: Thanks. You happy to be here.
[00:00:13] Hugh Seaton: So everybody knows Autodesk and most people know about the construction cloud, but you guys have had a lot of great changes over the last six months.
So I want to ask you to start with what you're most excited for.
[00:00:25] Matt Diesner: Yeah. Yeah. Happy to. So, with Autodesk construction cloud, we really have a vision for connecting construction workflows across the entire building life cycle. So that means that folks in pre-con, for example, don't need to email guys in the field to communicate changes. That all happens on a cloud-based platform that allows for example, an audit trail, and real time updates. So folks don't need to call or email. They can just log into the mobile app or through the web browser and see the latest and greatest, and just kind of eliminates the possibility for you know, wrong information being transmitted.
[00:01:07] Hugh Seaton: So the vision and what you guys are talking to people about, is this idea of sort of seamlessly connecting pretty much every step to every other step that's relevant to it. Is that right?
[00:01:20] Matt Diesner: Yeah, absolutely. And clearly Autodesk has a substantial footprint in the design software. So just extending that downstream of the project on a unified platform is kind of the basis for our go to market.
And, if you think about how that's communicated downstream, it's mostly email, it's file sharing, it's phone calls, it's meetings. The ability to eliminate a lot of that manual communication and digitize that and automate it is what's really kind of pushing, I think, the industry forward.
[00:01:59] Hugh Seaton: And how do you, this is an interesting idea, connecting some of the design output to the field. How is Autodesk bridging that gap?
[00:02:11] Matt Diesner: Yeah. So let's, let's think of, for example, the life cycle of an RFI. Typically that's created in the field, whether that's written down or in a siloed piece of software by a subcontractor.
And that needs to make its way back through the general contractor to the design team. So that's two bottlenecks, if you will, which are typically done via email or, or in other cases via software. Getting answers from design can take a while. And that's a lot of the reason you have some holdups on the job site and just kind of waiting to hear back on a change.
And even going beyond that the ability to manage costs that that results from those changes can also be handled by the construction cloud. So having all that data in a single place is enormously valuable, not just for the contractors and the consultants but, ultimately, really for the owners who are responsible for the risk and the cost of the asset that's being built.
[00:03:16] Hugh Seaton: That's a really cool point to go to also, is how do you find owners interacting with some of the construction cloud.
[00:03:24] Matt Diesner: It's a mixed bag, Hugh. I'd say some owners rely on the CM or the general contractor to make a recommendation, but some owners, and I don't want to mention names, but here in New York city, there are some that are very adamant about controlling their own data and mandating certain softwares on their project, especially the mega projects that have the most risk. So I've seen that is becoming more and more prevalent, in my opinion. You see owners kind of taking charge of the software that's being utilized on their projects.
[00:04:03] Hugh Seaton: And that's a broader question that I'd love your thoughts on, and that's this idea that, at least some owners are becoming more and more sophisticated when it comes to data. When it comes to the technologies used in what they often consider to be kind of a downstream set of activities, right? I mean, think about what an owner usually doesn't spend a lot of time thinking about construction until, it seems, lately.
So have you seen that? Have you seen that is just an increasing level of sophistication in some owners?
I mean in some owners, not everybody.
[00:04:32] Matt Diesner: Yeah, absolutely. The more progressive owners, they see the opportunity to leverage their own data, not just within a single project to ensure that the bottlenecks are being removed and things are happening smoothly, but also as a way to optimize their entire asset portfolio.
For example having a standard across all projects gives them the ability to benchmark progress and standards across each asset. So when they have a new construction project, they can see, well typically the milestone A is it involves X, Y, and Z. Or typically we see the lifecycle of an RFI is two days, and now on this project it's three days, what's going on? You know, they can manage proactively their project with data-driven analysis, which I think is huge. And just to go even a step beyond that, what I think is really cool, what Autodesk is doing is even kind of looking at workflows that are predesigned. So for example, capital planning, that's something that owners are very well involved in doing analysis of the potential asset before they even go to an architect and get the design. So we're building out Autodesk capital planning, which is through a partnership that we have with Origo, where we're actually going to be able to set up cashflow analyses and, and kind of model out the asset financially and have all that information as the starting point before it even goes to design.
And while we're on the topic of owners, if you don't mind, I'll even continue a step further - during handoff you know, there's typically...we've seen about a 30% data loss cause its as-builts are gathered by the contractors, they're chasing subcontractors, it's kind of a mess in a lot of cases.
But Autodesk is also building out a digital twin, that's built on our common data environment called Autodesk Tandem. That is a 3d model digital twin of the asset itself that could be handed over to facilities and maintenance, which is really, really cool. And we're hearing a lot of demand from owners for something like that.
So I think owners are going to benefit a lot from the construction cloud portfolio.
[00:06:51] Hugh Seaton: That's really cool. And so Tandem is a new thing. Have you guys been kind of working on it for awhile or talking about it for awhile.
[00:06:59] Matt Diesner: Yeah. So it's been in beta for a while.
[00:07:17] Hugh Seaton: Got it. that's cool. So what you're saying is Tandem is, among other things, tying together all of these pieces so that when you're doing handover and presumably beyond, I mean, is it more of a handover related thing or is it saying you can keep operating the building based on the data that we provide during handover.
[00:07:42] Matt Diesner: Yeah. So essentially, it starts with a theoretical model in design and then we'll update throughout the entire project life cycle. So it mimics the exact current state of the asset upon completion. And then that's handed off to the maintenance folks. So they they're able to...If they're looking at a wall, for example, they can use tandem to kind of peel back a layer or two to actually see what the state of the MEP situation is behind the wall.
Things like that. And then there's a whole slew of functionality on top of that, but just having access to the real state of the asset for maintenance people is a big step forward, I think.
[00:08:26] Hugh Seaton: I'll bet it is, and to your point automating or making easier, the collection of all that handover information is gotta be a big deal.
I mean, I hear horror stories about contractors walking away from money because it's more expensive for them to recreate the as-builts than it is to then the money that they're still owed. It's a real issue.
[00:08:50] Matt Diesner: Especially in the public sector, they build into the budget site surveys to be able to go and document the current state of the asset, where they could have just had that information available if they have a tool like Tandem previously.
[00:09:05] Hugh Seaton: Very cool. And so as you guys are out selling, and talking to potential and existing customers, are there kinds of projects where you find that the kind of completeness of the construction cloud is particularly loved and respected? Or is it pretty general?
[00:09:25] Matt Diesner: Well, so, we're getting there. Right now the construction cloud is really from design to hand off. But as we add these pieces and Autodesk is heavily invested in the construction cloud from an R & D perspective. I really think that's when the owners are going to start to take more notice.
One thing I think is especially challenging with the owners is that facilities and maintenance folks are typically managed by a different org than the construction. And then even the financial folks, for them to get together on the same page is an organizational challenge.
But as you know, products like the construction cloud come to market. I think that is going to be, there's going to be a sea change there where they start seeing an opportunity to be to work more in tandem (no pun intended) with each other...
[00:10:20] Hugh Seaton: couldn't help yourself.
I think, I mean, also it feels like that that as data and more modern ways of managing various parts of it become more prevalent, there's just more and more companies, including owners that say, why is it true that my FM team isn't involved in agreeing to accept a handover? I mean, I hear that from contractors a lot, that a lot of times the people that released the funds and say, yes, aren't the facilities team and the facilities team wasn't really, didn't even have anything to do with it.
Which you could see how that may have been functional in the past when handover was you know, a trailer full of paper, but in today's world, when you can actually figure out if everything's where you need it to be, I think more and more people are saying, look, we have the ability to do a better job, so let's make sure the right people are in the room when we hit send on the finances.
[00:11:13] Matt Diesner: Yeah, absolutely. And I think FM has been traditionally more of an afterthought, in a lot of ways. When you're looking at capital budgeting for construction project, they build in a lot of folks will build in a certain contingency for rework or whatever. That's not the case on the FM side.
So those folks are really kind of strained for resources and have to do more with less. So the ability to have that connected construction environment is I think going to help them more than anything. Just to be able to stretch their resources and lower overhead, just be more efficient with their day to day.
[00:11:57] Hugh Seaton: Yeah, absolutely. And again, it seems like certain asset classes are pushing the whole industry forward...large parts of the industry forward, right? Like whether it's data centers or other... factories and so on, where you've got people that are...that build the same building over and over again, what a great way to really learn how to do it well right?
[00:12:19] Matt Diesner: Yeah, exactly data centers. We're seeing a big uptick in retail you know, large chains where exactly, like you said, they're building the same more or less store or what have you again and again. Um, so it's really interesting.
[00:12:36] Hugh Seaton: So what are some partnerships that you're particularly proud of?
[00:12:40] Matt Diesner: Yeah, I think. So from a partnership perspective, our partnership with, Arigo who has been you know, really well-known. Their product master works in the public sector from a capital planning perspective. Early on we had an integration when I was at PlanGrid with them the vision was always there and now we're executing on it.
So I think part of Autodesk capital planning is going to include some of the functionality that we're using from Arigo. Obviously, Autodesk has announced a huge investment in them. And we are operating as separate entities and I don't know what's going to happen in the future, but you know, we do have a close partnership with them and you'd be surprised how many conversations I have when the minute we mentioned capital planning, the customer's like, tell us more about that.
So that's not going away.
[00:13:34] Hugh Seaton: Yeah, I can imagine. Can you imagine having to deal with capital planning right now? When so many things are in flux, I got to imagine they're hungry for any help they can get.
[00:13:49] Matt Diesner: Yeah. And public owners, private owners, they want to know five, six years down the road, once they've completed construction, they can look back at the cashflow analysis. They can see how everything developed and they learn so much about their own process, their own business practice.
And that's tremendously valuable and tremendously interesting to them so that they can continue to improve on their processes moving forward.
[00:14:18] Hugh Seaton: Yeah, I can imagine. And again, that's the 5% of the total cost of the asset that drives the efficiency of the other 95%. So it's good to be able to reach back into how the thing was built and how things went and see how that might impact its profitability over time.
[00:14:35] Matt Diesner: Yeah. Yeah. I'm really excited to see that product live.
[00:14:41] Hugh Seaton: Very cool. And are you hearing, there's a couple of things that have got a lot of headlines lately. One of them obviously is the pandemic. And the fact that commercial real estate is going to be a different equation from what it was in certain areas in certain cities in the past. Is that something that you're hearing people talk about and like a unified platform, like the construction cloud is helping people to think through what to do?
[00:15:07] Matt Diesner: Yeah, absolutely. I think the pandemic caught everyone pretty flat-footed, especially construction, which is such a hands-on, on the job site, showing up everyday to the trailer type of business. When that goes away, the ability to manage things remotely... I mean, you look at reality capture doing virtual walkthroughs, being able to have one person on site share their information in real time with the whole project team that they don't have to go site. It really opened the eyes. And I think the folks that were early adopters really positioned themselves competitively for the future of construction, which, I mean, let's face it...
We just had yesterday vaccine mandate here in New York city, it's going to be here for a little while. So being able to adjust using technology, is going to be the competitive differentiator in the next five years.
[00:16:07] Hugh Seaton: Um, I'm sure you're right. And especially for certain sorts of assets in certain sorts of building it really makes a difference, doesn't it?
[00:16:14] Matt Diesner: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:16:16] Hugh Seaton: So what kind of if you think about... Where you focus the most in your district, in your area I'm going to ask the asset class question again. Are there certain kinds (in different way obviously), but are there certain kinds of project that you focus on that you guys are really driving different... I mean, again, I assume you're valuable to everything, but are there some where you're saying, this is just the area for growth for us, where we want to do civil or we want to do more industrial or, or whatever it might be. Are there certain areas that you like to focus on?
[00:16:53] Matt Diesner: Yeah. Well, I think. You know, contractors were the first people who, who saw this technology is valuable. A lot more architects are adopting for CA for example, or punch at the end of the project. And then, the owner... I hate to keep going back to the owners, but they hold all the risk, not all the risks, but a big part of the risk for these new constructions.
And as far as asset classes. Yeah. I mean, data center, retail, healthcare is huge that we've seen, especially with the pandemic, Yeah. I mean all around, within those categories just mentioned that are really moving forward.
[00:17:35] Hugh Seaton: that's great. So you and I both were involved and still are involved in the society for construction solutions.
So both of us, in addition to working with companies that are themselves software providers, see the industry from other people's lenses as well. How do you see the construction industry on the technology side over the course of the time that you've been involved in it, have you seen some changes and how do you see the adoption process of new technology either changing or, how are you seeing it going?
[00:18:12] Matt Diesner: Yeah, so it's a light bulb that goes off for certain people. So I'll tell you a story real quick. So there's a large public owner in New York city, and they were about to embark on a very large project that required public projects there's dozens of stakeholders. So they were doing their initial walkthrough. And this was when I was at PlanGrid. But just to give you an example of how things are changing and how individuals can drive that change...we were walking through the job site and everyone was walking with their paper plans.
And I had asked them for a digital copy and I uploaded it via PlanGrid to my tablet and was walking with the gentlemen who was my prospective client at the time. And he was kind of an early adopter. He had kind of that mindset. So as we were walking and everyone's marking up their drawings and he turned to me and he sees me with my finger doing what everyone else is doing.
He says, can I do that? You know? And he pulls out his phone gets onto the wifi. I was like, “sure.” I press two buttons, I add him to the project. And he downloads the drawings right on the site, folded up his, his paper drawings, and went about the rest of the job just using PlanGrid.
And that was like, so instructive to me that this guy who had been using paper his whole career, and he was a little bit of an older guy, saw what I was doing, thought it was cool. And then in 30 seconds made the switch, and that happens one person at a time. But especially as the older generation retires, the folks that are really set in their ways with paper. And then the newer generation comes up and moves into leadership roles that there's no question of if, it's a question of when.
[00:20:11] Hugh Seaton: Right.
[00:20:12] Matt Diesner: And for Autodesk to be one of the leaders there, I think is a really exciting opportunity.
The next sea change is going to be getting away from email. We're almost away from paper. There's still folks out there that do it, but you know, getting away from email where everything needs to be emailed or, or whatnot. And kind of having that mindset change to, instead of me calling someone, let me just log into Autodesk Build, for example, and I can see, oh, so and so uploaded the latest documents. Okay. I don't have to call him or another guy change the status of this issue that we were tracking or this RFI, it's already there. I don't have to email I don't have to call. I'm already three, four steps ahead.
So scale that up to every single decision that needs to be made between across stakeholders on a job site. And you're talking about serious, serious efficiency improvements and it's the bottom lines will reflect that, for pretty much everyone in the construction ecosystem of a project.
[00:21:15] Hugh Seaton: That's a great vision, the idea of pulling even more friction out of the process. And that's what technology is for right. Is to close the gap between people and the information that they need. Very cool vision.
[00:21:29] Matt Diesner: Yeah. It's exciting.
[00:21:30] Hugh Seaton: So let me ask you what some of these words mean. So when you say Autodesk Build, what, what is that?
[00:21:38] Matt Diesner: Build is our productivity, document management and project management solution. So essentially it's PlanGrid mobile technology. So PlanGrid was great in the field. It was very easy to use intuitive, and, but it was missing some core project management features that our customers needed.
So for example, RFI, submittal, meeting minutes, cost, the ability to track assets, that type of stuff was the next level. So Autodesk's strategy was one of acquisition. So they acquired PlanGrid...they had BIM 360, It wasn't quite where they want it to be from a mobile perspective.
So but it had a lot more robust project management functionality. So that kind of gives you an example of Autodesk thinking and how we're going to market with our best of breed construction tool.
[00:22:41] Hugh Seaton: That's great. And so Build is part of the construction cloud overall, correct?
[00:22:46] Matt Diesner: Yeah. So right now there's Autodesk Build, there's Autodesk Take Off which does a 2d and 3d quantity takeoffs, and then Autodesk BIM Collaborate, which is a model coordination and clash detection. And they're all tied together on, on the Forge platform, which is Autodesk's common data environment.
So that allows it to kind of talk if you will, with the AutoCADs and the Revits of the world. And have that kind of bi-directional sync.
[00:23:19] Hugh Seaton: I actually didn't know that you guys were, I should have known, but I didn't know that you were kind of centered around the Forge platform. I really love Forge.
I mean, obviously a lot of people do it's been around for awhile. That's very cool.
[00:23:32] Matt Diesner: Yeah, and it just allows us to open up our ecosystem to third parties who want to develop on Forge just to make our platform more extensible for example, prefab really interesting third-party products that are built on Forge that help the prefab process that's just, it's kind of niche. The developer saw an opportunity and built it out. So those opportunities are available for anyone with the vision there.
[00:24:07] Hugh Seaton: That's really cool. Yeah. Um, I believe there's something like a thousand or some number like that, integrations built into Forge. It's huge. I just was working with somebody on something that a couple of days ago and, and we kind of dove into it. It's pretty amazing. That's sort of the tip of the spear when it comes to integrations for Autodesk, right?
[00:24:27] Matt Diesner: Yeah. I mean, we have a partner network.
But yeah, I mean, people ask us, can we, especially when we... they ask the most about, in terms of integration is like, like ERP, accounting and financial software. So the ability to sync with that, there's a couple of really good middleware solutions out there that are building turnkey solutions into Autodesk build with the kind of the usual suspects of financial ERP.
And I expect that will continue.
[00:25:08] Hugh Seaton: That's very cool. So as we get towards the end of this, how do you see things going? Like, so you guys have at Autodesk and Autodesk Cloud, have made a lot of strides over the last couple of years, but where do you see this going? What's your vision for where to take it in the future?
[00:25:26] Matt Diesner: Yeah, I think we're just at the beginning Hugh. We have Autodesk Build, which is kind of the culmination of this vision we've been talking about for two years, right. We just released four or five months ago. And since then we've released Takeoff and BIM Collaborate.
And it's just like, from my perspective in sales, it's tough to keep up with it all, you know? But I can tell you that the future is very exciting and the strategic direction of Autodesk is going to be heavily invested in building out the construction part of the business
You know, we made several acquisitions in the past even year, but also just investing R & D dollars and resources into the products, whether that's from user experience perspective or on the backend, feature requests, things like that, where we're heavily involved, especially engage with customers trying to understand what's missing what, what do they want and coming to market with what we think is going to is going to satisfy those goals.
And, and I've seen the fruit of that already. So it's just, it's a very exciting time.
[00:26:46] Hugh Seaton: Excellent. Well, Matt, thanks for being on the podcast. I got a lot out of this.
[00:26:51] Matt Diesner: Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks Hugh. Thanks for having me.