Driving Digital Transformation in the AEC Industry with Jason Miller

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Hello, and welcome to the Engineering Influence podcast from ACEC.
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My name is Thomas Grogan, Senior Director, Economics and Market Intelligence
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here at ACEC, and I'm also the Staff Director of the Technology Committee.
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We're really excited to have Jason Miller, Head of Innovation from Ramble, on our podcast today.
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Jason, thanks so much for joining us.
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Absolutely. Happy to be here. All right. Well, I'm just going to dive in with
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a question that we've been asking all our guests over the past year,
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and it is essentially, what does digital transformation mean to you?
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That's a big question. So I think one of the things that we really think about
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when we think about digital transformation at Ramble is the breadth of it, right?
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And that certainly when we talk about digital transformation,
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there's a big piece that's thinking about foundational technologies and how
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we can better use data and begin to reuse data and create more value from it.
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But one of the biggest pieces for us is how are we really training and upskilling
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our colleagues, right, to take it?
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Advantage of digital transformation and to come along with us on the journey
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for what the AEC industry of the future is going to look like, right?
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So for us, there's a huge piece of it that's around people and around ways of
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working and around, obviously, how we can create better value for our clients.
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So I think that that's the biggest piece for us, right? Is remembering to look
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beyond just the data and the tech, right?
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And the geeky portions of it and begin thinking about really how it's going
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to change the industry and what we all need to do to get ready for that. Yeah, absolutely.
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And so then, you know, the segues, well, to my next question,
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you know, mentioning working with the people and training them,
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upskilling them, and thinking about bigger, let's say, business objectives of your firm.
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What does your day-to-day look like as head of innovation at Ramble and how
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you kind of think or work cross-functionally so that you're not just in software
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or tech all day and accomplishing these bigger objectives?
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Right. So, I mean, personally, my background is as a consultant predominantly
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in the environmental space.
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Right. So that's that's how I grew up, so to speak. Right. So and I dearly love
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and treasure the time I still get to work directly with clients.
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And I hold on to that very, very tightly, even though it's only five or 10 percent
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of maybe of my time, because I think that's super valuable.
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But actually within Ramble, earlier this year, we created a new organization,
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which we just called Ramble Tech, but not perhaps the most inventive name we've
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come up with, but where we wanted to sort of bring together a lot of the different
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resources around the organization.
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So our innovation team our colleagues
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working on digital transformation and transforming the way we deliver
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our services and also a growing number
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of our ai developer and design colleagues right so
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we can bring everybody together in one organization to really
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begin to sort of make a bigger change and a
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faster change as we see the pace of change increasing so
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with all of that you know i've spent a lot of time obviously the last several
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months working with colleagues getting that new organization up and running
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and bringing all the pieces together but one of the other big question that
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is on my plate right now is to think hard about what's happening in the ecosystem
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around us at Ramble, right?
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So what can we do together with other AEC firms?
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What can we co-create with clients, right, to solve major sustainability challenges,
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which is obviously at the core of Ramble's mission?
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And then, you know, what can we also do with startups, with large technology
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vendors or other non-traditional partners, right?
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So that's a big question for me right now is sort remembering to look outside ourselves, right?
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And think, how can we solve some of these major sustainability challenges and
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move faster on digital transformation by working with others?
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Yeah, and that, you know, brings up a good point.
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Point, what sort of lessons learned outside an AEC firm or lessons not learned,
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right? Some failures maybe.
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Have you noticed or, you know, what are you looking to, let's say,
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borrow or steal that you're seeing in maybe other industries or partners or
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in the startup world that maybe traditionally hasn't happened at an AEC firm?
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Right. So we've, you know, one of the things that we're trying to steal and
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think about how to bring into the more traditional AEC firm.
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Is a little bit of the pace and the acceptance of failure, right,
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that you can get within a lot of tech startups, particularly tech startups, right?
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And I think, you know, for very good and sound reasons, AEC firms are built
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around avoiding failure, right?
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And that's not going to change, I hope, right? I mean, that'd be a very bad day.
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And so, but what we are talking about is, you know, obviously there are times
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when we can't fail, right?
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There, you know, on major design projects, you can't quote unquote fail, right?
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But we can talk about, you know, some of the ways that we want to bring new,
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new ways of delivering those design services to market.
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And certainly early on, when we're thinking about what those design services
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should look like, how we could, you know, how we could package an offering there,
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there is an opportunity for failure, except that then you have to start thinking
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about, you know, how do I encourage people to take those
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risks at the right times and not feel like they're taking a career risk, right?
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So that's one of the things that we've been talking about a little bit is how can we bring.
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Some of that speed from the startup ecosystem into Ramble.
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And we've, you know, we've successfully nurtured a couple of internal startups
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up over a million dollars in annual recurring revenue and growing.
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We have two of them at that, you know, greater than a million size and hope
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to get a third one online very quickly.
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But, you know, so that's one question for us is like, can we,
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how can we bring that in inside and sort of make it work with the sort of traditional
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AEC, you know, ethics and design work where you can't fail, right?
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So how do we, how do we run that line.
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So that's, that's a big thing that we want to try and bring in board.
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You know, I think another thing that we've talked a lot about is,
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is that sort of remember, you know, I think we as AECs sometimes get into the
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habit of wanting to build it ourselves, right?
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And reminding ourselves that particularly with technology moving as fast as
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right now on generative AI in particular, right?
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We need to remember not to do that, right? And to think more aggressively about
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when we can work with others, you know, who may have expertise more on the technology
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side where we can bring in data,
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right, and create something together and remember to shift our way of thinking
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a little bit in that traditional part, outside of that traditional partner model.
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Yeah, I mean, no, that makes sense. And I'm guessing, you know,
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the concept of ARR, annual recurring revenue,
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maybe took a little bit to, you know, bring into, it comes from a different
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business model in the software SaaS world versus just just basically being billable
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and utilization. So there's probably a bit of,
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education around concepts like that as well.
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Well, there is absolutely right in there. And there's also the question of that
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we are all very traditionally inclined toward the billable hour is the way we
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measure success, right?
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Individually as a team and as larger departments and organizations.
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And so there is then that question if we're starting to deliver more and more
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value through technology and software and new offerings, the billable hour isn't
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necessarily the right tool for that, right?
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So it is then questions of things like ARR, net revenue per employee,
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you know, all of these different metrics that we have to think about.
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And then have some pretty frank conversations with our clients about,
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you know, what's the right business model for us to do something together, right?
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If it's not the billable hour model. Yeah, totally.
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So you had mentioned, you know, working with data.
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Data is a very, you know, important pillar, let's say, of kind of technology.
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How do you think about having a data strategy and, you know,
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being nimble, using data to do data-driven decision-making at your firm and
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your, you know, in your role?
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We're actually deep in the midst of a reset of our corporate data strategy.
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And we, and the big initiative drive around that is, you know,
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trying to talk about moving from the paradigm where
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we create data, use data, and store data on sort of a project level.
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Where it tends to then die at the project level. But to begin thinking about
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a data strategy where we start talking about, are there specific data products
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that we create when we do project work that we can then build on and reuse, right?
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Are there, for example, you know, specific design components of our top performing,
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most sustainable bicycle bridges, right, in Denmark that can be used as building
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blocks for the next generation of bridges?
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Is, you know, how can we begin to think about data reuse in that point of view?
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Is there data that we generate when we're doing an environmental impact assessment
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that we can begin thinking about that data would have value the next time we
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do an environmental impact assessment, right?
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So, and so what we're doing within our corporate data strategy right now is
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actually taking a little bit of a lean startup MVP approach to a data strategy, right?
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And so we've defined, you know, some of what are our core data strategy ethics
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or pillars, Things like, do we want data to be shareable? To whom?
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How do we talk about security and ownership rights and reuse?
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Those are common based on the company's ethics.
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And then what we're saying is we will identify some of these highest value data
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products that we think will be highest value data products.
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And then let's start talking about what's the tech stack, what's the way that
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we need to change the way we work with that data to begin making that data more reusable, right?
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But we're taking a very incremental approach to that in some respects,
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because we're basically saying if we tried to redo the data strategy for the
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entire company, around reusable data, we'd never finish, right?
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So let's start talking about some of these prioritized products that we think
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we can very quickly get out there, get our engineers and scientists using and generating value.
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You, let's build the systems for those and then take the common elements from
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those systems and use that to build off the next generation of products and
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spin the flywheel that way.
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Absolutely. And you know what? You've talked about.
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Somewhat sophisticated. Ramble is an international company, you know,
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many employees, happy to have them as a member of ACEC.
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ACEC also has member firms that are one person, five person, 10 person companies.
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And so if you were at one of these smaller firms,
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how would you think about a data
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strategy and is you know a data
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strategy going to be necessary you know
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when you have to balance different projects and
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employee bandwidth and all the different capacity constraints
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you might have kind of what advice would you have for someone getting started
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who maybe doesn't have all the resources and also you know maybe it might be
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overwhelming to think about all the things that can be accomplished but it's
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like you know try to focus on what you do best and stick to your swim lane?
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How would you tackle a problem like that?
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Right. Yeah. So it's actually, I started my career at a much smaller firm.
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I think I was the 36th employee, right?
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You know, so when I started, so yeah, I've sort of seen both sides of that a
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little bit, you know, being in that world and now being in the Ramble side of the house.
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One of the things that's interesting to me is actually a smaller firm that has
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expertise in particular areas has some advantages, right?
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I mean, one of the challenges that some of the, I mean, some of the challenges
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I just went through that Ramble is dealing with, they're just,
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you know, we've been in business since 1945.
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We've got almost 18,000 employees. We, you know, if you thought about,
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if you try to convert the services that we offer to clients to start thinking about a product list.
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It'd go on and on and on like we were some 1990s era conglomerate.
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And so that actually gives us a challenge to think about what data could we
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reuse, what's valuable, what's probably not going to be valuable.
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There's a lot of work that we have to do on that side of the house.
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That a smaller firm actually has some advantages, right?
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Because you're dealing with a smaller data universe, right?
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And you can be more nimble, more agile, right?
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And so I guess that's my first statement is don't get scared by size and scale
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and lack of resources, right?
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Because I think that if you can think about some of the high value work that you do for clients,
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right, that is sort of more specific to where you're based or the particular
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client sector that you serve and think about how you can couple that with a
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lot of the freely available data to create something different, right?
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Because that's the key. You don't have to build a data product that's wholly meat.
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You just need to add your special spice and sauce mix to it, right?
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And so I think that is the, you know, it is the same question though.
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It's starting to think about instead of generating data, storing it in a file
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share under a project code and never looking at it again, it's starting to ask that question.
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Wait, how could we reuse this data next time? What here is reusable?
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And then starting to think about, well then how should I store it?
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How should I, you know, and there's a million ways to do that, right?
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Of differing levels of complexity. But I think it's the same question,
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but I think actually smaller firms can, will probably get there faster than
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we will in some places. Yeah.
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So going back to a point you made when you were first talking about digital
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transformation and the need to be holistic and include the people involved,
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how do you or does your group or Ramble kind of work with,
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maybe it's your chief people officer or chief talent developer,
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developer to upskill, keep your employees engaged,
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and kind of provide the resources or think about what resources you will provide,
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you know, your worker, your employees, so that, you know, they're up to date, being efficient,
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and don't feel left behind by everything that's kind of happening in the media
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talking about technology and change.
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So we tend to think of our service catalog, so to speak, right?
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When we talk about how we help our colleagues, we tend to think about it at three horizons, right?
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One is the sort of offering that we deliver to teams that we have tasked to
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create new large language model-based software products, helping us with automatic
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report generation, right?
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Obviously, it's a brand new way of delivering a service.
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They get a very high level of touch and a lot of a very personalized help,
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right, from our and not just help, but engagement in the project from our from
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our developers, from our digital marketers,
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from our, you know, our staff that are really good at co-creation workshops
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with clients. That's sort of one tier. year.
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Then we sort of say that we, we, within our major key account organizations
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and within the major client sector organizations that we have within Ramble,
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you know, we want to, we want to make sure that the leaders of a lot of those
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organizations are getting another level of training,
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right, on how to talk about digital transformation with clients and, and sort of.
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Be frankly have open conversations about the
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challenges we see the challenges our clients see how
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everyone thinks markets are moving and just try and
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be open and build the relationship right in part based on that mutual sharing
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of challenges and learnings but also obviously make sure that they understand
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you know what resources we have within ramble to bring to bear to help a client
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with the task and then the third group is you know sort of every colleague within
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ramble right we We want to make sure that we're giving them access to tools.
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And we are big, right? So we can't do that in person for everyone.
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And so one of the challenges we've set ourselves, for example,
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is directly from our CEO is to make sure that all staff within Ramble receive
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some AI-specific education, right?
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And that within the next, I'd love to say within the next six months,
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it's probably, hopefully we'll get it done that quickly or maybe even faster.
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That'll be a mix of virtual with some in-person. And it'll be an evolving thing, right?
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Because what we've talked about is, you know, we can talk about the current
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best of class tools in the market, you know, and some different things that
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we have available, but it's just changing so fast.
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Back to your point that part of it is getting, you know, giving them some comfort
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that it's okay that it's changing.
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You know, here's how you handle some basics. Here's the people that you can
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reach out to and you need to know more, right? Right.
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So we're building we are exactly working on our chief people officer to build
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that sort of catalog of resources within our sort of digital training materials.
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And then and then, like I said, trying to work more in person with with some specific teams.
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But it's a big job. It's a big job. Yeah. I mean, training 18,000 people just
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to do their timesheets properly with the right time codes can be a challenge.
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Although, who knows? Maybe AI will automate all of that, right?
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Well, that was going to be a joke and not a joke. We did a series of surveys
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around, you know, what would you like to see AIs help you with?
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And far and away, the most upvoted request was, can you help me automate my timesheet with AI?
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Yeah. Okay. Well, so for firms who maybe are going to start a digital transformation,
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what do you think the biggest or some of the biggest risks they might face trying
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to go on this transformation?
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And they should, you know, keep in mind as they begin this journey?
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I guess I would say one big risk is placing too big a bet too quickly,
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locking yourself into a particular vendor solution or locking yourself into
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a particular development pathway too early, right?
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With everything that's been happening with large language models,
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there's been a lot of chain in the technology space affecting ADCs,
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right? Right. We're seeing and we're seeing, you know, the large vendors,
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you know, the Autodesks, S3s, Bentleys of the world, right.
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Adapting their platforms to bring those tools on board.
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You know, that pace of change is not going to slow down.
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Right. So when you're when you're just beginning, that sort of flexibility is
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key to not not overcommit to a particular solution.
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And I can give a ramble specific example to that. that, right?
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We are, you know, we're deep into an analysis of, you know, Microsoft Copilot
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and Microsoft Copilot M365 and, you know, various products available from OpenAI
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and others and trying to decide.
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How do we want to make that decision and not be locked in right to a pathway
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that we feel like a year from now we'd be really frustrated about?
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So, you know, it's this being careful about where you put your resources and how fast you place them.
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And what we try to talk about a lot for that is, do you know the customer problem you're solving?
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Do you know the client problem you're solving? And really build around that.
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Design your solution around the problem that you're solving rather than around
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a particular technology.
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And if you, you know, and that, that customer or client problem you're solving,
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that can be an internal challenge that your design engineers are facing,
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or it can be something one of your customer segments is facing,
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you think you can help with, you know, so customer or client,
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in this case, can be internal or external, but you got to talk to them, right?
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And you got to get direct input and feedback and get away from that assumption.
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And really put them put the time and the effort upfront and that validation
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before you go too far down the road of actually starting to build or buy software.
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It's a mistake we've made, you know, where we've moved too fast on the tech side and the rails.
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We've created a wonderful solution to a problem that we didn't really have.
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But that's a constant learning push for us is stay focused on the customer problem.
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Yeah. And so, you know, this is something we talked about a little bit on one
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of our digital transformation webinar series is when do you know the kind of
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stop the initiative because you're You're going down the wrong path or, you know,
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it frankly is going to, to your point, let's learn how to fail faster and be okay with failing.
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You know, what, what should, what are warning signs?
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What are things a leader should keep in mind for, you know, being smart,
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not getting caught up in that some cost fallacy and pivoting.
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Yeah. And hopefully a lot of times it is pivot, not stop, right?
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Because you've learned that you can take those learnings and bring them on in
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a different direction, right?
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I mean, one of our most successful internal startups, right,
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was pointed very much to a particular customer segment, was getting some sales, some traction.
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And then they had a number of really good conversations with clients in that
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sector who were basically saying,
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yeah, we don't feel the industry is going going to be ready for the 18
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to 24 months for some of what you want to try and do and
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they pivoted right and they pivoted to a different customer segment
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that it was at the better time the time was
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more ready right they were just we were everything was a better sweet spot and
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they're doing quite well so but and they took a lot of learnings forward so
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it is sometimes think about how you can pivot don't kill but yeah it is that
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is a key piece and so one of the things that we talk a lot about is the sort
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of early stage gates, right?
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And what evidence do we have of the problem, and that we're on the right track
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with a solution, even before we really do any serious development or acquisition, right?
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So can we do something with, you know, you know, sort of dummy,
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you know, UX, or dummy workflows, where we sort of say, listen,
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this is the problem as we see it, we would like to do this as sort of a whiteboarded solution.
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Test that out it, And that is something that it's very challenging to take something
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that incomplete to a client and have a discussion with them about it.
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But frankly, if you're willing to do that and go in and have a discussion that's
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not about selling and it's about, hey, we think this is the problem.
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Are we on the right track?
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They can turn into just great conversations, right? Because then you're talking
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about a joint problem and how do you solve it together?
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But that's something that for us is we really want to see evidence internally
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of, yes, you understand my problem. This is an issue.
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If you solve that, it's really going to help my workflow or externally.
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Yeah, you've got this. We've got this issue.
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We would pay money if you come up with a solution.
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Those are the sorts of things we like to see early on before we really start
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triggering development costs, right?
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So we will often encourage teams and give teams time and space to go out,
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do the workshops, do the interviews, have the discussions.
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We don't want to talk to you about code, right? If you come in with a presentation
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and talk to us about code and tech platform, then you're going to get a no right
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at the beginning stages.
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So that's a lot of it for us. In the beginning, we want you to talk to us about
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your customer and their problem.
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And then once we're comfortable that you've got that locked,
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then you can come in and talk to us about time, space, and money for development or acquisition. Yeah.
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Yeah, absolutely. Makes a lot of sense. Well,
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I'm going to ask one last question and want to end on a positive note and kind
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of get your thoughts on what you think, you know, what the biggest opportunities
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are for a firm that would embark,
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begin their digital transformation and, you know, what, what positives they can look out for.
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Yes. So I actually the one for me is there's a huge amount of energy coming
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from younger colleagues and people coming out of school right now around digital
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transformation and the new capabilities that we're going to have.
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Right to solve problems core to the
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aec industry right we really you know
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i think there's the energy there and and the belief
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and i think it's a correct belief that with a lot of the new digital
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tools available we can solve some of these very pernicious very difficult sustainability
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problems right that we we can we can couple digital capabilities to talented
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engineers and scientists and do things that we frankly we couldn't do a year
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ago or two years ago and there's energy for that.
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So I'm very optimistic about that. And I don't, you know, for me,
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I don't look at this as digital transformation, replacing engineers or scientists,
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but it is to quote one of my colleagues, it's really giving them superpowers, right?
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And I think you position it that way, you talk about it that way,
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the energy is there to really to really build something exciting.
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Great. Well, Jason, thank you much. Thank you so much for joining the Engineering
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Influence podcast here at ACEC and hope you have a great rest of your day. Thanks. You too.
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Music.