Built to Evolve: Engineering the Future Landscape

WEBVTT
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Welcome to another episode of the Engineering Influence podcast by the American
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Council of Engineering Companies. My name is Shreya, and I will be your host for today.
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Did you know that most engineering firms struggle with evolving in an uncertain landscape?
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Today, we're joined by Haas Tabrizi to discuss the future of engineering and
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infrastructure in a rapidly changing world.
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From the energy transition and growing demand for resilient infrastructure to
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the evolving role of innovation and leadership, he shares insights on how firms
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can stay agile, competitive, and prepared for what's next, while touching on
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the broader policy and funding environment shaping the industry today.
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He is the Chief Operating Officer at Ulteg and has executive oversight of the
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Lifeline Sector Operating Business Units of Power, Renewables,
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Transportation, and Water.
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Working with the managers of each business unit, Haas Insurance ensures alignment
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between Lifeline Sector Strategies and Ulteg's overall strategic plan.
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Haas, thank you so much for joining us today. My pleasure. Great to be with you, Shreya.
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Awesome. Let's dive right into the first question. The infrastructure industry
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is operating in a period of constant change and uncertainty.
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So what does it mean for firms to be able to lead with agility today?
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Yeah, great question. Agility is definitely something we are all about here at Ulteg.
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In fact, it's one of our core values. And it's really less about,
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you know, trying to predict the future or anything like that,
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but really about building some flexibility into our day-to-day and into how we operate.
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We find ourselves in a position where we're really trying to see around corners and be
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planned and prepped for, you know, not just any one scenario,
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but a range of scenarios in the years ahead.
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One example I would offer is, you know, you think about the world of AI and data centers,
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that, that, you know, are increasingly creating this energy transition or this
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energy renaissance and clients are having to move fast and markets are moving
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faster to keep up with that.
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Well, as a result of that, Ulteg in our renewables business,
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as an example, we're preparing for a wide range of market conditions.
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We actually talk about that as future-proofing that business beyond the sunset.
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Of the tax credits at the end of 2027. So trying to sort of be ready for the
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upside as well as any potential blips or downside that there might be.
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And then when we talk about agility and sort of planning and prep,
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we're really talking about it on two different time horizons.
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Number one is on an annual basis, we work through prep for a rainy day and call
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that contingency planning.
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And I'll tell you, it's really our emergency preparedness exercise.
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And it's all about having a
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plan at the ready and sort of levers to pull and sort of ready to deploy.
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As an example, at the end of 2019, we put together a contingency plan that had
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the business ready for economic downturn, for a recession.
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Well, what ended up happening, it wasn't quite recession in the traditional
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sense, but it was the COVID-19 pandemic soon emerged in 2020.
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And so having that plan off the shelf, ready to go, gave us kind of a running
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start in our ability to respond.
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So that's the first piece. The second part is scenario planning.
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We look at that on a longer seven to 10 year time horizon. And we actually use
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the Royal Dutch Shell model. And we love a good two by two matrix here at Ultex.
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We look at our market drivers on one axis. That might be things like policy
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landscape, funding dynamics. Next, we look at delivery capacity,
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that's things like talent, technology, etc., on the other axis.
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And really, it's not just a binary question.
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We're actually planning for a multiple set of scenarios or a range of scenarios
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across that seven to 10 year time horizon. We don't get to pick which one we
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want. And sort of back to the AI example, a question that comes up often,
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is it a boom? Is it a bubble?
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You know, I personally don't know. But the point is, and then maybe a better
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question is, are we ready for either or? Maybe it's a mix of both.
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And if so, what are some of the signposts that we need to be paying attention
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to and looking at to sort of see it coming?
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That's so important, the future planning and the idea of, you know,
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hoping for the best but preparing for the worst in every scenario possible.
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Absolutely. So moving on to the next part, across power, renewables,
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transportation and water, what are clients asking and looking for the most right now?
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Yeah yeah i love that question and we have a pretty you know diverse range of
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those four verticals we call them lifeline sectors as you mentioned mix of public
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and private that we serve you know to me
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i boil it down to one word i'd say creativity i believe is part of what clients
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are looking for a big part these days clients find themselves in a place where
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there's limited resources limited capacity
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arguably sort of more work than ever more capital investment and expenditure and things to get done.
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So they're increasingly looking for new solutions, new ways to tackle that problem,
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to tackle those systemic challenges.
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Where there's that prevalence of more work than people, we know at Ulteg,
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for instance, for 1800 Strong, we have a lot of smart, talented people to throw at those problems.
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At the same time, we recognize we have to leverage more than just.
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Our workforce, our very talented and bright workforce, but we have to sort of
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build around them and sort of help augment them with things like technology,
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with things like an extension of our workforce down in Costa Rica that has now
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taken our business global as an example.
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And so one of the things that comes up often, you know, as I think about our
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power and renewables sectors, as an example, is speed to power.
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That's sort of the name of the game at all the industry conferences and trade
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shows that our teams get out to and sit down and engage with clients at.
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Clients find themselves in need of more options earlier and sooner to help sort
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of optimize their capital.
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And so one of the very deliberate ways by which we go about that at Ulteg,
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we stood up an engineering center of excellence. And in our engineering center
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of excellence, we're all about standardizing tools, workflows, methods.
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Why do that? Well, so we can unlock the value of automation,
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which is where our digital team comes in. We now have a small army of digital
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folks that partner very closely with business hand in glove.
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And an example that was actually born out of our transportation business is
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checking of plant sets, helping sort of supercharge our QAQC process through
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the use of automation, through the use of AI-assisted tools.
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And I believe what we're learning is that clients can pretty quickly get comfortable with this kind of.
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Creativity, especially when they're assured that, A, it's done under close engineering
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supervision, it's going to help an engineer more easily or readily spot discrepancies
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and things like that well before they become,
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challenges or problems out into the field.
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So those are some things that we've learned through the application of standardization
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and then automation as we digitize our business.
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It's amazing. So in the beginning of your answer, you were talking about lifelines,
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and I'm very interested in learning about where that term comes from and why
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these specific sectors are lifelines.
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Yeah, great, great follow-up question.
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So those four verticals that we serve, we call them lifeline sectors because
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they're so integral to sort of the functioning of day-to-day society,
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whether you flip a light switch, turn on a faucet,
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need to get from point a to point b what,
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what what comes with the lifeline sectors is really high investment costs,
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you know if things if things go go go badly or fail like over the over the long
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life of infrastructure it's it's traditionally got a very very high cost so we're in the business
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of de-risking energy and infrastructure assets for our clients
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and often there's also you know lots of aging infrastructure.
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So we call them lifeline sectors really to try to embody a lot of what's going
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on across public and private, across the worlds of energy and infrastructure,
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and really kind of speak to the value that.
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Those assets bring and that we as engineers bring economic value to society,
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which we're probably not always great at talking about as a professional.
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Yeah, that's something that ACC is really focused on highlighting is the essentiality
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of engineering and how reliant we are on the product of engineers' day-to-day life.
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And it's important, too, because
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we currently have a workforce shortage in the engineering industry.
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And like you were saying, there's more work than people. And we're seeing research
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from the ACC Research Institute that's saying that engineering firms are having
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to turn down work because they
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don't have enough engineers and they have a huge backlog of things, too.
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Yeah, absolutely. I think there was a stat I read from BCG.
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I think it was Boston Consulting Group that said sort of between now and 2030,
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each year, one in three engineering roles is going to go unfilled.
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So we're only going to be able to fill two out of every three,
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you know, now through the next four years or so, which is a pretty eye opening stat. Yeah.
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I think the latest one I saw is that there's like a 80,000 engineer workforce shortage currently.
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And it's, you know, when people retire, there's so much of loss of knowledge
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that happens with that. And people aren't prepared for that right now. Yeah, absolutely.
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The other one that I'll give you all credit for, I think it was out of the ACEC
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Research Institute, was close to $700 billion with a B.
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It's kind of the annual economic output, the GDP contribution that engineers
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really produce or contribute to, at least here in the U.S.
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So I think that's a pretty noteworthy stat right there that kind of speaks to
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the value that I was talking about.
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And when we think about energy and water systems, you know, now combined with
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this world of information or digital,
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infrastructure, you know, pretty quickly, those are critical assets that are
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sort of not only tied to our economic health as a society, but increasingly
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national security as well. Yeah, 100%.
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The value cannot be overstated, no matter how many times we talk about it.
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So, you know, speaking of the workforce shortage, speaking of the loss of knowledge
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and everything, how are firms preparing for this kind of long-term uncertainty
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that looks like it might be on the horizon while still pursuing growth opportunities?
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Yeah yeah it's a really good question around around the long-term uncertainty one of the
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you know another framework or model that we've found at ulteg is very useful
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and it's an acronym it's it's called luka it's volatility uncertainty complexity and ambiguity,
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and sort of the origin of this the the definitional context around it it i believe
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it came out of the u.s army War College in the late 80s, sort of,
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on the tail end of the Cold War, when the geopolitical environment was suddenly
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a whole lot less predictable when it came to threats, alliances,
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outcomes, and things like that.
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It's been pretty steadily adopted by business leaders in the decades to follow. And so I think.
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Part of the name of the game for us is sort of balancing the downsides that
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we were talking about earlier with some upside opportunities and no longer treating
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the future as a best case or a worst case, but rather that range of scenarios.
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We saw this in our contingency planning last year where we weren't just planning
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for a rainy day, but in our power business, as an example, which is sort of undergoing
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this investment super cycle, as it's often called, we needed to also be ready for upside.
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How do we build some capacity, go out and staff and hire and add capability
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to support clients at an even higher clip than what we originally planned or budgeted for?
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So that's an example of maybe one of the upside opportunities.
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And then I think back to your point, Treya, about...
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About the workforce shortage and about human capital, really one of the things
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that we need to do is continue to equip our workforce and augment and build around them.
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And that's where I believe that's where the value of digitizing a business and
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technology and tech-driven tools come into play. So that's maybe one flavor
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of additional resources to kind of bolster human capital that we use.
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Another is continuing to go global. And by the way, when we did that as Ulte down in Costa Rica.
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It wasn't really driven by more clients or projects to go pursue and acquire
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in another geography, but rather it was originally talent.
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Now, we may find ourselves in a position where that creates some more opportunities
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and new business and so forth, but it was first and foremost around talent.
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And then the last piece is external partnerships.
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I know that's commonplace in the public sectors as an example in transportation
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and water, But increasingly, also the case in our power and renewables lifeline
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sectors where we're leveraging the broader AEC industry.
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And so we're big believers in sort of the combined horsepower of the industry.
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So once again, I think the human capital piece is essential.
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There's no substitute for that, but it really gets to how we kind of build and
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bolster and augment around our people.
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Yeah, 100 percent. Like keeping people central to this whole process, I think,
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is what's going to be the key to making sure that all of this technology that
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we're using to augment is usable and it's not just technology for the sake of
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technology. Absolutely. Yeah.
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So changing gears a little bit, how is the energy transition changing the way
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infrastructure projects are planned and delivered?
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Like we were talking earlier about all of the aging infrastructure,
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and just the sheer amount of
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infrastructure that engineering firms and engineers are responsible for.
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So how is all of this change playing into that?
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Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that matters more than ever is speed and pace.
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We hear our clients talk about speed to power a lot, especially as we make the
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rounds in the trade show and conference circuits across power and renewables.
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And so there's this pace and volume and resource capacity set of challenges
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that are industry-wide, not just limited to Alteg or AEC, but even certainly
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extending into the world of our clients.
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And then there's also the convergence or the overlap of a lot of different sectors coming together.
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I'll go back to the data centers and AI example once again. And it's the business
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of power or electric utilities.
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They're in the business of building safe, reliable, economical power infrastructure,
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putting it into a rate base and earning a return.
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In renewables it's all about getting clean energy built and on the grid at scale
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and then there's this this other thing that has sort of emerged around information
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and digital infrastructure which is yet a different product or a different
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different business model and it's got everything to do with compute power but
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increasingly these things converge they overlap they create opportunities and
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challenges for clients that we serve
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and then there's also you know long-term resilience.
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Things like hardening the grid and being able to advise our clients on things
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like the threat posed by extreme weather or cyber risk or hardening the grid,
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those are very much top of mind for us.
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And again, as I alluded to, energy and water systems, those are not just critical,
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assets that are tied to economic health, but increasingly these are becoming
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sort of natural security assets, which
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really speaks to the importance to criticality of the work that we do.
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Yeah, that's really, really interesting. Just the changing nature of what people
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expect from their infrastructure, like with the power grids and with extreme
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weather events like you talked about. Obviously, the one that sticks in all
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of our minds recently is the California fires.
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Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And, you know, in our water business,
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as an example, we're increasingly kind of marrying up environmental engineering capability with,
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software developers and, you know, building out dashboards to help clients visualize
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some of the capital investment decisions they need to make at a municipal level.
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And really planning and helping them plan and prep for all kinds of different,
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extreme weather, you know, type of threats, whether they're wildfires,
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whether it's floods, whether it's drought conditions, you know,
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like we've experienced here in Colorado.
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So we have, you know, lots and lots of opportunity to continue to evolve how that work gets done.
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And I continue to believe that the needs, the opportunities,
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it's really incumbent upon us as a professional, as a profession to think differently
00:17:07.105 --> 00:17:09.301
about how we do those things in the years ahead.
00:17:10.002 --> 00:17:13.045
Definitely. Yeah. Evolving is the way forward.
00:17:14.354 --> 00:17:20.344
So closing out here with one final question for you, for leaders who are navigating
00:17:20.344 --> 00:17:23.665
this uncertainty, what does effective leadership look like?
00:17:24.629 --> 00:17:30.854
Yeah, I love that question about effective leadership. So from my perspective,
00:17:31.434 --> 00:17:38.314
my experience tells me that I believe our employees are paying attention.
00:17:39.294 --> 00:17:44.534
When we have company-wide town halls, when we go around to different locations
00:17:44.534 --> 00:17:46.794
and have leadership open forums, when.
00:17:47.894 --> 00:17:51.279
My team and I do some market-focused segments that we call straight talk,
00:17:51.633 --> 00:17:54.674
I believe that's exactly what employees are looking for.
00:17:54.674 --> 00:17:58.054
They're looking for their leaders to level with them.
00:17:58.054 --> 00:18:04.908
So I think it's about just honesty and transparency, kind of a steadiness from leadership and,
00:18:05.401 --> 00:18:10.154
folks are paying attention, especially to how leaders respond when things get
00:18:10.154 --> 00:18:13.828
challenging, when things are uncertain, just as much as folks do,
00:18:14.106 --> 00:18:15.395
you know, when things are going well.
00:18:15.749 --> 00:18:19.124
So I think it's always really important to level with folks,
00:18:19.124 --> 00:18:22.514
even when the future may be a bit unclear.
00:18:22.974 --> 00:18:26.514
We just may not have every single answer every time.
00:18:26.514 --> 00:18:32.524
And so I think just being forthcoming about that is really, really important for us at Ulteg.
00:18:32.524 --> 00:18:37.064
We're always focused on our people. And really, it's about creating those different
00:18:37.064 --> 00:18:41.924
channels and opportunities for some real-time interaction between our team members
00:18:41.924 --> 00:18:44.214
and our leaders. And then at the same time.
00:18:44.820 --> 00:18:48.137
I would say there's kind of this social contract element here,
00:18:48.137 --> 00:18:52.707
too, which is employees, I believe, also want to understand what's expected,
00:18:52.707 --> 00:18:54.758
not just of leaders, but of themselves.
00:18:54.984 --> 00:18:58.227
So they can bring their best selves, their full and authentic selves to work.
00:18:58.670 --> 00:19:03.717
And so we're increasingly learning that change management is a key capability.
00:19:03.717 --> 00:19:08.157
It's a key strategic function that helps our employees operate better and do
00:19:08.157 --> 00:19:12.537
their jobs better and, you know, be at their best for our clients and leverage
00:19:12.537 --> 00:19:17.332
resources that maybe we didn't have at our disposal five or 10 short years ago.
00:19:17.634 --> 00:19:23.137
So one of the other just related points to kind of round out the answer here
00:19:23.137 --> 00:19:25.409
that I think is really important is around trust.
00:19:25.891 --> 00:19:30.257
And there's a lot of benchmarks and things like that around trust.
00:19:30.257 --> 00:19:34.152
One of them is the Edelman Trust Barometer. And it actually found that,
00:19:34.651 --> 00:19:39.777
of all the institutions that are out there, a person's employer is the only
00:19:39.777 --> 00:19:45.187
institution that a majority of folks feel is doing well at facilitating trust
00:19:45.187 --> 00:19:47.297
across divides and bridging.
00:19:47.407 --> 00:19:52.187
And sort of that makes it important for leaders to model really positive,
00:19:52.187 --> 00:19:53.763
healthy trust building behavior.
00:19:54.405 --> 00:20:00.686
About 73% of people believe CEOs are obligated to facilitate trust building,
00:20:01.057 --> 00:20:06.457
and yet only 44% believe those same CEOs are doing it well. That's almost a
00:20:06.457 --> 00:20:08.865
30-point gap. That's a 29-point gap.
00:20:09.213 --> 00:20:12.567
I think that's something that business leaders really at all levels,
00:20:12.567 --> 00:20:14.792
not just CEOs, need to be aware of.
00:20:15.175 --> 00:20:19.657
And it's increasingly relevant during, you know, in this VUCA world that we
00:20:19.657 --> 00:20:23.607
live in, right, during times of volatility, of change, of complexity.
00:20:23.607 --> 00:20:25.703
I think that's when trust is so important.
00:20:26.788 --> 00:20:32.210
That is so, so important, what you said about building and maintaining that trust and fostering it.
00:20:32.727 --> 00:20:36.526
And even with the change management portion of it, I think any conversation
00:20:36.526 --> 00:20:40.346
I've been a part of or have heard that's been about change management has been
00:20:40.346 --> 00:20:45.605
that it is really, really essential. Otherwise, any new things that you roll out will fail.
00:20:46.885 --> 00:20:50.714
Yeah, yeah, exactly right. Totally agree that that's critically important right now.
00:20:51.995 --> 00:20:55.298
Well, thank you so much, Haas. Do you have any final thoughts you'd like to share with us?
00:20:56.072 --> 00:20:59.166
You know, Shreya, I would just say it's been just a pleasure.
00:20:59.166 --> 00:21:02.356
I've been looking forward to this conversation. So great to talk with you.
00:21:02.356 --> 00:21:07.606
I couldn't be more excited about really how things are going to evolve and change
00:21:07.606 --> 00:21:10.076
over the next couple, three short years.
00:21:10.076 --> 00:21:14.516
I think things inevitably will evolve and change. But at Ulteg,
00:21:14.516 --> 00:21:19.496
we're absolutely committed to our people and helping equip them and really sort
00:21:19.496 --> 00:21:21.606
of build this future workforce.
00:21:21.873 --> 00:21:25.244
We're so super excited about that and appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today.
00:21:25.895 --> 00:21:29.326
Well, thank you so much for joining us. This was a very interesting conversation.
00:21:29.326 --> 00:21:31.446
And you're right, it's a very exciting time for the industry.
00:21:32.846 --> 00:21:35.916
To our listeners, thank you so much for joining us on another episode of the
00:21:35.916 --> 00:21:39.805
Engineering Influence Podcast. Make sure to like and subscribe and we'll see you next time.