March 8, 2024 • 32 mins
To kickstart Season 4 of the Future Construct Podcast, Women in Construction Week, and Women's History Month, we highlight some of the industry's most influential women. Unlock the secrets to revolutionizing construction workflows and saving costs as we sit down with the trailblazing Kelli Lubeley from Cupertino Electric Inc. From her beginnings in drafting to her current role as a Construction Technology Manager, Kelli's insights are a goldmine for anyone keen on understanding the intersection of technology and construction. Her personal drive to optimize processes and mentorship in the field of BIM has not only reshaped her company’s standards but has also set a benchmark for the industry.
Journey with us through the unexpected lessons of tomato gardening and the steadfast pursuit of rock hunting, drawing parallels to architecture and construction. These narratives are more than just hobbies; they're a testament to the importance of innovation and sustainability in our industry. The stories of change management in the garden and the meticulous craft of turning rocks into jewelry mirror the precision and adaptability required in AEC. These reflections serve as a reminder that growth, whether in nature or technology, demands patience and a willingness to adapt.
Finally, we take a visionary leap into the future of construction design, where virtual reality and mind-to-display technologies are just around the corner. With Kelli Lubeley's expertise, we discuss the transformative potential these tools hold for architects, engineers, and construction professionals. Join us for this compelling exploration into the innovations that are set to redefine the way we conceive and construct the spaces of tomorrow.
Contact the Future Construct Podcast Produced by BIM Designs, Inc!
- BIM Designs, Inc.: minority-owned, US-based, union-signatory preconstruction technology firm, offering turnkey BIM modeling, laser scanning, coordination management, and other VDC solutions to the AEC industry.
- Schedule a free consultation: sales@bimdesigns.net.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Welcome to Future Construct.
I'm Mark Oden, the CEO of BenDesigns Inc and guest host of
Future Construct.
Today I'm hosting Kelly Lubili,construction technology manager
at Cupertino Electric Inc.
Welcome, kelly.
Thank you for making the timeto join me.
Thanks, I'm excited to be here.
As you've moved into the AECindustry, you've serendipitously
discovered unique opportunitiesthat ignited your passion for
(00:33):
standards and consistency,particularly in how they enhance
the user experience.
Over the years, you've embracedthese opportunities and even
carved out new ones for yourself, transforming your passion into
a fulfilling career.
During your career, you've hadmany notable accomplishments.
You've reduced BIM relatedexpenses, revitalizing project
workflows for a $750,000 annualcost savings.
(00:54):
You've implemented cutting-edgedata management systems across
20-plus technologies, developingrobust technical standards.
You've achieved a 20% reductionin total project man-hours,
resulting in cost savings whileincreasing deliverable value by
50%.
And you've also improved jobsatisfaction and streamlined
technical processes, reducingaverage user downtime by 40%.
(01:16):
Those are amazingaccomplishments and I'm very
proud of you, kelly.
Over the course of ourconversation, I'd love to take a
deeper dive into thoseaccomplishments to understand
how they've impacted your career.
With so much experience, you'recontinually and positively
influencing the digitalconstruction market.
Thank you for all your manycontributions in the AEC space,
kelly.
To get started with yourextensive experience in the AEC
(01:42):
industry, I'd first love tolearn more of your story and
what led you to the industry andultimately to where you are
today at Cupertino Electric.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Yeah, absolutely.
I really got my initialintroduction in high school when
my school offered ahand-drafting class as kind of
just an elective and I reallyreally enjoyed it.
It ended up taking all theelectives that they had
available.
We didn't have had technologyin place yet, but it did exist
(02:10):
at the time and I ended uptaking a different path out of
high school and came back aroundin my mid-20s to see what
AutoCAD was about, take a coupleof CAD classes and see if that
was a path that I would beinterested in.
And my very first jobimmediately working as an
architectural drafter, I justabsolutely found that it felt
(02:33):
easier for my work.
I felt more organized, like Icould help and be more effective
if I provided myself somestructure around what I was
doing.
And the architect I worked forat the time allowed me to kind
of step into that space andcreate standards, create some
kind of formal processes for ourcompany, and it really just
(02:56):
absolutely became this passionthat I found, which I enjoyed.
I didn't even realize it wasreally an option as a career or
anything like that, but I didget to move from there into
learning Revit just actually asa originally marketed, as a
(03:16):
vision excuse me, a review tool,a way to look at the model and
sort of analyze the model, and Ijumped at the chance because it
looked like a lot of fun and itturned out that a lot of higher
education was starting to movethat direction.
So the community college whereI had taken my classes asked me
(03:39):
to write some curriculum so thatthey could propose teaching it.
When they did, they actuallycame back and asked me to teach
the course.
So I got into doing trainingthat way and I found that that
was very, very rewarding.
And after having been a traineror technically a teacher at the
community college, having donesome Revit work, I was asked to
(04:00):
be a BIM manager and I didn'tknow it until I was asked.
But I realized this is what Iwant to do, this is kind of what
I want to be when I grow up andit's just sort of kind of
continually advanced from therewhere, okay, what are other
things that I can do?
That kind of help people andput things in place that make
(04:21):
the job easier?
So I made the leap from workingdesign the manager over to
construction.
I worked for GC for a while andthen Cupertino asked me to come
work for them.
I actually started working on acouple of projects so that I
could get familiar with the kindof construction side of the
world and just kind of theelectrical too, because my
(04:44):
background was in architectureand BIM and now my current role
is BIM program manager.
The majority of my dutiesrevolve around standards,
processes, documentation andtraining for a BIM department,
and I also work outside of myofficial title.
I do a lot of constructiontechnology management within the
(05:06):
company where especially thingsthat I'm quite familiar with,
familiar with like projectmanagement and document
management tools, I will workwith another department that
wants to implement a process,bring in a new technology,
things like that, to just helpadvance the users in other areas
as well.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
I love it.
Thank you so much, Kelly.
How's speaking ofserendipitously finding your way
?
It's so true, and I love how italso came full circle, too,
where you're again focused onstandards and processes, and
that seems to be your truecalling.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
It is.
I really love it, so, so much.
It's a true passion of minethat I would have never known
existed if I didn't get start,start to work in the industry
too and experience thefrustrations of of others.
You know, I went through thesame thing that they did when I
first started and I think to methat's that's what drives me to
do it and it's I joke a lot withpeople but I say you know, I
(06:03):
don't do what I love, we,everybody's just do what you
love, and you won't work a dayin your life.
I'm like there's a lot of thingsI love.
I love pet, I love my pets, Ilove my hobbies.
You know, I love my partner,all sorts of things, but those
things don't translate into workvery well.
But what I am passionate about,what I will argue with somebody
every day, no matter howfrustrated I get about my job,
is how important it is to helpother people be successful at
(06:28):
their jobs.
And so that's how I knew, kindof what to do and the direction
that I wanted my career to go,and so far has fairly
successfully gone that way.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
So cool.
The other thing I, the otherthing I really value is that
you've you've got your handsdirty when joining Cupertino and
said, hey, let me work on those, those electrical projects, so
I can, you know, I can reallylearn the tools of the trade, if
you will, or the trade itself.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, I think a critical partof being on any team, honestly
is epistemic humility.
It's a big fancy word, Ilearned it from an NPR?
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Yeah, help me understand that one.
You learned it from what?
Speaker 2 (07:06):
I learned it from an NPR episode.
Oh cool, but it was.
It was a great show and it'swent through and to me it had
just really resonated becauseit's something I think our
industry struggles with a lot,which is acknowledging that you
don't know what you don't knowand being able to work with that
, because it takes a lot ofconfidence to get done what we
(07:29):
need to get done in theconstruction world, and a lot of
times that also translates intoego, which is where we start to
struggle, right when we say Ican do something or I know
enough about this to get it done, when maybe we don't.
And that's where you know.
The area that I like to work inis hey, I know this part, like
(07:50):
I'm not going to pretend to knowexactly what a project manager
goes through every day orexactly what a superintendent or
an superintendent or even aninstaller goes through every day
, but I've done work on projectsto get a better idea and I want
you to tell me, as a user, inwhatever role I'm working with
at that time.
(08:11):
You tell me what it takes to bea project manager and what is
going to make your life easier,and I'll work with technology
and standards and training tohelp you be more successful in
that, and that's, I think, oneof the bonuses of my job, but
also one of the challenges ofthe type of work that I do and
(08:31):
where we run into how we get tothe future of construction in
the industry is getting someonewho's maybe a C-suite or a site
superintendent versus theforeman to acknowledge that
they're not as familiar with theexperience of another person or
a different area of theindustry that they haven't
worked in and bring in an expertor someone who has that
(08:55):
experience to assist, as opposedto attempting to kind of fumble
through it or confidence theirway through it.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Yeah, thank you for sharing that.
Kelly, appreciate your focusand you call that epistemic
humility.
Epistemic humility yes, great,that's something for me to
research.
I love that.
So I really want to talk aboutyour accomplishments and your
stories behind thoseaccomplishments, and I'm really
excited to talk about the loveof the hobbies that you have.
(09:25):
From the pre-show research, Iknow that you've taken up
gardening and that you see thisas a big science experiment,
including, which creates thatunique perspective.
How do you see the principlesof experimentation, continuous
learning and your gardeninghobby translating into your
approach of tacklingtechnological challenges and
industry challenges?
Speaker 2 (09:46):
You know that's an excellent question and I think
it translates over extremelywell.
And it's humbling for me, inboth my professional career and
as a hobby gardener, that youknow we can always try something
different.
But if you're not careful abouthow you try something different
, you can't be confident withthe results and make those
repeatable.
(10:06):
Because you know I can go in toa project and I can change out
the technology that they'reusing and they do it
successfully.
But I also change the standardsand I changed the people that
were interacting with it at arudimentary level and I changed
(10:28):
the process right.
And so I go to another projectand I try to repeat that and it
doesn't always work Because Ichanged too many variables.
And gardening frequentlyreminds me of that, because you
know, maybe I didn't get a goodcrop of tomatoes this year.
I actually didn't.
My tomato struggled this yearand tomatoes are interesting.
(10:51):
They're always abundant, but youalso get a lot of varied
results.
And you know, I realized thatlast year they grew really well,
but I changed too many things.
So now I'm not sure why theydidn't grow well, because I
changed which of my raised bedsthat they were in, which is a
recommendation to cycle yourbeds.
I also changed what otherplants were around them, which
(11:13):
also has an effect on how wellthe individual plants grow.
I added more pets to myhousehold, which of course you
know pets that go outside tendto be a little bit nosy and kind
of get into things and theymake it a little bit more
challenging.
And then I also changed mywatering habits that I had to
(11:34):
because of the drought that wehad this year, and so it just
became too many things thatchanged from this year to last
year to be able to say, oh, theproblem is this, and now I can
move forward and have betterresults.
When I plant my tomatoes, it'scoming here, and that is a
constant back and forth to me asmuch as I do that in gardening
it's.
(11:54):
You know, if I want to see adifference, if I want to see
growing, I have to limit myvariables, and it's the same
thing when we take changes intothe workplace right, any kind of
change management.
I know we usually talk aboutthat in terms of change orders
and project changes, but to mechange management also applies
at that corporate level or thatprogram level where if I change
(12:15):
the technology and I change theprocess and I change the people,
well, there's no way to knowwhat was the, either the factor
that caused, you know, thesuccess or the lack of success.
So that I can then makeimprovements moving forward.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Beautiful.
Thank you so much for sharingthat.
I love the correlation.
I'm also excited to get into asecond major hobby of yours,
which is which is rock hunting.
So tell me about rock hunting.
I've never heard of it, I don'tknow about it.
I'm super excited to hear aboutthis.
This this.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
I feel like this is pinnacle nerdness right here.
So this has been a familytradition of mine since my
grandparents started, when theystarted dating, and it was much
bigger back in the 30s, 40s and50s.
We're a very nature lovingfamily, and rock hunting is
literally going out into natureand finding interesting rocks
and minerals.
(13:07):
So you know, a lot of peopleenjoy the beauty, the math, the
you know beliefs that can beplaced on different types of
minerals, how they're formed,things like that.
So that is what I do.
I actually just took a trip overNew Year's out to West Texas to
(13:30):
a one of the largest ranches inthe world I believe it's half a
million acres and they theyhave a small group of people
that they work with to pick upagates.
And you know I'm justconstantly fascinated by all of
the, the geometry that goes intohow different types of minerals
are formed, all the colors thatcan show up based on the
conditions that happen, thingslike that.
(13:51):
And then I also, extending itinto an even crazier hobby will
take those rocks and mineralssometimes and cut and polish
them to be used in jewelryBeautiful, very cool.
So have you made jewelry out?
Speaker 1 (14:09):
of it.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
I have about three pieces so far that I've made.
I'm still learning the silversmithing part.
That parts a little bit more indepth.
But the, the rockhounding iswhere I've pretty much been
doing that my whole life andsometimes it's, you know, just a
half hour drive.
Other times it's, you know,hours in a weekend out somewhere
picking up you know, fluoriteor quartz in Arkansas or, like
(14:35):
said, agate in West Texas.
So there's a lot of differentkinds of different minerals that
are that are interesting andbeautiful to me Very cool and
you mentioned the math behind it.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
So I imagine there's repeated geometric structures
and things like that.
Have you, have you dug intofurther the math or the
structure of?
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Oh, there is so many different structures and there's
a lot behind the chemistry andthe physics of what happens with
with the different minerals asthey form.
Manel, my favorite mineral, isfluorite.
It most commonly forms in kindof cubes, and so I think it
looks very starting, startlinglygeometric and not really
something that a lot of usassume we would see in nature.
(15:16):
Right Rocks are kind of theserounded boulders or these really
jagged edges, and these are abunch of cubes that are kind of
like stacked up and overlappingand there's very obvious math
done to where it almost lookslike it couldn't be done by
nature, but it is, and I justfind that so fascinating that
you can get different size cubesslightly different.
(15:36):
There's what's called etching,that kind of shows the different
lines of how things are rodeover time, and then you get the
whole spectrum of colors basedon what other minerals may have
been seeping in at the timewhile those crystals were
forming.
So it's a lot, yeah, andthere's definitely some math and
some science to dive into withit as well.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Sure, and I'm starting to see the tie-in back
to the start of your career inarchitectural design.
That's so cool.
Yes, absolutely.
How do you feel like this hobbyties into your perspective on
sustainability and environmentalconsiderations within the AEC
industry, especially with theexcitement of treasure hunting
(16:16):
as a metaphor for discoveringinnovative solutions?
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Yeah, I mean, and honestly, when people ask me
what rock-counting is like, Iusually describe it as treasure
hunting or hiking with abackpack or with a hiking and
adding weight to your backpack.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
You can't just pick it up heavier and heavier rocks
until you can't carry anymore.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
But yeah, it is a lot like treasure hunting, where
you find a place where you thinkthere's going to be minerals.
You go out to that area, yousearch around.
Sometimes you find what you'relooking for and sometimes you
don't.
To me, the benefit along theway is the actual journey itself
, and I know that that sounds socheesy and trite, but it's
(16:55):
really true, and I think thatapplies to how we decide to make
things better for the users inthe industry is.
I may start with a journey toimplement a particular tool, a
document management tool, forour field team, and along that
(17:16):
journey what I find is thatdocument management maybe isn't
what suits them, or the toolthat they had in mind isn't the
best tool for the job, and so tome it's very similar in that
looking for that perfecttreasure, that perfect mineral
or specimen that I would love tohave at home is the same as
finding that thing that fitsjust perfect with the technology
(17:40):
that we need, or the tweak tothe process to fit in to help
the users that are getting thejobs done, that are working on
the projects.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Very cool.
Yeah, thanks for sharing.
And then also, I know that I'veintroduced you as the
construction technology managerat Cooper-Tino Electric and you
mentioned that is a part of yourresponsibilities and your
proper role title is BIM ProgramManager.
In the context of acting asconstruction technology manager
or BIM Program Manager, yousuccessfully mentored and
(18:11):
trained over a thousand users,which is an incredible career
feat, and you mentioned earlieryour passion for training and
helping others grow in theirindustry and in their field.
Can you share a particularlychallenging training scenario
that you've encountered and howyou successfully enhance the
team capabilities and streamlineworkflows through mentorship?
Speaker 2 (18:32):
Ooh boy, I think you know I actually ended up having
some very similar experiences.
But I had one particularproject where we were
implementing just some basicstandards as far as kind of the
data points that were beingentered and how we wanted to
format the data.
And I had one particular useron the project who was just not
(18:55):
used to using technology.
Their age kind of put them outof, kind of that natural
introduction or immersion intotechnology, and so there was,
you know, initially a lot ofresistance to the idea of making
the change, and I think that'svery typical, right?
We have all different types ofpersonalities, all different
(19:15):
kinds of experiences and skillsets.
When I worked with thisindividual person, what I did
was I spent a lot of timeoutside of our actual training
sessions.
I would do group trainingsessions.
I told the individual like youcan attain a chain, excuse me,
attend the training sessions ifyou would like, but let's do
(19:38):
this instead.
I said you know, I think whatmight be helpful is for us to
have someone on one timetogether, because you're, you
know the training sessionoverall, you're just gonna have
really different questions andyou know, what do you think of
that?
He was particularly.
He said no, I think that wouldbe really helpful, and so he did
not attend the trainingsessions.
We did that with the groupoverall and then I met with him
(20:01):
individually to kind of slow thetraining down a little bit and
focus on different things,because he understood the
content and how to get his jobdone, but it was literally a
matter of more of understandingthe true picks and clicks right.
Why do I click on this?
Things that we don't thinkabout too much anymore, like
what is a tap versus a click,what is a right click versus a
(20:22):
left click we don't talk inthose terms anymore.
But there are still people thatneed that type of training and
I think also we didn't discussit directly.
But I think, especially forpeople that struggle with
technology and get put into asituation where they kind of
feel forced into it, there's alevel of pride that's attached
(20:43):
to it and a level of dignitythat needs to be preserved for
them to make sure that they feellike people are still
acknowledging their expertiseand not dismissing that because
they happen to not be familiarwith how to use an iPad or where
(21:04):
to go on an Android phone tofind a setting, things like that
.
So that's what I try and findways to get to that and I think
that was one time where itactually worked pretty well was
reducing the challenges thatthat person was experiencing,
but also being able to get themthe training they needed to be
successful.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
I love that so much, kelly, as you were sharing that
story.
I thought in multiple instancesin my life where the teacher
stepped out of the classroom tohelp me one-on-one and really
spent probably much of their ownpersonal time to make sure that
I understood the topic at handand moved past it, and each one
of those moments in my life werepivotal for the life that I've
led, and so I really commend youand all the teachers out there
(21:47):
that understand the challengesof each individual and really
focus in to help each personoutside of a group setting if
that's needed.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
Thanks.
I actually was just sharingwith a friend yesterday.
I aspire to always be a teacher.
I used to be married to a highschool teacher and had a lot of
friends that teach high school,grade school et cetera, and I
still think, as much as I docorporate training, that that's
another level that I haven't hityet of being able to do that.
(22:17):
And teaching being a trueteacher is about focusing on
each student and getting thestudent what it is they need to
succeed, not about how much youknow about the topic or what
someone expects of you or thisnice universal idea that
everybody is at this exactbenchmark.
It's setting the student up forsuccess and in most cases that
(22:42):
means doing some individual workwith them, because everybody's
different.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Yeah, beautiful words that can be applied at the
journeyman level teaching anapprentice or at the manager
level, at the executive level,and certainly for teachers.
Yeah, thank you for thatcontribution.
Additionally, I understand thatyou've been able to reduce BIM
related expenses by $750,000annually.
(23:08):
That's an astounding number.
I don't know what the super setbudget was, but sign me up in
any case.
Could you walk us through thespecific strategies or
initiatives you implemented torevitalize project workflows and
achieve such significant costsavings?
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Absolutely, and so that particular number comes
from actually one implementation.
That was done.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Oh incredible.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
That was a single technology that was introduced
for the BIM modelers, and Ithink one of the things that we
struggle with a lot is weconstantly get little, tiny
things added to our plate.
We don't always realize that,oh, hey, could you throw this on
the drawings?
Or oh, while you're installingthis, could you just do this
(23:55):
part real quick.
And we do that a lot because wewanna be team players.
Most people are there for it toget the job done, but it starts
to add up after a while, andone of the challenges that we've
seen, especially over the lastfew years, is that those little
things have gotten individuallybigger and there's gotten to be
more of them as we have thisexponential growth in technology
(24:19):
in the industry.
And so now, instead of, oh, hey, could you give me a little bit
more information about theseracks that we're gonna install
so that I can make sure I getthem built correctly?
Now it's gone from that toabout 10 different levels of
these questions for just alittle bit more that now we're
saying, hey, I need a full-onprefabrication deliverable that
I can give to my shop guys, andthen I need the install
(24:41):
deliverable that I can give tothe guys out in the field to
take the assemblies and installthem out in the field.
But we don't always realizethat step one and step 10 is
really one big implementationthat we need to do because we're
getting asked these littlequestions along the way and I
recently had the opportunity tosit down and look at kind of
(25:02):
those steps that we had beenasked and when and where we had
been asked.
Lots of projects were asking fordifferent things based on the
project needs and location andtype of construction, and so
what we did was we made a largeinvestment in an add-in that
specifically helps with ourprefabrication effort, and then
(25:22):
I also brought in ourprefabrication manager and our
senior manager that sits overBIM, prefabrication and pre-con
to sit down and create formal,structured deliverables to
provide to our prefab departmentthat come out of our Revit
model.
And so by doing that, what wedid was reduced all of the
(25:45):
unexpected asks that werehappening on every single
project into this.
You can tell me up front do youwant prefab deliverables from us
or are you guys gonna kind ofdo your own thing outside of BIM
and all they have to do is say,yes, we would love those
deliverables and we have a planin place that immediately tells
them exactly what to do everystep along the way.
(26:05):
And by doing that, we'vereduced the amount of time that
we spend on placing hangers,updating hangers, working with
trench card supports, thingslike that, so it's really
facilitated taking out all thosethings that we get asked for
here and there and combiningthem into one unified thing that
(26:26):
says even if you don't ask forit, we have this for you and we
can give it to you.
And by doing it this way, itcuts the cost of the step that
we were doing here, the stepthat we were doing here, the
step that we were doing here,and really combines them into a
process as opposed to a bunch offavors.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Have you shared that larger story and the specific
implementation or integrationthat you did on, maybe on the
conference stage or publiclysomewhere that the listeners
could look into?
Speaker 2 (26:55):
I haven't yet.
We have talked a little bitabout it.
We are trying to get a C-suiteapproval to be a little bit more
open about the exact numbersand results of that story.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Very cool.
Well, when you do, let us knowand we'll help you get the word
out Absolutely, thank you.
So I would love to understandabout how you work to reduce
total project man hours andincrease deliverable value.
The BIM process has been shownto save upwards of 40 percent of
the construction budget.
How integral was that into yourreduction of the man hours and
(27:30):
delivering the value?
Speaker 2 (27:33):
Yeah, it's always very integral because for me,
the things that we're lookingfor are, or should always be,
focused on one how do we get thedeliverable but two, how do we
make it easier for the end user?
And if you don't take both ofthose into consideration, one or
the other can get extremely outof control in in a way that's
going to negatively impact yourproject.
So we actually had a paralleleffort that we were running as a
(27:57):
way to automate some of thedata collection that we do of
our users time, so that we tooksome work off of their plate
that they were doing for sort ofadministration or tracking type
work and then let them alsofocus that on to the additional
deliverables of the prefab ifthey weren't doing that on the
project already.
And we found, I mean, even onetweak that that we made that
(28:22):
took about.
I think it was about 100 hoursof development, so pretty low
development for a webapplication reduces every one of
our users down our extra timeif we take one man hour out of
their admin so that we can putan hour towards production every
(28:44):
single day for every singleuser.
To me yeah, to be able to takeand have a whole one eighth of
your time or one tenth of yourtime given back to you every
single day to progress theproject instead of just make
sure that data is getting passedaround.
You know that that makes my day, because people that are doing
(29:07):
work whether it's, you know, amodeler or an installer they
want to do the job they signedup for.
They want to work, model toinstall, they want to manage the
project.
They don't want to sit and fillout paperwork.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
Yeah, and thanks for putting it into perspective too,
because if we're reducing onehour, you know that that may
seem like one hour in a week,one hour in a year, right, but
it's one hour per day, one hourper workday, specifically, so
one out of eight or one out of10, beautiful.
Yeah, thanks for that, kelly.
I feel like there's so much Ican learn from you and I hope
that there's a there's a futurepodcast recording that I can
(29:43):
continue learning from, andwe're at time, so I would love
to share that.
As the final question of theshow and a traditional future
construct, if you could projectyourself out 25 years and wanted
to have any device ortechnology that would benefit
you personally, what would thatbe and what would it do?
Speaker 2 (30:00):
Man.
I mean I can think of so manydifferent things, whether there
are things that already existnow but could be tweaked, or
things that don't exist.
But I think my brain alwaysimmediately goes back to one of
the things that my very firstco-workers in the industry and I
used to joke about, which washaving like a little plug on the
side of your head that you canplug into the computer so that I
can just think about thedrafting I want done and it
(30:24):
drafts itself.
I think you know we obviouslyget closer and closer to
automation, but there's still ahuman component to the design
and the choices that we make andI think that helps with that.
I think that would be such acool thing to help streamline
that is, to take away thefingers, typing and the clicking
(30:44):
and all that and be able toenvision it and see your vision
break.
You know, display in front ofyou as you think about it.
It's beautiful, yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
It took me to the white room in the matrix.
Yes, yes, absolutely Very cool.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Awesome Kelly.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
Well, thank you so much for your time today.
I really enjoyed speaking withyou and learning from you, and I
look forward to continuing theconversation in the future.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
Absolutely.
It was wonderful being here.
I love chatting with you, thankyou very much.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
Talk to you soon, bye .
Welcome to Future Construct.
I'm Mark Oden, the CEO of BenDesigns Inc and guest host of
Future Construct.
Today I'm hosting Kelly Lubili,construction technology manager
at Cupertino Electric Inc.
Welcome, kelly.
Thank you for making the timeto join me.
Thanks, I'm excited to be here.
As you've moved into the AECindustry, you've serendipitously
discovered unique opportunitiesthat ignited your passion for
(00:33):
standards and consistency,particularly in how they enhance
the user experience.
Over the years, you've embracedthese opportunities and even
carved out new ones for yourself, transforming your passion into
a fulfilling career.
During your career, you've hadmany notable accomplishments.
You've reduced BIM relatedexpenses, revitalizing project
workflows for a $750,000 annualcost savings.
(00:54):
You've implemented cutting-edgedata management systems across
20-plus technologies, developingrobust technical standards.
You've achieved a 20% reductionin total project man-hours,
resulting in cost savings whileincreasing deliverable value by
50%.
And you've also improved jobsatisfaction and streamlined
technical processes, reducingaverage user downtime by 40%.
(01:16):
Those are amazingaccomplishments and I'm very
proud of you, kelly.
Over the course of ourconversation, I'd love to take a
deeper dive into thoseaccomplishments to understand
how they've impacted your career.
With so much experience, you'recontinually and positively
influencing the digitalconstruction market.
Thank you for all your manycontributions in the AEC space,
kelly.
To get started with yourextensive experience in the AEC
(01:42):
industry, I'd first love tolearn more of your story and
what led you to the industry andultimately to where you are
today at Cupertino Electric.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Yeah, absolutely.
I really got my initialintroduction in high school when
my school offered ahand-drafting class as kind of
just an elective and I reallyreally enjoyed it.
It ended up taking all theelectives that they had
available.
We didn't have had technologyin place yet, but it did exist
(02:10):
at the time and I ended uptaking a different path out of
high school and came back aroundin my mid-20s to see what
AutoCAD was about, take a coupleof CAD classes and see if that
was a path that I would beinterested in.
And my very first jobimmediately working as an
architectural drafter, I justabsolutely found that it felt
(02:33):
easier for my work.
I felt more organized, like Icould help and be more effective
if I provided myself somestructure around what I was
doing.
And the architect I worked forat the time allowed me to kind
of step into that space andcreate standards, create some
kind of formal processes for ourcompany, and it really just
(02:56):
absolutely became this passionthat I found, which I enjoyed.
I didn't even realize it wasreally an option as a career or
anything like that, but I didget to move from there into
learning Revit just actually asa originally marketed, as a
(03:16):
vision excuse me, a review tool,a way to look at the model and
sort of analyze the model, and Ijumped at the chance because it
looked like a lot of fun and itturned out that a lot of higher
education was starting to movethat direction.
So the community college whereI had taken my classes asked me
(03:39):
to write some curriculum so thatthey could propose teaching it.
When they did, they actuallycame back and asked me to teach
the course.
So I got into doing trainingthat way and I found that that
was very, very rewarding.
And after having been a traineror technically a teacher at the
community college, having donesome Revit work, I was asked to
(04:00):
be a BIM manager and I didn'tknow it until I was asked.
But I realized this is what Iwant to do, this is kind of what
I want to be when I grow up andit's just sort of kind of
continually advanced from therewhere, okay, what are other
things that I can do?
That kind of help people andput things in place that make
(04:21):
the job easier?
So I made the leap from workingdesign the manager over to
construction.
I worked for GC for a while andthen Cupertino asked me to come
work for them.
I actually started working on acouple of projects so that I
could get familiar with the kindof construction side of the
world and just kind of theelectrical too, because my
(04:44):
background was in architectureand BIM and now my current role
is BIM program manager.
The majority of my dutiesrevolve around standards,
processes, documentation andtraining for a BIM department,
and I also work outside of myofficial title.
I do a lot of constructiontechnology management within the
(05:06):
company where especially thingsthat I'm quite familiar with,
familiar with like projectmanagement and document
management tools, I will workwith another department that
wants to implement a process,bring in a new technology,
things like that, to just helpadvance the users in other areas
as well.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
I love it.
Thank you so much, Kelly.
How's speaking ofserendipitously finding your way
?
It's so true, and I love how italso came full circle, too,
where you're again focused onstandards and processes, and
that seems to be your truecalling.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
It is.
I really love it, so, so much.
It's a true passion of minethat I would have never known
existed if I didn't get start,start to work in the industry
too and experience thefrustrations of of others.
You know, I went through thesame thing that they did when I
first started and I think to methat's that's what drives me to
do it and it's I joke a lot withpeople but I say you know, I
(06:03):
don't do what I love, we,everybody's just do what you
love, and you won't work a dayin your life.
I'm like there's a lot of thingsI love.
I love pet, I love my pets, Ilove my hobbies.
You know, I love my partner,all sorts of things, but those
things don't translate into workvery well.
But what I am passionate about,what I will argue with somebody
every day, no matter howfrustrated I get about my job,
is how important it is to helpother people be successful at
(06:28):
their jobs.
And so that's how I knew, kindof what to do and the direction
that I wanted my career to go,and so far has fairly
successfully gone that way.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
So cool.
The other thing I, the otherthing I really value is that
you've you've got your handsdirty when joining Cupertino and
said, hey, let me work on those, those electrical projects, so
I can, you know, I can reallylearn the tools of the trade, if
you will, or the trade itself.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, I think a critical partof being on any team, honestly
is epistemic humility.
It's a big fancy word, Ilearned it from an NPR?
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Yeah, help me understand that one.
You learned it from what?
Speaker 2 (07:06):
I learned it from an NPR episode.
Oh cool, but it was.
It was a great show and it'swent through and to me it had
just really resonated becauseit's something I think our
industry struggles with a lot,which is acknowledging that you
don't know what you don't knowand being able to work with that
, because it takes a lot ofconfidence to get done what we
(07:29):
need to get done in theconstruction world, and a lot of
times that also translates intoego, which is where we start to
struggle, right when we say Ican do something or I know
enough about this to get it done, when maybe we don't.
And that's where you know.
The area that I like to work inis hey, I know this part, like
(07:50):
I'm not going to pretend to knowexactly what a project manager
goes through every day orexactly what a superintendent or
an superintendent or even aninstaller goes through every day
, but I've done work on projectsto get a better idea and I want
you to tell me, as a user, inwhatever role I'm working with
at that time.
(08:11):
You tell me what it takes to bea project manager and what is
going to make your life easier,and I'll work with technology
and standards and training tohelp you be more successful in
that, and that's, I think, oneof the bonuses of my job, but
also one of the challenges ofthe type of work that I do and
(08:31):
where we run into how we get tothe future of construction in
the industry is getting someonewho's maybe a C-suite or a site
superintendent versus theforeman to acknowledge that
they're not as familiar with theexperience of another person or
a different area of theindustry that they haven't
worked in and bring in an expertor someone who has that
(08:55):
experience to assist, as opposedto attempting to kind of fumble
through it or confidence theirway through it.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Yeah, thank you for sharing that.
Kelly, appreciate your focusand you call that epistemic
humility.
Epistemic humility yes, great,that's something for me to
research.
I love that.
So I really want to talk aboutyour accomplishments and your
stories behind thoseaccomplishments, and I'm really
excited to talk about the loveof the hobbies that you have.
(09:25):
From the pre-show research, Iknow that you've taken up
gardening and that you see thisas a big science experiment,
including, which creates thatunique perspective.
How do you see the principlesof experimentation, continuous
learning and your gardeninghobby translating into your
approach of tacklingtechnological challenges and
industry challenges?
Speaker 2 (09:46):
You know that's an excellent question and I think
it translates over extremelywell.
And it's humbling for me, inboth my professional career and
as a hobby gardener, that youknow we can always try something
different.
But if you're not careful abouthow you try something different
, you can't be confident withthe results and make those
repeatable.
(10:06):
Because you know I can go in toa project and I can change out
the technology that they'reusing and they do it
successfully.
But I also change the standardsand I changed the people that
were interacting with it at arudimentary level and I changed
(10:28):
the process right.
And so I go to another projectand I try to repeat that and it
doesn't always work Because Ichanged too many variables.
And gardening frequentlyreminds me of that, because you
know, maybe I didn't get a goodcrop of tomatoes this year.
I actually didn't.
My tomato struggled this yearand tomatoes are interesting.
(10:51):
They're always abundant, but youalso get a lot of varied
results.
And you know, I realized thatlast year they grew really well,
but I changed too many things.
So now I'm not sure why theydidn't grow well, because I
changed which of my raised bedsthat they were in, which is a
recommendation to cycle yourbeds.
I also changed what otherplants were around them, which
(11:13):
also has an effect on how wellthe individual plants grow.
I added more pets to myhousehold, which of course you
know pets that go outside tendto be a little bit nosy and kind
of get into things and theymake it a little bit more
challenging.
And then I also changed mywatering habits that I had to
(11:34):
because of the drought that wehad this year, and so it just
became too many things thatchanged from this year to last
year to be able to say, oh, theproblem is this, and now I can
move forward and have betterresults.
When I plant my tomatoes, it'scoming here, and that is a
constant back and forth to me asmuch as I do that in gardening
it's.
(11:54):
You know, if I want to see adifference, if I want to see
growing, I have to limit myvariables, and it's the same
thing when we take changes intothe workplace right, any kind of
change management.
I know we usually talk aboutthat in terms of change orders
and project changes, but to mechange management also applies
at that corporate level or thatprogram level where if I change
(12:15):
the technology and I change theprocess and I change the people,
well, there's no way to knowwhat was the, either the factor
that caused, you know, thesuccess or the lack of success.
So that I can then makeimprovements moving forward.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Beautiful.
Thank you so much for sharingthat.
I love the correlation.
I'm also excited to get into asecond major hobby of yours,
which is which is rock hunting.
So tell me about rock hunting.
I've never heard of it, I don'tknow about it.
I'm super excited to hear aboutthis.
This this.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
I feel like this is pinnacle nerdness right here.
So this has been a familytradition of mine since my
grandparents started, when theystarted dating, and it was much
bigger back in the 30s, 40s and50s.
We're a very nature lovingfamily, and rock hunting is
literally going out into natureand finding interesting rocks
and minerals.
(13:07):
So you know, a lot of peopleenjoy the beauty, the math, the
you know beliefs that can beplaced on different types of
minerals, how they're formed,things like that.
So that is what I do.
I actually just took a trip overNew Year's out to West Texas to
(13:30):
a one of the largest ranches inthe world I believe it's half a
million acres and they theyhave a small group of people
that they work with to pick upagates.
And you know I'm justconstantly fascinated by all of
the, the geometry that goes intohow different types of minerals
are formed, all the colors thatcan show up based on the
conditions that happen, thingslike that.
(13:51):
And then I also, extending itinto an even crazier hobby will
take those rocks and mineralssometimes and cut and polish
them to be used in jewelryBeautiful, very cool.
So have you made jewelry out?
Speaker 1 (14:09):
of it.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
I have about three pieces so far that I've made.
I'm still learning the silversmithing part.
That parts a little bit more indepth.
But the, the rockhounding iswhere I've pretty much been
doing that my whole life andsometimes it's, you know, just a
half hour drive.
Other times it's, you know,hours in a weekend out somewhere
picking up you know, fluoriteor quartz in Arkansas or, like
(14:35):
said, agate in West Texas.
So there's a lot of differentkinds of different minerals that
are that are interesting andbeautiful to me Very cool and
you mentioned the math behind it.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
So I imagine there's repeated geometric structures
and things like that.
Have you, have you dug intofurther the math or the
structure of?
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Oh, there is so many different structures and there's
a lot behind the chemistry andthe physics of what happens with
with the different minerals asthey form.
Manel, my favorite mineral, isfluorite.
It most commonly forms in kindof cubes, and so I think it
looks very starting, startlinglygeometric and not really
something that a lot of usassume we would see in nature.
(15:16):
Right Rocks are kind of theserounded boulders or these really
jagged edges, and these are abunch of cubes that are kind of
like stacked up and overlappingand there's very obvious math
done to where it almost lookslike it couldn't be done by
nature, but it is, and I justfind that so fascinating that
you can get different size cubesslightly different.
(15:36):
There's what's called etching,that kind of shows the different
lines of how things are rodeover time, and then you get the
whole spectrum of colors basedon what other minerals may have
been seeping in at the timewhile those crystals were
forming.
So it's a lot, yeah, andthere's definitely some math and
some science to dive into withit as well.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Sure, and I'm starting to see the tie-in back
to the start of your career inarchitectural design.
That's so cool.
Yes, absolutely.
How do you feel like this hobbyties into your perspective on
sustainability and environmentalconsiderations within the AEC
industry, especially with theexcitement of treasure hunting
(16:16):
as a metaphor for discoveringinnovative solutions?
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Yeah, I mean, and honestly, when people ask me
what rock-counting is like, Iusually describe it as treasure
hunting or hiking with abackpack or with a hiking and
adding weight to your backpack.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
You can't just pick it up heavier and heavier rocks
until you can't carry anymore.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
But yeah, it is a lot like treasure hunting, where
you find a place where you thinkthere's going to be minerals.
You go out to that area, yousearch around.
Sometimes you find what you'relooking for and sometimes you
don't.
To me, the benefit along theway is the actual journey itself
, and I know that that sounds socheesy and trite, but it's
(16:55):
really true, and I think thatapplies to how we decide to make
things better for the users inthe industry is.
I may start with a journey toimplement a particular tool, a
document management tool, forour field team, and along that
(17:16):
journey what I find is thatdocument management maybe isn't
what suits them, or the toolthat they had in mind isn't the
best tool for the job, and so tome it's very similar in that
looking for that perfecttreasure, that perfect mineral
or specimen that I would love tohave at home is the same as
finding that thing that fitsjust perfect with the technology
(17:40):
that we need, or the tweak tothe process to fit in to help
the users that are getting thejobs done, that are working on
the projects.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Very cool.
Yeah, thanks for sharing.
And then also, I know that I'veintroduced you as the
construction technology managerat Cooper-Tino Electric and you
mentioned that is a part of yourresponsibilities and your
proper role title is BIM ProgramManager.
In the context of acting asconstruction technology manager
or BIM Program Manager, yousuccessfully mentored and
(18:11):
trained over a thousand users,which is an incredible career
feat, and you mentioned earlieryour passion for training and
helping others grow in theirindustry and in their field.
Can you share a particularlychallenging training scenario
that you've encountered and howyou successfully enhance the
team capabilities and streamlineworkflows through mentorship?
Speaker 2 (18:32):
Ooh boy, I think you know I actually ended up having
some very similar experiences.
But I had one particularproject where we were
implementing just some basicstandards as far as kind of the
data points that were beingentered and how we wanted to
format the data.
And I had one particular useron the project who was just not
(18:55):
used to using technology.
Their age kind of put them outof, kind of that natural
introduction or immersion intotechnology, and so there was,
you know, initially a lot ofresistance to the idea of making
the change, and I think that'svery typical, right?
We have all different types ofpersonalities, all different
(19:15):
kinds of experiences and skillsets.
When I worked with thisindividual person, what I did
was I spent a lot of timeoutside of our actual training
sessions.
I would do group trainingsessions.
I told the individual like youcan attain a chain, excuse me,
attend the training sessions ifyou would like, but let's do
(19:38):
this instead.
I said you know, I think whatmight be helpful is for us to
have someone on one timetogether, because you're, you
know the training sessionoverall, you're just gonna have
really different questions andyou know, what do you think of
that?
He was particularly.
He said no, I think that wouldbe really helpful, and so he did
not attend the trainingsessions.
We did that with the groupoverall and then I met with him
(20:01):
individually to kind of slow thetraining down a little bit and
focus on different things,because he understood the
content and how to get his jobdone, but it was literally a
matter of more of understandingthe true picks and clicks right.
Why do I click on this?
Things that we don't thinkabout too much anymore, like
what is a tap versus a click,what is a right click versus a
(20:22):
left click we don't talk inthose terms anymore.
But there are still people thatneed that type of training and
I think also we didn't discussit directly.
But I think, especially forpeople that struggle with
technology and get put into asituation where they kind of
feel forced into it, there's alevel of pride that's attached
(20:43):
to it and a level of dignitythat needs to be preserved for
them to make sure that they feellike people are still
acknowledging their expertiseand not dismissing that because
they happen to not be familiarwith how to use an iPad or where
(21:04):
to go on an Android phone tofind a setting, things like that
.
So that's what I try and findways to get to that and I think
that was one time where itactually worked pretty well was
reducing the challenges thatthat person was experiencing,
but also being able to get themthe training they needed to be
successful.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
I love that so much, kelly, as you were sharing that
story.
I thought in multiple instancesin my life where the teacher
stepped out of the classroom tohelp me one-on-one and really
spent probably much of their ownpersonal time to make sure that
I understood the topic at handand moved past it, and each one
of those moments in my life werepivotal for the life that I've
led, and so I really commend youand all the teachers out there
(21:47):
that understand the challengesof each individual and really
focus in to help each personoutside of a group setting if
that's needed.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
Thanks.
I actually was just sharingwith a friend yesterday.
I aspire to always be a teacher.
I used to be married to a highschool teacher and had a lot of
friends that teach high school,grade school et cetera, and I
still think, as much as I docorporate training, that that's
another level that I haven't hityet of being able to do that.
(22:17):
And teaching being a trueteacher is about focusing on
each student and getting thestudent what it is they need to
succeed, not about how much youknow about the topic or what
someone expects of you or thisnice universal idea that
everybody is at this exactbenchmark.
It's setting the student up forsuccess and in most cases that
(22:42):
means doing some individual workwith them, because everybody's
different.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Yeah, beautiful words that can be applied at the
journeyman level teaching anapprentice or at the manager
level, at the executive level,and certainly for teachers.
Yeah, thank you for thatcontribution.
Additionally, I understand thatyou've been able to reduce BIM
related expenses by $750,000annually.
(23:08):
That's an astounding number.
I don't know what the super setbudget was, but sign me up in
any case.
Could you walk us through thespecific strategies or
initiatives you implemented torevitalize project workflows and
achieve such significant costsavings?
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Absolutely, and so that particular number comes
from actually one implementation.
That was done.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Oh incredible.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
That was a single technology that was introduced
for the BIM modelers, and Ithink one of the things that we
struggle with a lot is weconstantly get little, tiny
things added to our plate.
We don't always realize that,oh, hey, could you throw this on
the drawings?
Or oh, while you're installingthis, could you just do this
(23:55):
part real quick.
And we do that a lot because wewanna be team players.
Most people are there for it toget the job done, but it starts
to add up after a while, andone of the challenges that we've
seen, especially over the lastfew years, is that those little
things have gotten individuallybigger and there's gotten to be
more of them as we have thisexponential growth in technology
(24:19):
in the industry.
And so now, instead of, oh, hey, could you give me a little bit
more information about theseracks that we're gonna install
so that I can make sure I getthem built correctly?
Now it's gone from that toabout 10 different levels of
these questions for just alittle bit more that now we're
saying, hey, I need a full-onprefabrication deliverable that
I can give to my shop guys, andthen I need the install
(24:41):
deliverable that I can give tothe guys out in the field to
take the assemblies and installthem out in the field.
But we don't always realizethat step one and step 10 is
really one big implementationthat we need to do because we're
getting asked these littlequestions along the way and I
recently had the opportunity tosit down and look at kind of
(25:02):
those steps that we had beenasked and when and where we had
been asked.
Lots of projects were asking fordifferent things based on the
project needs and location andtype of construction, and so
what we did was we made a largeinvestment in an add-in that
specifically helps with ourprefabrication effort, and then
(25:22):
I also brought in ourprefabrication manager and our
senior manager that sits overBIM, prefabrication and pre-con
to sit down and create formal,structured deliverables to
provide to our prefab departmentthat come out of our Revit
model.
And so by doing that, what wedid was reduced all of the
(25:45):
unexpected asks that werehappening on every single
project into this.
You can tell me up front do youwant prefab deliverables from us
or are you guys gonna kind ofdo your own thing outside of BIM
and all they have to do is say,yes, we would love those
deliverables and we have a planin place that immediately tells
them exactly what to do everystep along the way.
(26:05):
And by doing that, we'vereduced the amount of time that
we spend on placing hangers,updating hangers, working with
trench card supports, thingslike that, so it's really
facilitated taking out all thosethings that we get asked for
here and there and combiningthem into one unified thing that
(26:26):
says even if you don't ask forit, we have this for you and we
can give it to you.
And by doing it this way, itcuts the cost of the step that
we were doing here, the stepthat we were doing here, the
step that we were doing here,and really combines them into a
process as opposed to a bunch offavors.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Have you shared that larger story and the specific
implementation or integrationthat you did on, maybe on the
conference stage or publiclysomewhere that the listeners
could look into?
Speaker 2 (26:55):
I haven't yet.
We have talked a little bitabout it.
We are trying to get a C-suiteapproval to be a little bit more
open about the exact numbersand results of that story.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Very cool.
Well, when you do, let us knowand we'll help you get the word
out Absolutely, thank you.
So I would love to understandabout how you work to reduce
total project man hours andincrease deliverable value.
The BIM process has been shownto save upwards of 40 percent of
the construction budget.
How integral was that into yourreduction of the man hours and
(27:30):
delivering the value?
Speaker 2 (27:33):
Yeah, it's always very integral because for me,
the things that we're lookingfor are, or should always be,
focused on one how do we get thedeliverable but two, how do we
make it easier for the end user?
And if you don't take both ofthose into consideration, one or
the other can get extremely outof control in in a way that's
going to negatively impact yourproject.
So we actually had a paralleleffort that we were running as a
(27:57):
way to automate some of thedata collection that we do of
our users time, so that we tooksome work off of their plate
that they were doing for sort ofadministration or tracking type
work and then let them alsofocus that on to the additional
deliverables of the prefab ifthey weren't doing that on the
project already.
And we found, I mean, even onetweak that that we made that
(28:22):
took about.
I think it was about 100 hoursof development, so pretty low
development for a webapplication reduces every one of
our users down our extra timeif we take one man hour out of
their admin so that we can putan hour towards production every
(28:44):
single day for every singleuser.
To me yeah, to be able to takeand have a whole one eighth of
your time or one tenth of yourtime given back to you every
single day to progress theproject instead of just make
sure that data is getting passedaround.
You know that that makes my day, because people that are doing
(29:07):
work whether it's, you know, amodeler or an installer they
want to do the job they signedup for.
They want to work, model toinstall, they want to manage the
project.
They don't want to sit and fillout paperwork.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
Yeah, and thanks for putting it into perspective too,
because if we're reducing onehour, you know that that may
seem like one hour in a week,one hour in a year, right, but
it's one hour per day, one hourper workday, specifically, so
one out of eight or one out of10, beautiful.
Yeah, thanks for that, kelly.
I feel like there's so much Ican learn from you and I hope
that there's a there's a futurepodcast recording that I can
(29:43):
continue learning from, andwe're at time, so I would love
to share that.
As the final question of theshow and a traditional future
construct, if you could projectyourself out 25 years and wanted
to have any device ortechnology that would benefit
you personally, what would thatbe and what would it do?
Speaker 2 (30:00):
Man.
I mean I can think of so manydifferent things, whether there
are things that already existnow but could be tweaked, or
things that don't exist.
But I think my brain alwaysimmediately goes back to one of
the things that my very firstco-workers in the industry and I
used to joke about, which washaving like a little plug on the
side of your head that you canplug into the computer so that I
can just think about thedrafting I want done and it
(30:24):
drafts itself.
I think you know we obviouslyget closer and closer to
automation, but there's still ahuman component to the design
and the choices that we make andI think that helps with that.
I think that would be such acool thing to help streamline
that is, to take away thefingers, typing and the clicking
(30:44):
and all that and be able toenvision it and see your vision
break.
You know, display in front ofyou as you think about it.
It's beautiful, yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
It took me to the white room in the matrix.
Yes, yes, absolutely Very cool.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Awesome Kelly.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
Well, thank you so much for your time today.
I really enjoyed speaking withyou and learning from you, and I
look forward to continuing theconversation in the future.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
Absolutely.
It was wonderful being here.
I love chatting with you, thankyou very much.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
Talk to you soon, bye .
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