As part of Payapps’ ‘From Surviving to Thriving’ campaign, Anthony Puma spoke to Glider’s Stuart Bell at Digital Construction Week to discuss digital adoption within the construction industry and how this can drive the industry forward.
Within the video we explore:
● Changes within the construction industry in recent years
● Why there has been less digital adoption in construction compared to other industries
● The potential that technology holds for the industry
● How Glider’s clients have responded to disruption within the industry
● How Glider has grown in spite of industry disruption
● The outlook for innovation in construction
● Tips and tricks for resilience in the industry
● Stuart’s takeaways from Digital Construction Week
Construction has been one of the slowest sectors to adopt digital methods of operation, just behind hunting, fishing and mining despite being a significant contributor to the economy. However, digital adoption holds even more potential for the construction’s industry’s growth through increased optimisation.
This is being proved by progressive businesses such as Glider, which is powering the digitalisation of the built environment through its data-driven software solutions and information management consultancy.
Stuart Bell, Director of Sales and Marketing, discusses the exciting technological developments within construction and what this holds for the industry.
Surviving to Thriving: Glider Interview
Anthony Puma: Hi Stuart. Thank you for joining us at Digital Construction Week. Would you mind just giving us a quick background into yourself, and what you do?
Stuart Bell: Yes, absolutely. So, three decades at this now. I started in the early nineties with a quantity surveying practice that had a little development arm. And so, my career is pre- and post-contract; estimating post-contract valuations, whole life costing. Then I joined Microsoft’s lead partner in construction in ERP and then moved actually, from construction into architectural engineering and worked for business school Union Square for a decade.
Really interesting role. And then I reunited with the former chairman to come back into information management with a company called BC, until they were acquired by Bentley Systems. And for the last nearly two years now, I've been leading sales and marketing at Glider.
Anthony Puma: Right, excellent. So, you've got a wealth of experience in the industry across all areas, but what would you say some of the biggest challenges have been?
Stuart Bell: In our industry, it’s always people, process, technology, that we centre on and the people factor is always the biggest challenge; the biggest resistance to change. There’s no surprise that construction is still only second bottom of the whole digitisation league table out of every industry vertical just above hunting, mining and fishing – and there's no reason for that. It's really kept my appetite though, and my interest because I'm always thinking we're ripe for disruption. So, for the last three decades, I think I'm the catalyst for change and I'll make this change happen.
Anthony Puma: Glider are here today specifically discussing industrial strategies for successfully delivering smart buildings. So, can you explain how you feel digital skills particularly can help in this instance, and then also how it can help the industry move forward?
Stuart Bell: Yes, absolutely. So again, back to that ‘people’ factor, clients are demanding more than ever out of their built assets and their estate. Historically at handover, they’d either be left with a collection of documentation that would sit probably in either a physical or now a chaotic digital archive somewhere.
From a smart building perspective, there's now a new demand – there’s net zero, there’s energy savings, there's post-pandemic, there's hybrid working, and how are we going to optimise our space? And a lot of that is driven by data. And if you don't have individuals that can understand the needs and can articulate their requirements, and can actually validate information that's coming back into the organisation, it's going to be a real challenge to unlock the value out of that smart building discussion.
Anthony Puma: You mentioned it a moment ago, the construction industry has been accused of being incredibly slow to facilitate change. Given the potential that you see with digital skills within the industry, have you witnessed this? And if so, what do you feel is causing this and how do you feel we can overcome this as far as the potential digital technology holds for the industry?
Stuart Bell: I think there's probably a couple of factors there. One is the fragmented nature of how we work. As much as we think we're good at collaboration, we still very much work in silos. When we think of that separation between CapEx and operations, the discord between designers and contractors, we're beset with challenges because of some of those soft skill politics that we're not very good at.
I've done a few things with universities providing lectures to architectural students, for instance. In particular, around practice management. They're given two weeks on a seven-year degree course and some of the reflections or conversations I've had is they've stepped out into industrial placement from university - it's like a handbrake going on.
And when I reflect on my travels - I'm sure it's the same for yourself - there's a little bit of ‘brontosaurus effect’ still. Some of it is a vendor challenge. We're not very good at articulating the business case and not tuned into the outcome in value. We don't really listen to the customer pain and problem and the business case gets rushed forward and often those projects end in non-decisions as a result.
Anthony Puma: And the last few years - let’s just briefly remind ourselves - have had a profound effect on the country with challenges I think still felt in the industry. How are your clients coping with these particular challenges?
Stuart Bell: Mixed bag really – depends on who we work with. Major asset owners and principal contractors. What I would say is a bit of a nod to positives that came out of the pandemic effect is that probably, the first three months of lockdown did more for digital transformation for our industry than the UK BIM Mandate back in 2016, because we were forced to change, we were forced into home office working, we were forced to adopt new ways to collaborate and exchange information and work with one another. And we still see that persisting today with our clients. I think on the asset owners’ side, there's much more diversity in terms of the work that's out there.
There's been a maturing in clients, in terms of what they expect from the performance of their assets in their built estate. As a result of that, more innovation is starting to appear. We held a breakfast panel discussion this morning and we had some fantastic clients in the room from public and private sectors.
Some of the best innovation is coming from public sector. So, we had the Defence Infrastructure Organisation and the Ministry of Justice and we're doing some work with the Ministry of Justice currently around Digital Twin, but very specifically around a use case on energy performance.
So, we've recently delivered on a major prison along with an enriched BIM model for that project. They've given us access to some energy and some sensor data and are looking to drive insight on design, occupancy, CO2 and energy performance, and for the first time, bringing those two worlds together. Time series data from sensor information and BIM data. You can unlock some real insight that is genuinely adding value – the penny is dropping in terms of that connection back to digital as well.
Anthony Puma: Yes, and I think Glider has had some fairly significant growth during this time as well. How did you approach the sort of ever-changing situation in the industry and how did you continue to motivate and involve the team?
Stuart Bell: Well we are still, albeit over seven years old, I would still say we're in scaling startup mode. We are that speedboat that can spin on a sixpence rather than an oil tanker, as an organisation. So, we're very agile. We're on some really cool and interesting projects. So, for the data geeks in our business, it really keeps their tools sharp because it's challenging day-to-day and it's a pleasure for them to come to work.
For some of them as well, actually, they've got young families. The fact that we're virtual and we support that; that remote work and we're very flexible around things like school runs and childcare and how people work. All of that helps as well. But we're also coming out of the downturn with this wave of innovation and this drive towards digital. We've always been well positioned to capitalise on that and I guess my job is to keep us at the forefront of conversations, so that Glider is a name that people think about.
Anthony Puma: So, from a professional perspective, what do you feel the key to survival was and how did you adapt during this time? You touched on a few things there, but anything else you can add to that?
Stuart Bell: I think the key for us was to be open, amenable and flexible with our clients. Whilst we could have been very selective with the types of work clients were asking us to support them on, we were a little bit more open in those conversations. As a result, rather than the traditional software approach of ‘we'll just come and implement some software and leave you to your own devices’, because we're an information management consultancy service provider as well, we really help clients get the project over the line and be successful. If we can win with them, we become memorable and they think about us for extra projects as well.
Anthony Puma: I suppose if there is one thing… is there anything different that you would do?
Stuart Bell: We were possibly a little bit tentative in terms of that none of us knew in the early days of the pandemic where we would all end up in terms of business. You know, what would that cliff edge look like in terms of order book work? Actually, with the benefit of hindsight, if we were a little bit more optimistic and speculated a little bit more, I'm sure we could have accelerated our position even further. But we're in a great healthy place.
Anthony Puma: That’s good to hear. Are there any tips and tricks that you found during this time that you would like to share with the industry?
Stuart Bell: For me, always be inquisitive. Be prepared to challenge and be challenged. Where we sit with our information management consulting roles, on projects, we'll quite happily – if we see a bad set of requirements presented, for instance – if we're supporting a contractor, help them challenge the client, to validate, to make sure they're getting value from the information that they receive.
I think as well, keep up the communication and have fun. So, while we're a virtual business, we get together as a leadership group monthly. It’s important to have that face time and a good part of that is not talking about work and really getting into some conversations over a coffee, or at the witching hour of the day over a beer. Similarly with the extended company as well, we get together quarterly and we've purposely said we're not talking about business on those days, and we put an agenda that's built around team building activities and tends to end up with me embarrassing myself on a dance floor somewhere.
Anthony Puma: As an industry as well, we talk about innovation. Do you think there's enough innovation in the industry and do you feel that there's more that could be done?
Stuart Bell: I think we only have to look a couple of degrees left and right of our industry into other complementary sectors to realise, yes, absolutely, there is more to be done. If we could just bridle some of the technology talk that's around at the moment. So, AI, machine learning and apply that logically into some of the highly structured data – that we're actually quite good at an industry in collating and collecting – there’s some fantastic insight that we could drive out of that.
We've still got our traditional mindset, unfortunately. If we can continue to challenge and even people in companies challenging their own Executives to give them a bit of free rein. I’m fortunate enough, in my career I've worked with a couple of US organisations and being part of an American culture, and they're not they're not afraid of failure.
And actually, if you were to compare a UK business that does a lot of planning up front, and a US business that will just run at opportunities or run at challenges, they probably end up in a slightly better place. There might be a few casualties in the waking up process, but generally, culturally people are accepting of that and they take the learning from it to carry it forward.
Anthony Puma: So, you’ve got your crystal ball out. What are your predictions for the future of the industry?
Stuart Bell: I think in the words of Yazz and the Plastic Population, the only way is up and especially supported by digital. So, I was speaking very recently to a Tier 1 contractor and when you look at their turnover and number of employees, it's about £1,000,000 per head their contribution to turnover. Looking at their own growth projections, there aren't enough digital skills and capability of people available for them to scale, so they've got to look at technology to make them more productive and efficient and effective.
We're seeing that as well through contractors embracing things like modern methods of construction, offsite manufacture, and making sure that offsite manufacture becomes fully laden and loaded with IOT and intelligent building technologies that can plug in and possibly in the very near future, give a client a building operating system.
So, a bit like we go to the garage now, we plug our car in symptomatically, that will happen with a building as well. And buildings will talk to us. You know, they know a lot about themselves already, and with the available technology, our interaction with buildings will be very different – rather than just look through a dumb terminal at a dashboard, we'll be able to have a conversation with a building and it will understand about our work pattern and how we like to interact with it.
Anthony Puma: It sounds really exciting. I'm really looking forward to it. So just one last question. We're here at Digital Construction Week. What's your take away from the event and what are you looking forward to in the future with construction?
Stuart Bell: Well, I’ve been to the last three with my Glider hat on, and what I'm really pleased about coming out of the pandemic is that it's grown successively, but the conversations are getting better as well as more quality conversation. I look at the stage talks - there's some real good knowledge-share going on there. There are people actually talking about ROI and payback and illustrating through projects. So long may that continue and people coming with good purpose. Time is a valuable commodity for all of us, so a lot of the conversations that I've had today and hopefully into tomorrow as well will be very much around very specific challenges that companies have got.
Anthony Puma: Thanks Stuart. I think it's time for a well-earned drink now, so it's been an absolute pleasure to get your valued experience in the industry. Thanks for talking to us today.
Stuart Bell: Thank you very much indeed.