Getting into the thought leadership business

The speed of technological advancement gives engineers an opportunity to diversify their offer.

As the pace of technological advancement quickens, engineering businesses have an opportunity to diversify their offering, see the bigger picture and start leading the industry, say two of the speakers at FIDIC Mexico City 2019.

The central theme of the FIDIC International Infrastructure Conference in Mexico City is the impact technological innovation is having on the industry. One of the business leaders offering a corporate board perspective on the subject at the conference is Keith Howells, who until recently was the chairman of leading international consultancy, Mott MacDonald.

“What happens to consulting engineers in a digital age is the thrust of what I’m going to be talking about,” said Howells. “We’re all going to carry on running businesses that are about creating and managing infrastructure and supporting social and economic development, but it’s going to change,” he said. “The big question is how quickly will we adopt the new digital tools and what impact will that have on the business,” he said.

Mitch Simpler, managing partner of Jaros, Baum & Bolles and the current chair of FIDIC’s USA member association ACEC, agrees with Howells. “Technology today is changing at a rate faster than it has ever changed in the history of mankind and particularly for the boardroom it is a very difficult subject to get your mind around because it is changing so rapidly,” he said. “The question is, where are the real changes taking place and what is the risk-reward that you are going to be faced with?”

Howells thinks that automation and a common data environment are opening up cost and programme information and creating significant possibilities for data mining. “There’s some interesting stuff coming out of this where people start using data to identify bottlenecks to make process improvements and this is all improving collaboration, whether that’s between designers or the designer and the client or contractors,” Howells said. “The approval process is much faster as a result. It’s been interesting on the Thames Tideway project, where the model-based approval ‘workshopping’ approach has shaved a good chunk of time off the programme and many things have been right first time,” he said.

Simpler said that automation had real potential to move the engineer away from commoditised service provision to a much more exciting (and productive) area of thought leadership. “What we need to do as an industry is to look at automation tools – this makes our employees more productive and enables more thought leadership work,” he said.

In doing so, Simpler said it was also important for technology to be designer friendly so that engineers enjoyed using it as that would attract more talent into the industry. “We have to come up with ways that make our industry feel exciting to the younger generation. The idea is to make the industry and the firms that work in it more forward-thinking and attractive. We also have to be in front of the innovation curve and lead our clients,” said Simpler.

Given the innate ability of engineers to see the connections between issues and processes, could more technology play to engineers’ strengths? Howells clearly thinks so. “Undoubtedly there will be a need for someone to provide the bigger picture,” he said. “My view is that businesses in the infrastructure space need to start thinking hard about what other services they might provide beyond design. That could be around programme and project management or it could be environmental and social impact or smart asset management. Businesses will have to think about broadening their offering,” said Howells.

But, are clients forward thinking enough to embrace the new ways of working and take advantage of what technology has to offer? Both Howells and Simpler think that it’s a mixed picture but that leadership is crucial. “Some clients are, and some aren’t,” Howells said. “Some need their eyes opening about the possibilities, some are still quite nervous and some are enthusiastic. It’s a mixed bag; a bit like it was with BIM more than ten years ago,” he said.

“Part of our role of the consulting engineer is to educate their client and say: ‘the way things were done is not the way it can be done and will be done in the future’”, Simpler said. “We need to be able to lead the clients in what technology is either emerging or what will be required in the future. And, leadership is crucial. It always has been and it always will be,” he said.

Technology is creating some big challenges for the boardroom and more and more it’s being discussed by industry leaders. “It’s definitely being talked about in the boardroom and there are a couple of major implications for businesses,” Howells says. “One is, when we are doing in a day what we used to do in a month, how do we get paid for that properly? We need to think about how we do that and also avoid the risk of a race to the bottom. Extracting value is a key question,” he said.

“The other big boardroom issue is the people side of it,” said Howells. “People will have to have the right attributes to cope with relentless change over the coming years and that’s where leadership comes in – motivating people to change and helping them by investing in skills,” he said.

Simpler sees an important role for FIDIC in all this. “FIDIC and its member associations can take the engineer out of the commodity business and put them into the thought leadership business,” he said.

So, what would his advice be to firms grappling with technology and its effects on the business? “To be open minded and be a thought leader,” Simpler said. “Our key role is to be able to communicate with each other, bring these technologies out into the open and allow the industry to become comfortable with them to improve performance across the whole industry,” he said.