From Drawing Boards to Digital: Revolutionizing Construction with BIM Expert Ralph Montague – Episode 3 | ConTech

01:07
Ralph Montague
It’s fantastic to be here. Thanks, Erin. Thanks, Nandan, for hosting this podcast. Look forward to talking to you both. 

01:15
Erin Khan
Fantastic. So, Ralph, I didn’t want to spoil all the amazing experiences that you’ve had in the industry, so why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself? 

01:27
Ralph Montague
Yeah, I suppose I have a long history in the industry as an architect. I’ve been in practise for 30 years. Started off on drawing boards and went into CAD, got into BIM, got into technology about 15 years ago, decided to specialise in BIM consultancy, in other words, helping other architects and engineers and clients to embrace a different process, a digital process of producing information, communicating information. And so that’s been my focus, I suppose, of the last 15 years, is helping people embrace this digital way of working, and either at an individual level or business level or project level. And I suppose because we’re quite early in Ireland, we’ve also had a significant role at an industry level, because we’ve had to, I suppose, educate different institutes, different professional bodies. 

02:33
Ralph Montague
We’ve did some work with the government, had set up a national bomb council, so we participated in writing a report for the government, a strategy report. So it’s been a long career, but I suppose it’s always, to me, it’s always been the same thing. It’s about producing the information that communicates ideas, and that’s basically what architects do. 

03:01
Erin Khan
Gotcha. So take us back to the very beginning. How did you kind of just start with architecture, or I. Or pick this to begin with in the first place? 

03:15
Ralph Montague
I suppose I’ve always had an interest in design, and I suppose I had choices when I was looking at a career in either engineering or architecture or industrial design or something along those lines, I can’t really remember, but somebody convinced me that a degree in architecture would be the best degree to go for. So got started in architecture, but I suppose I’ve always been fascinated by how things work. So maybe I would have been a better engineer, but for better, worse, I’ve got into architecture. But, yeah, my interest really is in how do we communicate information, because that’s what architects do, I suppose, is communicating information or exchanging information with other people to get something done. Like I always say to people as an architect, I’ve never actually built anything. So, you know, architects don’t build stuff. 

04:14
Ralph Montague
We communicate ideas to other people. And they build it. So, yeah, so that’s how I got into BIM. Yeah, started as an architect on the drawing board, you know, you just find that the work is quite laborious and tedious. And, yes, I’m always fascinated by better ways of doing things. And when computers came out in the. When we started using computers, I suppose, in the late eighties, nineties, and when CAD came out in the nineties. So all these things really fascinated me, just different ways of producing the information and communicating the information. So it’s been a long time. A long history, I suppose, to where we are now. 

05:03
Nandan Thakar
Yeah, that’s fascinating, Ralph, I would say you are one of the OG’s in the industry, which is excellent. 

05:13
Ralph Montague
The old guys, is it? 

05:15
Nandan Thakar
Yes. 

05:16
Erin Khan
Original gangster. 

05:18
Nandan Thakar
Original gangsters, yes. You have started right from the drawing board, and so we are lucky to have you. Thank you. Well, I’m going to lead with a very simple question for our audience. What makes BIM important for the industry, construction industry in general, what makes BIM so important? 

05:41
Ralph Montague
Yeah, well, I must say that information has always been important for the industry. So, I mean, in the history of time, nothing has ever been built without information. So, I mean, that information has been communicated in different ways through speech or papyrus, ink on paper, pencils and pens. And so the technologies of communication have always changed, but the underlying principle of communicating information about buildings and infrastructure has always been, what gets stuff built? Nothing gets built without information. So I would say that information is the most important thing to our industry, because nothing gets built without information. And I suppose BIM, as a process. And technology has begun to digitise that what was very paper based and slow, tedious and cumbersome process of producing information. 

06:48
Ralph Montague
So it’s made our industry more productive, more efficient at what it does in some cases, not in all cases. So BIM can actually have the opposite effect if done badly. So. But it’s definitely helping the industry and helping humanity, because the other thing is, there’s not a single person on the earth that doesn’t interact with the built industry. So it’s where we live, it’s where we work, it’s where kids go to school. There’s nothing in your life that you could imagine that doesn’t involve the built industry. Even the infrastructure that supplies you with transport and communications. Even what we’re doing today is dependent on the built environment. First, It’s the most important sector, I would say, to humanity, in that it supplies everything that humanity needs, but it’s not the most productive and efficient industry. 

07:53
Ralph Montague
So I think in terms of the importance of becoming more productive and more sustainable in the way we work, is incredibly important. 

08:05
Nandan Thakar
Yeah. Ralph, I’m keen to have you reflect on how far has BIM come over the years and more so the digital phase of BIM. 

08:17
Ralph Montague
Yeah. I often say to people it’s more of an evolution than a revolution. I mean, if you look back in the history of BIM, it actually started in the seventies. So it’s not a new idea, although a lot of people still think it’s a new idea. It’s just been maturing. But it’s a pretty mature idea at this stage, but still not as adopted as you would imagine. So sometimes I talk to people outside our industry and I say, yeah, we’re doing these things that are digital and they sort of look at me. Well, surely you’ve been doing that for the last 20 years. Every other industry is working in digital tools. I mean, you don’t imagine going to a bank and somebody pulling out a piece of paper and a typewriter. So most people think everything’s digitised. 

09:09
Ralph Montague
But funny enough, in our industry, we’re still a little bit slow in the adoption. And some people are doing an incredible job. They are fantastic leaders. But then there’s a lot of the industry that are operating at a very low level. So it’s come far, but it also has a far way to go. Yeah. 

09:32
Nandan Thakar
Yes. Especially speaking from. 

09:34
Ralph Montague
Probably not the answer you want. 

09:36
Nandan Thakar
No, no, that’s the reality. And we are just trying to reflect that, I guess. One observation I would share, being in the industry for less than ten years is that when I talk to different construction teams, some have got. There’s always a spectrum of maturity, and this idea of a digital team has started to mushroom up and mature a lot more than it used to four or five years back, which is a good thing. Obviously, a digital team is lot broader than just BIM, but a lot of companies do have their baby steps with BIM. They sort of expand from there. So if you have any thoughts on that, it’ll be great to hear. 

10:25
Ralph Montague
Yeah, I mean, having a digital team within a company is a first step, but really where you want to get to is the whole company operates in a digital way collectively. So it’s, you know, it’s not something that you outsource to one team. I mean, and that’s where a lot of companies start, but that team becomes the bottleneck. And so I think with the companies we worked with, where they have a more holistic sort of digital strategy across the organisation, from everyone, it’s a much better way of thinking so that everybody gets into this mindset of when I produce information, it’s got to be in a format that other people can use. And it’s not a piece of the end product, is not a piece of paper, it’s some digital data. 

11:22
Ralph Montague
But I do understand why a lot of companies start with the idea of a digital team and then broaden it out. But the end goal must be to be all digital across the board, because the one department that works in paper will still be the bottleneck in protest. 

11:43
Erin Khan
It’s not just applicable to the company level. 

11:46
Nandan Thakar
Right. 

11:46
Erin Khan
That’s for every project, all stakeholders kind of have to bring that digital adoption level up. 

11:57
Ralph Montague
That’s one of the challenges, actually, of AEC that’s unique compared to other industries, is that it’s a very fragmented industry. So on a project, over time, you could have 100 different companies contributing to a project and it will be the lowest denominator that sort of sets the productivity of the project. And the problem is, often people employ companies onto projects because they’re the cheapest price, you know, something like that, rather than looking at competency and whether they’re going to be the. The lowest denominator and the bottleneck they go for, are they the cheapest price, which usually equates to they’re also the lowest denominator and the bottleneck. So, yeah, it’s one of the challenges is trying to bring teams together that are competent and. 

12:57
Ralph Montague
And supporting each other, rather than bring teams together that are just looking out for themselves and trying to do as little as possible. 

13:08
Nandan Thakar
Yeah, I’m keen to know what motivated you to create BIM Heroes. 

13:16
Ralph Montague
Yeah, well, it’s related to that idea of fragmentation. So if you look across the industry, most companies, and when I say most companies, it’s more than 90%. In some countries across Europe, I think it’s close to 94% of companies are small enterprises, so they less than ten people. And that sort of idea of fragmentation, you’ve got lots of little companies across the industry trying to come together for short periods of time and do work, and none of those companies have either the time or resources to put into research and learning and sharing ideas. So we thought the idea, let’s bring people together in a community where people can share knowledge, share ideas, share practise. It’s not just about access to knowledge, because, of course, we live in an age where there’s ubiquitous access to knowledge through the Internet, AI and all these things. 

14:23
Ralph Montague
But it’s. What’s more important is knowledge and practise. Like, how did you do it there and what worked and what didn’t work? And this is what people want to know. They don’t just want lots of knowledge thrown at them, they want experience. So I call it knowledge and practise. So the idea was a community of practise, people who are practising this and are willing to share amongst themselves and that way everybody learns and everybody develops together and in a shared resource that is suitable for 90% plus of the industry, which are small medium enterprises, and also to get a consistency of message, because we got great things happening in Europe, great things happening in the US, great things happening in Asia, but they’re nothing connected. You know, nobody’s talking to each other. 

15:17
Ralph Montague
So the idea was to get people talking to each other and try to find the best amongst the best. And, and that’s really the way I see that. Practise. Yes. Sort of novel ideas translate into good practise and eventually best practise. 

15:36
Erin Khan
And a quick question for me, Ralph, for some of our listeners who may not know much or anything about BIM Heroes, could you give maybe a quick summary on how they could potentially get involved or what it looks like to be a part of the community? 

15:56
Ralph Montague
Sure, yeah. So BIM Heroes is a community platform, so it’s a place people can connect and meet. I see it as three things. So it’s a community of practises that I just described. It’s also what we’re doing as a community is building up a body of knowledge. So we’re recording all these discussions and practises in a platform so that there’s a body of knowledge that people can tap into. But also it’s a network marketplace, because a lot of people operating in this sector, as I said, are small companies and they don’t have lots of big marketing teams. And so by coming together and having different skills and different products and different offerings and talking about those in a central place, we hope it will also support people’s career and their business and the industry in general. 

16:51
Ralph Montague
So, I mean, the vision of the BIM Heroes community is to make the AEC sector more productive and more sustainable and safer by sharing knowledge. So that’s our vision, is to have a much more productive industry because the industry is struggling. I don’t know about other countries, but definitely in Ireland we would call ourselves a first world country, but we can’t produce enough housing in this country. We can’t produce enough schools, we can’t produce enough hospitals or other infrastructure to meet the demand of our citizens. And that’s in a first world country. So it’s even worse in other countries. So the industry is not operating at its peak. And we believe that digitization and all these tools and processes can change that. But we have to get the knowledge out there for people to embrace these processes and technologies. 

17:55
Nandan Thakar
Yeah, we might put the link down. 

17:57
Ralph Montague
How people can access – BIMhero.io is the website. It’s free to join and to access the information. We also have a membership subscription for those who want to participate as members. It’s a small cost per year and there’s added benefits for doing that. But the mission is to get this knowledge across the world. And it’s fantastic because I think we have 40,000 followers on LinkedIn. We have 9,000 members that have come to the specific platform and spread across 100 different countries. So we’re getting diverse input from all sorts of fantastic and wonderful people who are willing to talk about what they’re doing, which is incredible. Amazing. 

18:50
Nandan Thakar
Yeah. I’m going to have a slight change of tack in terms of questions. This probably is a topic for a podcast on its own, contracts and BIM delivery. But yeah, I would like to pick your brain in terms of how do contract structures affect BIM delivery, and I suppose extending that into how to set up the contracts for success for a collaborative BIM delivery. 

19:21
Ralph Montague
Yeah, that is a big topic. I suppose it’s interesting to look at the history of contracts, and if you go back before these technologies, the process of creating information was very slow. So you basically had to sign up a contract and create the information as you were going along in the process and deliverables at specific stages. So it was progressive. And the idea that never materialised was that the information would be ready by the time it got to construction. But we all know that doesn’t actually work. And a lot of people are trying to execute work on site with incorrect information or incomplete information or uncoordinated information. And that’s really the root cause of a lot of these problems. But the way the contracts were structured was around that sort of outdated idea of progressive information. 

20:30
Ralph Montague
And you could almost say the pushing of information to the latest stage possible, which when you look at the BIM methodology, is counterproductive because the whole promise of BIM was this beautiful idea that you could build a building in software and resolve it and coordinate it and test it, and analyse it and cost it and programme it and do all these wonderful things within software before spending real time and money on site. And the idea was that you would take a complete set of information to site and be able to execute the work without any changes, variations. And so that’s the beautiful idea. The problem is the contracts are written to the other way around. The contracts are written to try and get the information as late as possible, whereas in the BIM methodology you actually want the information as early as possible. 

21:28
Ralph Montague
And that means we want to engage the specialists, specialist contractors, the people who actually build stuff. So as I said earlier, as an architect, I don’t actually build things. So the information I produce as an architect is design intent, but it’s nothing executable. Somebody has to take my information and turn it into something that can be executed. And those are usually the specialist contractors, like facade contractors, mechanical, electrical, structural, etcetera. And in the traditional contracts, those people are getting appointed very late in the process and sometimes a few days or weeks before they have to actually start the work on site. Yeah, and that just doesn’t work with, I mean, it can work with BIM. I mean, BIM’s no worse in that scenario than traditional practises. 

22:21
Ralph Montague
But if you really want to get the benefit of BIM, you want to engage those people much earlier before we get to site, like get that expertise and knowledge into those digital models to have everything resolved and coordinated and completed before you get to sites. So you need a type of contract that is more engaging earlier in the process. And there’s lots of good examples around the world. So in the UK, I think it was around 2000, they started with the PPC 2000 contracts, which are sort of partnering, public partnering contracts that sort of led to IPD, which is integrated project delivery, which is very famous in the United States. So many people, which is really about appointing people to the project before the information is complete so that they can be involved in the production of the information. And. 

23:22
Ralph Montague
Yeah, and there’s other examples, framework alliance contracts, etcetera. So there’s good examples, but I suppose the key thing is most people, if you looked at all contracts, you would say that probably 90% of contracts are still using traditional, this traditional method of late appointment of specialists. And so there’s good examples to follow and to use. We don’t have to reinvent anything. They’ve been used, they’ve been tested, they’ve been proven. Actually, fantastic research in the UK, by the UK government on various projects using frameworks, lines, contracts. All the proof in the pudding is there. It’s just changing the mindset of people. 

24:10
Nandan Thakar
Yeah. Early engagement is the key. 

24:13
Ralph Montague
Early engagement and producing the information first. So, yeah, I was going to ask you a lot of projects that people are doing a lot of as built production of information, but if these people are doing a lot of as built production of information, then they’ve completely misunderstood the idea that information has to exist before the building. Yeah, like, you shouldn’t be producing information after the building, you should be producing it before. So, yeah, that’s where we have to change the mindset, this traditional mindset of go to site with incomplete, unresolved information, try and figure it out on site, and then produce the as built information afterwards, because it’s the most expensive, most disruptive, and most dangerous way to build something is to make decisions on site. 

25:09
Erin Khan
So, Ralph, expanding on that topic, and I want to get into this a little bit more, because in our previous conversation, I think you mentioned a phrase like backwards BIM. Like we do backwards BIM, unfortunately. Can you elaborate on, you know, what? Like, what do we get wrong with BIM? So maybe we go backwards, maybe it’s other things, but could you share some more insights on that specific area? 

25:40
Ralph Montague
So the, it goes back to this traditional process of architects and engineers would produce design intent information to go to tender, okay? But the design intent information was only descriptive to a point, like, you couldn’t build it, so. But it was enough to get a price for somebody to build it. But then the GCs and all their subcontractors had to almost reproduce everything to make it buildable and. Yeah, and then at the end, because there were a lot of it was happening in tandem with construction. They would do all this as built record of information to capture what was actually constructed. So if you look at that from a helicopter view, you’re saying, well, we’re actually producing the information three or four times in that process to describe one building. 

26:40
Ralph Montague
And that’s kind of backwards, because what you should really do is change around, say, if we spent our time and money initially getting the BIM right, you know, this virtual version of the building and bringing specialists in to make sure that what we’re designing can actually be built, that it can be coordinated and resolved, and I programmed and costed and all this amazing stuff you can do with the technology. We do all of that first before trying to execute the work on site. That would be. That would make the most sense for everyone. But we don’t do that. We do it the other way around. We produce loosely defined design intent, information that is incomplete and incorrect, uncoordinated, unresolved, and then we send that to site. 

27:33
Ralph Montague
We expect people to try and execute the work and make changes on site, which is the most disruptive and expensive and dangerous place to make changes. And then at the end, we try to capture everything as built information. So it’s wasteful, it’s problematic, it’s adding to the cost. It’s making construction unsustainable, unsafe, unpleasant. So it’s not a pleasant industry. And people aren’t rushing to work in the construction industry. It’s very. It’s very tense. People are always fighting fires, operating at low profit margins because they keep having to redo the work without any extra compensation. You know, there’s so many issues that. That come out of the way. We produce information in a sort of backwards way, as I called it, that if we just decided to change it around and do it properly, let’s employ people to produce BIM first. 

28:37
Ralph Montague
Coordinated, resolve it, cost it, plan it, do all the fantastic things that technology can do, and then take that and execute it on site. It would suit everybody. 

28:48
Erin Khan
I think a few contractors that might be tuning in, they’re probably like, yes, absolutely, we would love to have coordinated information before hitting the site, but yeah. 

29:01
Ralph Montague
Well, I must say that there would be a few contractors who actually would be upset by that, because some people have learned to make incredible amounts of money from this wasteful process. It’s not. We can’t assume that everybody. 

29:17
Erin Khan
Unfortunately. 

29:18
Ralph Montague
True. 

29:18
Erin Khan
Unfortunately, yeah. 

29:20
Ralph Montague
Not everybody’s excited about productivity and sustainability. Like some people have learned to make a really good living from wasteful and corrupt practises. And they not that excited about the idea. 

29:36
Erin Khan
Well, I go back to what you said previously where, you know, BIM, it’s a. An evolution, right? So in my mind, and the hope slash idea, you know, is that eventually this is the new standard and some of those bad actors in the industry, they won’t be able to perpetuate, you know, those practises that basically take advantage of current gaps in our industry. 

30:05
Ralph Montague
But that’s happening already. So, you know, once you have digital data, it’s much easier to process. Like if. I’ll give you an example, a simple example. If I gave you a box full of 1000 paper drawings and I said, Erin, would you analyse that? You know, that would take you, let’s say a week to open each drawing, have a look at it and. Yeah, but if I gave you the same set of drawings in a digital format, you could probably do a good investigation in a day or two. So. Yeah, and you’d have a much better picture of what you looking at. And if I gave you a 3d model as well, of the building that you have to build, well then you’d have an immediate understanding because that’s the way people understand the world. 

30:56
Ralph Montague
Like you, we all grew up in a 3d world. That’s the way we experience the world. So you have these three scenarios. One, I give you a box full of paper drawings. Second, I give you some digital data. But the third, I give you a 3d model and digital data, definitely on the third one you have a much better understanding. But with understanding comes lesser of an opportunity to manipulate you. So when I give you the paper drawings and you don’t understand the building, I can negotiate a low price with you because you don’t know what you’re agreeing to and I can lock you into a price. But when I give you the digital model and the 3d model, it’s very difficult for me to manipulate you on the price because you have a much better understanding. So digitization is definitely reducing manipulation and. 

31:52
Erin Khan
Corruption in price data tells a powerful story. And I think back to some of your points, that 3d format humanises that story in a way that makes it easy for all of us to understand. 

32:07
Ralph Montague
Absolutely. 

32:08
Erin Khan
Yeah. 

32:09
Ralph Montague
If you look at a lot of the changes on site, a lot of contractors will say on site, most changes are instigated by clients, like late change, late design changes, but. Yeah, but that’s because the clients didn’t understand the drawings that they were shown a white piece of paper with lots of black lines on it and they were expected to sign off on an idea and then. And then when they see it materialising on site, they say, oh, no, that’s not what I want. Like, can you move this? Can you do that? Can you? Yeah. And. And that’s when it becomes really expensive. If you could walk them through their building in three dimensions before you go to site and say, like, go to every room, look around, are you happy with everything? 

32:53
Ralph Montague
They would understand that far better than looking at a piece of white paper with lots of black lines on it. And you could reduce that sort of misunderstanding significantly through the three dimensional experience. I know 3D isn’t the only thing about BIM, because the underlying data is just as important, but all the information about the materials and the performance of the materials, etcetera. So there’s lots of things that are important, but I wouldn’t underestimate the value of the 3D. It’s the way everybody experiences the world. 

33:31
Nandan Thakar
Just making a point on what Ralph was saying in terms of digitization. So at SureWorx, Ralph, as you know, we have got deep experience in quality and commissioning process, among other things. And to our surprise, or it shouldn’t be, one of the biggest feature requests that we have on our platform is to bring in a BIM viewer, so that if someone’s doing deep quality and commissioning exercise for a data centre or for a volume, that people are able to visualise the assets and then when they click on that asset, the rich metadata comes from our platform. So, yeah, we are seriously looking at that. So, yeah, I think it will be great to progress that capability forward. 

34:32
Ralph Montague
Yeah. And going back to your earlier question about contracts, I mean, if you could have a quality control and commissioning of the virtual building before you went to site. Imagine that. Yeah. So that everything was tested and signed off. And because what you’re doing at the moment is quality and commissioning three weeks before the building has to open. But that’s too late. If you find a problem, then it’s going to be really expensive to fix it. But if you found it two years earlier, before you signed off on the contract, it would be fantastic to know that all those problems had been resolved. So that’s kind of what I mean by moving everything forward. 

35:18
Ralph Montague
And the other advantage of BIM in that sort of commissioning and handover process is that you could hand over the digital version of the building six months before the physical building, because all the information would be there. People could analyse the information, set up their testing regime, set up their preventative maintenance programmes. Yeah, they could be ready to rock by the day they got the keys. Whereas at the moment they get the building and then they spend six months trying to figure everything out before they open the doors. 

35:54
Erin Khan
So one thing I do want to ask Ralph, and it ties back into everything we’ve been discussing so far, but let’s say we do have a project. They’re doing a pretty good job about putting together their model. They have the information. They’ve kind of sunk in some resources to prepare this ahead of time. One of the challenges, especially on the contractor side, that I’ve seen, that comes up fairly often. The number one complaint is we can’t get this information to the actual people who need it in the field. So there’s a bunch of tonne of resources, time and energy put into a model. You get a beautiful 3d coordinated asset. 

36:41
Erin Khan
But the people in the field who are building the building, putting things into place, they are still, for whatever reason, not able to easily access that information and kind of default back to what you mentioned earlier, which is maybe going back to a manual or paper process and then becoming that bottleneck. So it’s that last mile of implementation that gets kind of challenging. What are your thoughts or recommendations on that? 

37:13
Ralph Montague
Yeah, well the default, I suppose, is if you had a brilliant BIM model that where everything was correct and coordinated and resolved, and you needed to produce a drawing from that model. That’s, yeah, that’s a few clicks of a button, because I mean you don’t have to draw the drawing, the model is extracted. So if you need, if somebody on site needs a drawing, if they need to carry a piece of paper with them, at least that drawing should be correct and accurate and not incorrect. So BIM already helps there. Even if you don’t change anything on site. If the guys going to site have in their possession a piece of paper that’s produced from a resolved, coordinated model, then they’re really going to do a better job. But they are, of course, technologies. 

38:10
Ralph Montague
There’s lots of fantastic technologies available, like AR for instance, that can project a model onto a screen that you’re looking through at a site. And there’s robots that are setting out, you’re helping with the setting out lasers and there’s a lot of fantastic technologies. Now I know a lot of people can’t always afford those technologies on projects, but they are available. I suppose there’s a bit of investigation and this company is offering that as a service. So instead of someone laying out stud wall with a tape measure and a chalk line or whatever, a robot could be doing that in minutes without human labour. There are a lot of technologies to explore and use. Once you have the digital data that can go into those models, into those technologies, there are a lot of advantages. 

39:14
Ralph Montague
But even at the basic level of getting accurate, complete information to the guys on site, even if the last mile is in paper, at least it’s a decent piece of paper, not a, an incorrect. Yeah. Drawing. Because that’s the problem, that they work off something that’s incorrect and then it has to be redone. 

39:35
Erin Khan
Right. Thanks for that. 

39:39
Ralph Montague
Yeah. But, Yeah. And there will be more technologies. I mean, I’ve seen some fantastic. Yeah. Things that people are using at all scales, even at the civil engineering scale, like a source site where they had diggers levelling the site and the digger was being driven by a robot. And above the digger was a drone that was scanning the site as it was grading the site. So every time it graded the site, it took new levels to see if it needed to. And the drone was actually feeding information back to the robotic driver in the. You’re like, it’s amazing. I think the thing about tech with our industry, there’s incredible technologies and innovations, they’re just not widely distributed. You have these pockets of ideas. We just. I suppose that’s part of the reason the BIM here is communities. 

40:36
Ralph Montague
If we can come together and start sharing some of these ideas and possibilities, we can really transform the industry. And that’s our vision. Is transformation nothing? We’re not looking for a 5% increase in productivity. Anybody can do that. We’re looking at ten x 100 x. That’s what change. The world needs housing, the world needs schools, the world needs hospitals, the world needs food production facilities and water production facilities and communication. The world is desperate for built infrastructure and our industry is just a little bit crip at delivering it, to be honest. 

41:20
Nandan Thakar
Sorry, can you say a word like that? No, it’s been wonderful. Ralph. I think we have started from the early days through two early steps of digitization. You know, what could be done better in terms of contracts and best practises? The usual gotchas. And then you gave us some ideas around, you know, what the future of beam and construction is looking like and may look like. So, yeah, it’s been perspective because I. 

41:54
Ralph Montague
Mean, as an arc, as a young architect working on a drawing board, producing door schedules or whatever, it’s tedious, mundane, repetitive work. It’s, it’s just not fun. And I mean, I’ll tell you a funny story, but once we left, once I left architecture started working with contractors. I was talking to a contractor about schedules, and they said, well, we never use architects schedules. So the thing that architects hate the most, the contractors never use. And I said, why is that? Why don’t you say, no, I’d never trust the architect schedule. What I do is I send the plans to my. My manufacturer or supplier and they produce a schedule. And I trust that schedule because, yeah, they. They’ll be supplies. I thought, is that crazy? That the thing that. 

42:45
Ralph Montague
Yeah, the things architects are sitting in the office doing and hating because it’s tedious work nobody uses anyway. Yeah. 

42:54
Nandan Thakar
So, Ralph, I must ask you, have you had a play with augmented reality, with BIM output? I’ve seen a couple of those scenarios myself, and it is quite impressive. We’ve done well. 

43:09
Ralph Montague
Yeah, I have it with augmented reality, I have with virtual reality. So we’ve walked through BIM models with VR glasses, but I haven’t. I’ve seen it, obviously, I’ve seen it available where people walk on a site and the. The BIM model is projected on a screen as they’re looking through at the physical site. And it’s a fantastic idea. I’ve seen it in manufacturing where. And I think it’s with an ageing workforce. We have a lot of old people who have incredible experience with AR technology. You could have a younger person on site looking at something and somebody back in the office looking at the same thing through their goggles and educating and mentoring. And, you know, we could actually use the experience that people have to a much older age. 

44:11
Ralph Montague
Instead of making elderly people walk around sites in difficult situations, we can use these technologies to educate the next generation. Well, I haven’t used it myself. I can see the fantastic possibilities of. 

44:25
Erin Khan
It and extend the longevity of a career in the industry, too. So. 

44:30
Ralph Montague
Absolutely, yeah. 

44:31
Erin Khan
The possibilities are very exciting, I agree. 

44:35
Ralph Montague
Yeah. And that’s. A lot of these things are old ideas like mentoring apprenticeships. That’s the way people were taught, but it was always one on site. But now you could actually. One person could be mentoring eight or ten people on different sites from one location using Internet technology and ar. So, yeah, you can replicate the idea multiple times through technologies. And I think that’s the whole point about technology as a tool. A lot of people fear technology. Like, it’s going to take my job or something. It’s not going to take your job. It’s going to make your job so much better that you can. Instead of mentoring one person on one, you can mentor ten people, and that increases the output capacity of our industry, and that’s really what we need. 

45:31
Erin Khan
And more fun. And more fun. 

45:33
Ralph Montague
Yeah, absolutely. 

45:37
Erin Khan
I have been taking some notes on the side here, Ralph, so there are a lot of great insights before I get to them. Nandan, is there anything else you might want touch on for today? I know we’re getting a little close to our time here with Ralph, but. 

45:51
Nandan Thakar
Yeah, yeah, no, I think Ralph has been sort of thorough in his responses. I’m feeling pretty good. Thanks for having me. 

46:00
Ralph Montague
I think the key message, I would say, is let’s not try and apply a fantastic technology to a broken process. Let’s rethink, let’s try and leverage the best of the technology. The idea that we can buildings in software and sort them out before we get to site is such a simple idea. I mean, they do it in manufacturing. It’s not as if when they’re manufacturing a car, they’re making changes as it goes along the conveyor belt, like they’ve decided before they get to the conveyor belt how the car is going to be built. 

46:36
Erin Khan
Right. 

46:37
Ralph Montague
You know? 

46:37
Erin Khan
Right. 

46:38
Ralph Montague
Yeah. It’s like what gets executed in the production line is exactly what was meant to be executed. And that’s the way we need to think about construction. And it’s happening in some degrees with the lean construction movement that’s borrowing sort of lean principles from manufacturing, but it’s a combination of lean principles, technologies, changing the contractual incentive structures, getting people involved earlier, and really making the best use of the technology. And then the production gain isn’t like 5%, it’s massive. 

47:22
Erin Khan
Right. 

47:22
Ralph Montague
You could. 

47:23
Erin Khan
Right. 

47:23
Ralph Montague
You could literally produce twice as many buildings for the same resource. 

47:28
Erin Khan
So. So, absolutely. And some of the nuggets of wisdom I think I’ve gotten from this whole discussion. So BIM is an evolution, not a revolution. So we’re still learning and growing and doing that in communities. The other note that I have is, you know, the lowest denominator sets the productivity of the project. So making sure that digital strategy is throughout your organisation and not just in one department or individual on the team. And then one of my last takeaways too, is, you said it best, Ralph. Information has to be produced before the building. 

48:10
Erin Khan
So engage your builders early, get that specialist input sooner rather than later, through things like a public private partnership or IPD contract or some of the other methodologies that are out there, and explore additional technologies that can help get that information into the hands of the people that are building. So I just want to say thank you for spending your time here with us today, and I really appreciate the discussion and some of the information that I’ve been able to get out of the conversation. 

48:44
Ralph Montague
It’s been a great pleasure to be here and look forward to talking again. I’m sure we will. 

48:50
Erin Khan
Thank you, Ralph and Nandan, for joining me on this episode of the SureWorx podcast for our listeners. We’re excited to bring you to the leading edge of innovation in construction. Over the course of this show, we’ll be hosting leaders from the industry as they share their experience and insights. Finally, if you’re interested in being a guest on the SureWorx podcast, don’t be shy. Please send us an email at podcast@sureworx.io that’s podcast@sureworx.io to connect with us. Thanks again, and be sure to tune in for our next episode. I’m Erin Khan, and this is the SureWorx podcast.