Behind the Build: Interview with Justin Lipsey, VDC Technical Leader, SSOE
The importance of hard work and thinking big cannot be understated, especially in the world of modern design and construction. These are the very things that lead to growth, innovation, and career success, which is why it’s essential that we strive to embody these traits in our day-to-day lives.
One person who’s doing just that is Justin Lipsey, VDC Technical Leader at SSOE.
Justin started his construction career as a plumbing engineer, and in 2018, proactively made the transition to a more tech-focused role in VDC. He’s achieved quite a lot in just over three years within the VDC realm, including winning SSOE’s Founder’s Award and landing a speaking engagement at Autodesk University.
Justin credits his accomplishments to positive thinking, dedication, and of course, hard work.
We recently caught up with him to discuss his construction journey thus far, as well as what’s next.
Tell us a little bit about SSOE and what you specialize in.
SSOE is an AEC firm specializing mostly in the “engineering” portion of that AEC acronym. We’ve been around for 70-plus years and have business units that touch pretty much every facet of the industry. So, we range from semiconductors all the way to educational projects.
When working at SSOE, you’re actually able to interface with anything you would like. There are loads of opportunities. In my case, I have over a decade of experience as a plumbing designer/engineer. I was in the automotive and manufacturing business unit, and my specialty was siphonic storm drains.
But then I switched over to technology. Now, my role is with the Project Technology department and I’ve been here just over three years. I specialize in all things BIM 360 and ACC (Autodesk Construction Cloud).
I started off just by volunteering and training with pilot projects. And two and a half years later, many of my coworkers call me “BIM Three Lipsey”.
Walk us through your career and what led you to becoming VDC Technical Leader.
I’ve always been into technology and computers, and I like being creative. But sometimes design and engineering projects aren’t creative at all, especially the types of projects I was working on.
So I started looking for ways where I could get into tech but still remain in my industry. A VDC rotation slot happened to open up, and at that time I didn’t really know a great deal about VDC. I just had a very broad idea of what it was.
But I took the leap, and that spiraled into registering point cloud data, laser scanner operation training, and all things reality capture technology. I learned really quickly and I get to work with developers now. I can really say that I’m passionate about this work.
I also got to go to AU in 2019 and just sat with the Forge devs for an entire day. I learned so much just by sitting next to them, talking to people’s managers, and soaking it all up. So VDC led me into the world of construction technology.
The way I see it, technology is like the wild wild west right now. Depending on your job title, you get to make your salary—you get to decide on your duties and tasks. It’s amazing.
What is your proudest accomplishment in your 6 years at SSOE and why?
About a year and a half ago, I wrote down this list of goals. It included things like speaking at AU (Autodesk University) and winning a Founder’s Award, one of our most prestigious awards at SSOE.
I’m proud to say that I hit those goals in about 6 months. I was given the opportunity to speak at the virtual AU last year, where I discussed the topic of AEC product ownership.
There was also the Founder’s Award, which was given to the project team who developed training materials to support the rollout of BIM 360. Before the pandemic hit, we were piloting BIM 360 and trying to understand how to best roll it out. Then COVID happened and there were infrastructure issues immediately. That’s when we made the quick decision that every new project going forward starting January of this year would be in BIM 360.
To make it happen, we needed to develop training materials. I was afforded the ability to utilize all of the beautiful music equipment I have collected over the years and my limited knowledge of video creation and editing. I purchased an iPad app, watched a few YouTube videos, and was able to create over 20 customized training videos for BIM 360. Our team also created a SharePoint site to house all of our training content and other supplementary information. To-date, we have uploaded over 150 pages of tips and tricks, knowledge base articles, and quick reference guides
“One of the most rewarding parts of my job is when I finally get things to click for someone, and they say, ‘Oh, I understand that now! And I’ll share this with my team.’”
Justin Lipsey, VDC Technical Leader, SSOE Group
There were a whole bunch of people who contributed to our training content, so I can’t take all of the credit. Our developers were able to whip up this automation, despite some limitations within the API for BIM 360. They did a bunch of workarounds to get a lot of “ease-of-use” functions out to our users.
I’m proud of all of that. I knocked all my goals out of the park and I think it’s just the power of manifestation—writing things down, and looking at it every day.
As construction evolves, how do you see the role of VDC Leader changing?
Honestly, I think the future is going to be more focused on data analytics, as well as innovation, research, and development.
I am also hoping for more product ownership because, over the next five years, we’re going to need a team of people who understand computational design, algorithms, APIs—all that fun stuff. We’re trying to build that team of people right now and we’re looking to leverage Power BI and dashboarding. We’re trying to figure out how to harvest the data from BIM 360 and our new ERP Microsoft Dynamics to gain the insights we need to make better business decisions. We also want to better visualize that kind of information in a palatable way for our users.
Right now, VDC is more of a manual process. I interface with project teams. I’m doing a lot of the training and tons of research and documentation, but I believe that the future would be similar to how Revit developed. Now, you have Revit power users who do a majority of what a BIM manager used to do 10 or 15 years ago, managing templates, setting up models, etc. This allows BIM managers to focus on more high-level important coordination items.
In the future, it should be the same for VDC. Research and development should come from operations. They should be telling us what they need, what they want, and VDC performs the analysis and evaluates how to best fit it into our tech stack. Then empower them through the use of data to visualize the end goal.
There’s also the learning aspect to the job. BIM 360 and ACC Build have the Insight module, and we’re really trying to utilize that. I think a big part of the future is learning how to use all this data and figure out how to apply it to upcoming projects. Then we can really handpick our clients and projects. That way, we’ll be more profitable and provide the most value.
I also think that product owners and managers will become more prevalent in our industry. Technically, I’m a product owner of BIM 360 right now. We have this amazing automation process that our developers came up with, where you can create a new project in our ERP system, and it spins up a BIM 360 project. It also spins up an Outlook group so they can track their project email. As a product owner, I helped connect the developers to the business by defining what would be the most valuable automation for our project teams.
Being a part of the BIM 360 team, I interface a lot with our users and take feedback to the devs and give them improvement ideas for that automation. And in my eyes, that’s the future. If more of our VDC folks would learn the skills needed for product management and the human side of technology, I would welcome that.
What are the biggest challenges you face in your role? How does technology help you overcome those challenges?
We’re in this digital transformation phase where we’re no longer attempting to bend technology to fit our processes, we’re revising our project execution processes to fit the technology. This can be a challenging concept for people who have been doing something a certain way for 20 or 30 years.
But one of the most rewarding parts of my job is when I finally get things to click for someone, and they say, “Oh, I understand that now! And I’ll share this with my team.”
This is what happened with BIM 360. It helps us collaborate a lot better, and certain processes are streamlined now.
When you think about the future, what are your plans to advance innovation and productivity at SSOE?
Our CEO has set a goal for 2025 to improve efficiencies and productivity by 50% organization-wide. This is a large undertaking for us, and BIM 360 was just the beginning. ACC Build is being piloted now on a few projects and we are looking for ways to utilize the new features in the platform. We have partnerships with Autodesk, Microsoft, and Cintoo that we are looking to leverage and assist in the development of solutions that progress our strategic business goals, and advance our industry. I am keeping an eye on a few game changing companies like AVAIL and Bridgit in hopes of partnering with them one day as well. But most importantly for us, automation is the key. Whether it’s through Dynamo, Power Automate, or developing something custom, we are looking for ways to streamline our project execution processes with automation and generative design. Last but not least, we are attempting to break down the silos between design firms, fabricators, and GC’s through the use of Fab Parts in Revit.
What advice would you give to the next generation of men and women entering and preparing for the future of the industry?
Something I try to instill in my son is that if you put your head down, work hard, and are respectful, opportunities will present themselves. I have an associates degree in CAD Technology, but I worked extremely hard to get to where I am today. So to all future technologists, don’t focus on getting fancy acronyms that you can add on after your name. Work hard, stay curious, dream big, and build your future without limitations in mind.
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The True Cost of Not Having a Data Strategy
In any workplace, good decisions drive good outcomes. In construction, those outcomes can vary from staying on schedule to facing major time and cost over-runs.
But decision makers are now contending with more complex projects and shorter timelines than ever before.
In fact, four in five APAC construction professionals say schedule compression is fueling the need to make more rapid decisions, according to Autodesk Construction Cloud’s new Harnessing The Data Advantage In Construction report.
Autodesk partnered with FMI Global to survey more than 3,900 construction industry stakeholders, including more than 500 across Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, India, and Hong Kong, to understand how their approach to data was propelling them forward – or holding them back.
And the single biggest factor interfering with making good decisions? The lack of reliable data.
Data quantity
The research revealed vastly different approaches to data strategy, but what’s almost universal is the fact that more data is being generated and collected than ever before. In fact, most project managers and field supervisors report spending two to three days a week collecting and managing the ever-increasing torrents of data.
A big factor in this workload is the multiple channels from which data must be collected, and the numerous formats it arrives in. As one subcontractor told us, “The usual way in which most construction companies operate is a lot of decentralised information.
“We create 2D designs, spreadsheets, PDFs and a whole range of different file types and formats. This is very hard to manage.”
Data quality
Not only are many streams of data unwieldy – they can also be tainted.
For the average construction firm, almost 40% of the data they are collecting is bad – inaccurate, incomplete, inconsistent or untimely.
For data to produce valuable insights and drive better project outcomes, it needs to be readily:
- Accessible
- Consumable
- Understandable
Worryingly, just one in eight construction professionals believe that most of their data meets this definition. This doesn’t just undermine confidence in data-driven decision-making; it undermines projects too.
Industry data indicates that for every $1 billion of revenue earned by a contractor, the total cost of poor decisions driven by bad data could be as high as $165 million. In fact, it is estimated that bad data is responsible for 14% of all construction rework.
That means bad data costs the construction industry an estimated A$2.49 trillion in 2020. And that’s before we count:
- the environmental cost, with global construction waste reaching 2.2 billion tons by 2025, and
- the reputational cost, including 77% of megaprojects being delivered at least 40% late.
Difficulties using data
Despite the vast increases in data flows, barely one in 10 construction professionals report always incorporating project data into their decision making. Most do it sometimes, at best.
These concerns over data quality are why the companies that are reporting getting the most out of their data have formal plans in place to ensure the quality of their data.
“We have invested a lot of time and money ensuring the integrity of our data. Otherwise, it will all be a terrible waste,” one told us.
Another contractor explained, “We want the data to work for us and not against us. If you have bad data, the results will be bad, no matter how good the process is.”
Among the chief challenges faced in using the data being collected are:
- combining data from two different sources
- grappling with missing information
- difficulties in accessing data, either because of its structure or because other parties are unwilling to share.
Overcoming this requires both process and people solutions.
On the process side, for instance, replacing non-collaborative digital channels such as email with cloud-based, construction specific technology can ensure data is collected accurately and easily accessible.
Underpinning all of this is a firmly mapped out data strategy. Such a strategy must cover which data is the most valuable to a given team, and how it can be made reliable and accessible.
Having this not only helps you ensure your processes and tools are fit for purpose – it also helps bring the people you need up to speed.
A subcontractor in the mechanical, electrical and plumbing sector told us, ”Everything is centred on our information being iterative and creating bidirectional workflows with BIM software to drive commissioning activities out on-site.
“That means that we can actually collect data from the field and format it back into the model. We’re getting consistency through construction documentation – and consistency breeds quality.”
Data-driven decision making
Our research clearly shows the impact of trying to make decisions with bad data – the average company reports that it results in poor decisions 38% of the time.
On the other hand, those companies that have nailed their data strategy say it is driving fewer budget overruns, fewer missed schedules and fewer safety incidents.
By managing data effectively from collection to access, these are the companies unlocking its value and moving to the next level, where nothing is left to chance.
An integrated digital approach allows them to see all of the dependencies on a construction site and review the project schedule for potential risks. They can see how a change order might affect the project’s critical path, and re-prioritize accordingly.
Despite this, one in three APAC construction firms without a data strategy say the cost and resourcing required for a data strategy is holding them back.
It’s a bit like trying to save money by skimping on maintenance – any savings you make will be wiped out when something inevitably goes wrong.
Learn more about how Asia-Pacific construction firms are using data to build better in the Autodesk/FMI Harnessing The Data Advantage In Construction report.
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