Dorkcast 18 - “I know ConTech..... Show me”

APIs (Application Programming Interface) are popping up all over the technology space, creating a common language to communicate between programs. This week the dorks welcome Hugh Seaton, Head of Product for CSI Crosswalk and Author of "The Construction Technology Handbook." To talk about the work he is doing at CSI to build standards for data communication and better continuity across our digital landscape. We will also be talking about his book, the research and journey in creating it, and how it helps to layout and define understanding across the Human API, which is the other side of construction technology.

DorkCast 17 - Tomorrow's another DOY

As one year has turned to the next, the DOY (Dork of the Year) baton has been passed. The inaugural DOY was awarded to Walker Lockard by the CPC at the Dork-A-Thon at the end of 2019. In 2020’s final CPC virtual round table event, it was announced that the Academy of Dorks within the CPC has bestowed this honor on Lilian Magallanes.

Lil’s passion and dedication for moving the industry forward through tech adoption is clear in her roles with the CPC and Bluebeam. We wanted to bring her on to talk tech and transformation and asked her what topic she would love to cover. In true Dork fashion she didn’t hesitate and said “AI!!” so join in and take part as we have a free flowing conversation with Lil about her love of tech and industry and how AI and robots are going to take over the world.

It's a Fair Trade

Construction technology dramatically influences the building trades, but as the rate of adoption increases, there are still many essential but unanswered questions. Questions about how technology is changing the skill set needed to be a modern builder. What should those builders expect as they leap into modern construction? Many ask if the technology is leading to a brain drain? Is prefabrication changing the craftsman of today to resemble assembly line workers? How are robotics, data, and automation likely to affect the people we count upon to build our structures and homes? In this episode, we discuss those questions and others with Stephan Schnell, Training Director at JATC Local 467 in the Bay Area. Stephan also acts as an advisor to Construction Tech startups. We also talk with Mike Zivanovic, Sales Development Specialist with GTP services and former Technology Manager and VDC team member for local 597 out of Chicago. Join us as we talk about the changes and trade-offs that happen as modern technology takes a more active construction role.

DorkCast Episode 15- Cheers!

We are nearing the end of 2020 and looking forward to 2021! Speaking for all of us on the show, the Dorkcast has been a haven in the crazy times. A place where we could meet up and feel that sense of normalcy that seems in short supply. Well, something like our own version of Cheers:

Sometimes you wanna go

Where technology is the game

and not all software is the same

You wanna be where you can see

That Dorkin’ is not all lame

You wanna be where technology is the game!

Join us for a year-end episode to recap the good, the bad, the ugly, and look forward to 2021. We are not announcing guests, but we guarantee that if you miss the live episode, you will be kicking yourself! Take a look back at the year, grab your favorite beverage, and join us LIVE!

DorkCast Episode 14 - Take Me to Your Data

For our first (I think) repeat guest, we bring back Nathan Wood, from Spectrum AEC and the Executive Director of the Construction Progress Coalition and Tom Stemm from Ryvit, who is also the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the CPC. Both of these gentlemen have a passion for their respective organizations in freeing the data we all collect in the process of executing our projects. So much so that they worked with the AGC XML and the Construction Open Standards Alliance to bring data standardization to our industry.

What would be possible if a Submittal was a Submittal no matter where you existed in the project team or what system you were running? What sort of efficiencies could we gain? How might we more fairly play this game of 3 Card Monty we all play with risk?

These are the types of questions we hope to get answered when we talk to our guests next week on the next Construction DorkCast. Let’s bring in these founding members of the CPC and talk about what happens when we do genuinely take Owners to our data.

Register to take part LIVE!

DorkCast Episode 13 - Oh the HumanIT

We all know them, We all have them in our organizations or have worked with them in the past. Those damn IT people. Or maybe we ARE those damn IT people. While very valuable, even indispensable in this modern age, man… they can just be… weird. Many of us have to provide support in our roles as construction technologists. How do we avoid being those weird computer nerds no one wants to talk to but has to because they need us to tell them to clear their cache, turn their computer off and on, or throw it out of the window?

In an interesting role reversal, one of our hosts is now a guest as we invite in Darren Young and Jeff Sample to talk about that human side of IT. All jokes aside, many techy people are starting to break the stereotypes of being awkward geeks. Now many of us are just regular geeks. Join us as we talk about how to connect with users and the benefits of building that personal report that can help to grease the wheels on tech adoption and even help us gain more sway inside of our companies and the industry.

Register Here for the Live Show.

DorkCast Episode 12 - I Dork.

Back in early August, Travis wrote a post circling the fact that, while we labeled our Podcast “The Construction DorkCast,” we are not THE Construction Dorks. That post created a good deal of confusion because we included a form in it where we were looking for others to declare their Dork-ness. We intended to declare loudly that this is a movement greater than the sum of its parts, but uniquely shaped by the individuals that choose to declare, "I am a Dork." In this episode, we’re going to try to reboot and rejigger. For the veterans out there, we’re going to adjust fire, hopefully zeroing in so we can fire for effect.

In next week’s episode, we’re going to bring in Doug Smith of Dynamic Systems and Travis (Other Travis - AKA OT) Althouse of Revizto to talk about the new and the.. not so new. The concept we’re trying to press out to our listeners is that we are ALL Dorks. We are going to dig into what makes a Dork, what were Dorks doing before being a Dork was a thing, how can new Dorks get out there, and how do we promote the Dorks. 

This is OUR collective movement and we need you to participate. We want you to announce your Dorkiness on LinkedIn or Twitter so that we can use this platform to support, promote, and encourage our community. There are many out there who deserve to be recognized for how they are pushing their slice of the industry, their region, or their organization forward into this digital transformation.

Tune-in live next week as we chat with OT and Doug about their perspectives on being a Dork, what it means to them, how they’ve gotten where they are, where they see things going, and what they hope the community can become.

DorkCast Episode 11 - Put your Enterprise in Knight Speed

As the construction industry goes through its digital transformation, there is a burgeoning group of people known as construction technologists. The term was coined by The ConTech Trio founding members, James Benham, Rob McKinney, and Josh Bone. These pioneers blazed the early trails for the rest of us to follow. Where their path went cold ConTechs found their way into the depths of construction companies, software providers, tool companies, entrepreneurial ventures, and more. This has provided the industry with a mix of organizational success and failure. At first, Construction Technologists are embraced for their creativity and problem-solving, but in many situations, this is followed by pressure to conform to the companies current culture and processes.

What started as a wide-open platform to create change and innovation quickly becomes a stifling and frustrating headache. So how do we fix it? We create a community around it that supports one another and can lean on each other to create organizational change and awareness. Or at least be a conduit to building your own brand and finding the right culture for you to truly reach your ConTech potential. Join us as we bring on Jim Knight a Training & Development veteran for 30+ years. Jim facilitates on a variety of interactive topics, including sessions around amping up organizational culture, world-class differentiated service, building rock star teams, hiring & retaining “rock stars”, employee branding, performance management, and philanthropy.

Coopetition

co·op·e·ti·tion

/kōˌäpəˈtiSH(ə)n/

noun

1. collaboration between business competitors, in the hope of mutually beneficial results.

For me (Travis), the first time I heard this word was at an AGC IT Forum a few years ago from Ric Kahn in one of those after hours talks we all are missing at conferences. Standing with him and other large GC innovators as they were collaborating and sharing openly about programs, initiatives, and their learnings along the way. It was a moment that has obviously greatly influenced how I interact with others in the industry. Even those my company directly competes with.

I often say that the construction pie is very, very big and we should stop completely treating this as a zero sum game. Jeff and I often like to say a rising tide lifts all ships and it is how we approach most things. We can’t give away numbers and fully open our books and small innovations specific to the way our teams work can be talked about in general to portray the concept of what we’re accomplishing with the details being kept secret, but we’re all trying to solve the same problems and what makes our companies different isn’t so much the processes that we all think is our special sauce. The real differentiator is our cultures and how it mixes with our people, or the chefs of that special sauce.

That’s our viewpoint from the contractor side. Really, why can’t we all get along? Let’s solve the problems that plague all of us and make the whole industry a safer, better, more profitable place to be. There’s plenty of pie to go around.

For this episode, though, we’re bringing in two coopetors from the software side. In true podcast fashion, I’ll turn the blog post over to Jon to have a bit of a rant..

Thanks Travis … Like Travis Coopetition is an idea I have a passion for. I first heard the term in the late 90’s when a book Co-opetiton landed on my reading list. I had been reading books on Game theory, and it was considered an updated, more readable version of a book from the ’20s called Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. I was interested in it because one of my core beliefs was in the proverb about Iron sharpening Iron, and the understanding we sharpen ourselves by engaging with others at a similar level (of the same metal). One of the things that I miss most about conferences was a chance to sharpen ideas off other Construction Dorks.  The conversations were always fun and in the end, tended to shave off the bad ideas and to leave only the strongest while also imparting a host of new things to think about. The new ideas were also from those most likely to have the best ideas. That said, The idea of iron sharpening iron shares a central understanding with Coopetition. Rival Businesses that open up ideas and even processes to one another are less likely to persist in those that are poor and far more likely to make breakthroughs because they are exposed to a larger pool of high-level ideas. Game Theory bears this out, so does history.

When The Toyota Way was published, Toyota executives did not think it would ruin them, and they were right. They made a bold move sharing their process, even teaching it, and the result was tens of thousands of people responded back to them and sharpened their process. It has always driven me nuts that we look to them for LEAN ideas, but ignore process sharing as one of those ideas… Thanks, Travis, for letting me rant.  

Please join us as we ask two strong leaders how they are using Coopetition to sharpen their companies and raise the tide for those around them.

The Construction Dorketts

As this podcast has begun to take shape, Travis, Jonathan, Trent, and I have all had our moments of trying to understand what we are doing and where we are going.  Just like the nerds we borrowed some of our tag lines from, we are trying to define what it is we are (Or more importantly what it is we are not). I do not think any of us knows the answer to what we are, nor will we for a while. We are, however, firm on what we are not. We are not a single individual, viewpoint, race, product, or purpose. What we have firmly decided is we do not want to be defined in the normal constructs of other movements. We want the Construction Dorks to be free of the normal constraints that we find in our daily work lives. In following our purpose, we hand this next episode over to a group of people that we admire. They just so happen to all be women in construction, but each of them is far more than just one label. These are all people that have joined us in the hallways and watering holes to have deep, dorky discussions around the many challenges we are facing as technologists in the construction industry. Hence why you NEED to hear their perspective. This is not a token episode to support the cause, but rather another step towards the Construction Dorks continuing to define itself as a movement of individuals that want to passionately share in a safe space for dorking out no matter who you are or what your background is.

Register here to take part live in the podcast!

Coordination isn’t always …concrete

We talk a lot about using ConTech to coordinate MEP in buildings that we work on. Our new focus on designing for manufacturing (DfMA) is a big push for the MEP trades to be able to prefabricate more of their scope of work. But guess what? MEP isn’t the only trade that is pushing for heavy prefabrication! More and more we are seeing structural pieces of a job being prefabricated as well. What does this mean for the job?

Precast concrete structures are no longer just for parking garages and warehouse buildings. Construction teams are evolving to meet tighter schedules and tighter budgets by prefabricating structure and architectural areas. This push for complete fabrication is only driving home the imperative coordination of the ENTIRE design team of a building. No longer is it possible to just fit the MEPS into a shell that is being built simultaneously with the trades. Coordination now has to involve the structural team members to insure a proper build that is both functional MEP wise but also functional structurally.

During this next episode we sit with key players in this game! Joining us are Terry (TJ) Chin, PE of Bristol Group and Lauren Williams Of McCarthy. We hope to shed light on how we can improve this coordination process. This improvement seeks to allow all players to fabricate their products in the manner that they need to and also allow the entire team to provide the building to its owner on time, on budget, and to the specifications that they require.

Register here to take part live in the podcast!

Not the Dorks

To start, I know that this is a different movie franchise than we’ve named our next episode after, but I’m more of a Star Wars nerd than a Trekkie and the theme of this blog fits this scene better anyway. I started to think about this post the week before last and was noodling on it while on vacation with the family in East Tennessee. With no phone service and no internet, it was easy to turn off the worries of all my data being stolen that built up after our last episode. So I’m going to spit out the thoughts that I loosely put together while hiking through the Appalachian Mountains this past week. Hopefully they come out as clear as the air and water.

Seriously, how beautiful is this?

The seed for this came from a post on LinkedIn by Kyle Snyder calling it my (Travis) podcast. I’m thrilled he found the episode and us valuable enough to share with his network, but it got me thinking again of how we got to where we are.

I guess we are, kind of.

That’s where this scene comes back into play. The Construction DorkCast has hijacked the Dork moniker that applies to many of us across this industry. If you go back to our third episode, DJ gets the credit for naming us all on The ConTech Crew. It’s a title we’ve all embraced and run with. Some more than others.

What I’m trying to get at is I am not the Construction Dork. We are not the Construction Dorks. This title should be worn like a badge of honor by scores of Con Techies fighting the good fight across the world to bring construction firmly and irreversibly into the digital age. In that sense, we are indeed the dorks, but I want to welcome others to stand up. To shout it out. To be counted.

This is your community. It is one we have created a blog and podcast to represent, but we do it with great honor, deep reverence, and immense respect. We do our very best to protect the image and ideals of the dork community. We are merely a small part of it all. Doing our best to represent our band of nerds, share information, and have a few laughs.

All that said, I’d like to see just how many of you count yourself among the Dorks. I am asking that you fill out the form below and create a post on LinkedIn or Twitter with a video stating your name and that you are indeed a Construction Dork. Add the hashtag ConstructionDorks and we will do our very best to repost and share. Let’s get this community even bigger and stronger. Let’s connect new dorks with old dorks. Make new friends. Figure out how to best digitally network and share during the times of the Rona.

Construction Dorks: The Next Generation

As construction technology evolves, a new generation has come onto the scene. They bring with them new skills, but the same deep passion to change the industry and move technology to the center of construction. In the next episode of the Construction Dorkcast, we sit down with James Simpson of eVolve Mechanical and Walker Lockard with DADO to discuss the next generation of Construction Dorks—their journey from job site and in-house ConTechs, working with technology providers to build solutions that drive the industry forward, and their vision and understanding of how the technology is likely to change the way we build for their generation.

  We will also ask them about what they see as the differences between the older generation, themselves, and even those coming up after them, how the next generation of dorks are changing both the culture and tools of our industry, and perhaps most importantly, what they feel defines the next generation of Construction Dorks.

Join us Aug 12 03:00 PM MST

Grand Theft Data "The Tin Foil Hat Episode"

It’s an exciting time for ConTechs. The world is full of solutions to be leveraged, platforms to jump on, technologies to throw at processes. We are all busier than ever bringing our organizations through their digital transformations. Many of us are running around excitedly and getting traction with our initiatives.

Now it’s time for us to regret all of it and be terrified of technology. If you’ve had the opportunity to hear Nick Espinosa at an event, his video series, or a TedX talk, you know we have plenty of reasons to be afraid. Nothing like him announcing the name of your device while up on stage, calling out the fact that you are indeed one of the unlucky ones connected to his spoofed WiFi network.

Now Nick isn’t all doom and gloom, but he is the Chief Security Fanatic at Security Fanatics and he will tell us all the reasons we should be techno-optimists with a pragmatic approach to securing all of these devices, apps, softwares, clouds, autonomous vehicles, neural links, and SkyNets that we’re deploying across our jobsites and throughout our companies.

Join us this week, Wednesday July 29th at 5CT as we put on our tinfoil hats and get the bejeezus scared out of us. Hopefully we’ll have some laughs along the way and learn that the future is still bright.

Register Here

The Dorks Strike Back

In the next episode of the Construction DorkCast, we invite in Tauhira Ali and Josh Bone to talk about how the Dorks have been trying to grow up. Don’t worry, not going to grow up too much. We still need to keep our sense of humor.

The Dorks are starting to struggle through their awkward adolescence (Thanks Nathan!). We’ve discovered that we have a voice and some of the adults are starting to listen. Over this last year, with the help of the Construction Progress Coalition, our small group of Dork-minded individuals have had the opportunity to share our vision of the future of construction with some of the bigger organizations and we feel like there might be some moving of the needle.

Now that our little pseudo-movement has started to get some traction, what might the trajectory of the Dorks be? We’re hoping to enjoy some laughs with our guests and talk about what drew them to the Dorkside and how they see what they think of our band of smart, goofy people working with their organizations to continue to push the industry forward.

Will the PowerB(Ice) Age kill the Excelasaurus?

This episode we are talking Excel.  Excel may be one of the most widely and frequently used software programs in our industry.  The tool provided easy solutions to many peoples’ problems and was easily learned.

The problem that we have with Excel is that it hordes information that isn’t easily shared with other project members.  It also requires an individual to manually enter data that is already known.  It doesn’t manifest or create data, it just organizes what we already know.

With the development of data driven content in our building models, new more intuitive ways to organize and leverage this data have arisen.  Power BI has become a more popular tool in construction.  Dashboards that display data in organized fashions are now accessible to project members on a web browser.  These dashboards are also updating in real time and don’t require an individual to manually update it.

Our goal with this post isn’t to talk about how we want to make Excel extinct, it is for others to tell us how they are moving beyond Excel.  The Construction Dorks are challenging our members to submit how they are curing their Excel habit below and we’ll share those on the podcast. Register here for the live recording.

You down with LOD, Yeah you know me

It is way past time to talk about LOD...

One of the things that you understand when you build models is that they can always be better.  There's always something to fix, modify, extend, and maybe the only thing worse than figuring out how far to go is figuring out where the last person to work on the model decided to stop.  With most work still being delivered from team to team during the design and construction process, how do we determine that we're giving the next team the best chance at success? With the ability to add thousands of parameters to our BIM, how do we decide which of those adds value? 

I've struggled for years with the fact that most of the time, the model elements I receive just get erased.  There is often not so much of an evolution of design as a complete redesign using better components and an understanding of the true means and methods of construction or even manufacturing that will be used to build. The model doesn't so much progress as it is replaced by one that more closely matches the reality of what will be built. As an MEP contractor, finding even a single object within the final design that was present during level 100, 200, or even 300 is a rare thing.  This is why the move from LOD 300 to 400 or to the infamous 500 often takes longer than all the other levels combined.  

Mmmmmm….coffee

Worse than that, often the previous design team has spent a large amount of extra time on achieving their LOD that may be of limited or even zero value. I've gotten to hear people stand up, take a bow for a level 300 model that is "clash-free" after months, or even a year of intense work. The problem is that this model cannot be used to build the final product. Their objects will need to be replaced with actual objects of the right size and type to support the actual means and methods, and thousands of clashes will result from these necessary changes.  Did having Clash detection at that level 300 really help? I would say that most of the time, the answer is a resounding No! 

In this podcast, we will take a deep dive into what LOD is and how it might be improved to make it valuable to all the stakeholders. Join us as we talk to people throughout the AEC  process about LOD the realities, the successes, and the struggles.

Join Jonathan, Trent, Myles, and Cliff as they breakdown this topic. Remember, the live episode is interactive so be prepared to bring your opinions as well as your favorite beverage.

Register Here

It's a show about nothing...

I know I know… been awhile since I’ve written again. It happens. What can I say? Hopefully all you Dorks out in Dorkland are making the best of the situation and deploying/pushing your respective companies further down the path of your digital transformation. That’s what’s kept me hopping these last few months.

The reason for this post and for the Sienfeld shout out is the result of a conversation with a couple of fellow Construction Technologists. On the 18th of May we’re going to do our first podcast. The podcast will be about nothing. Nothing but the podcast itself. We’re hoping to make this a different sort of podcast.

Much like the Dork-a-Thon that started off as an attempt to get a group of like minded people into one room that pushes the industry forward, sharing ideas and pains, the group of people who huddle together at conferences and talk over the processes and tech they are seeing, trying, using. The idea for this podcast is to continue to play on that concept and theme. Just some techies talking about the problems they are working on, the processes that are vexing them, and trying to include some of the experts out there that have solved or are also working on solving them. No ads. No promotion of a specific solution. Just talking about solving problems.

In mentioning conferences, one of the ideas we came up with was to run the podcast like our favorite type of sessions at a conference, the industry panel and the networking breaks. Each episode we will have on different Dorks to talk about a topic. The main portion of the podcast will be a back and forth between the panelist, but we will leave the last bit open at the end for discussion from the broader community. If you tune in live, be prepared to take part, engage, and share.

Another difference is we will be soliciting topics from the community. We have several ideas already queued up, but we want to engage our peers across the industry. If there is something you are struggling with or an idea for a process/solution you’d like to talk about, there will be a form here for you to post it and, if you’re interested, you can be a future host to talk about that topic.

So that’s it for this update. We’re grateful to eSub for allowing us to use their Zoom platform as well as for allowing Jeff Sample to help us get this thing going. There will be registration required to get into the webinar, but don’t worry, there will be no followup sales calls from eSub. You will merely be updated on any new webinars coming and you’re always able to opt out.

That’s it. Click on the link below to register to join in live Tuesday the 19th at 3pm central or check back later in the week when we release the recording and hear what we talked about.

REGISTER HERE

Inconceivable!!

I started this blog post on my flight to the MCAA Technology Conference while the blog post I’ve been intending to write for quite awhile. It’s inconceivable to me that it’s been 60 days since our little shindig down in Dallas. But you know what they say…

Time flies…

Many of those interested already know the outcome from the event in Dallas, but there may be some of you that may have been sitting there thinking “Hey, I wonder what happened, what did they talk about?” Well, we talked about a lot but it all came back to one central theme. I’ll recap the presentation we gave to the Construction Progress Coalition (CPC) delegates earlier this year to fill you all in on what went on, what were the findings, and what are the next steps that are coming.

As you can see, we had roughly 40ish people from Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) and technology gathered to breakdown three topics: The Evolving Supply Chain, Analog to Digital Workflows, and, everyone’s favorite, DfMA - Design for Manufacture and Assembly. The group was heavy on the contractor side, particularly with a large representation of the mechanical specialty trades.

Believe it or not this group was actually pretty productive

If my previous blog posts haven’t beaten it to death, I’ll briefly outline the way we structured the event. We took those three topics and split the group up. The DfMA group ended being the largest, then Analog to Digital Workflows, and finally Evolving Supply Chain. We split the morning up into three activities while keeping an open, free flowing round-table discussion feel. The three activities we all ran through were the Anchors (what’s keeping us stuck in the current processes) to Rockets (what’s been happening or could happen to help propel us to a better future). We then ran through mapping the Shared Pains where we mapped the current processes to understand those Anchors even better as well as to discuss places where the process could pivot. Finally we said Disrupt the System. Describe that Moonshot. What would the ideal state be and what Rockets are there that could take us to the moon?

I am not going to go into each group’s findings or review each activity, that would make for a much too long post, but I will highlight a bullet in the slide above. This theme of the current process being “Design to bid, not design to build” was something that each group came to on their own. Granted we had several people in the room with similar backgrounds and coming from similar personas, it was still interesting to see that each group came to the same conclusion on where perhaps the bulk of the problem lies. This is where, from a CPC point of view, things pivoted and we changed the title of one of our Common Data eXchange (CDX) initiatives from dealing with Submittals to Design to Fabrication.

I believe that this new focus is pretty exciting. Each group coming to a consensus that we didn’t need to outright fix design, but if we can change the bidding process in a way that allows the proper stakeholders to get involved earlier on. The project can be designed in a way that is collaborative. Decisions can be made sooner, input on constructability as well as fabrication and modularization can be made from the subject matter experts who put the work in place will allow for submittal process to become all but obsolete. Then the analog workflows we have in communicating during the current final phase of design which, as Josh Bone points out, are the shop drawings. If we can kick all of that to the front of the project, planning like we should be instead of the race to the bottom in the low-bid process then the scramble to make up schedule, we can really thrust this industry forward and remove those self-imposed barriers to progress.

That’s a very brief… brief of what we went over, compressed into a few paragraphs it maybe doesn’t sound as impactful as it felt in the moment, but hopefully I did a decent giving a hint of where we started and how we came to the conclusions we did. I am going to share two more slides that help now illustrate where we think we should be going next.

Do you sense a theme?

That is what Josh’s group came up with. I am sure you can see a thread of similarity in here with what my group, the Evolving Supply Chain came up with, then we loop in what Nathan Wood and DJ Phipps’ group The Analog to Digital came up with.

Then finally a slide relating what we’re looking to do next, what we think the CPC should focus on in the coming year to drive these findings out into the industry. We realize that there were many personas missing in our discussion. Along those lines, we’ve been lucky to have Jeff Sample involved and are very fortunate in that we have the opportunity next week to speak with the Construction Users Round Table.

Onward and upward!

We’re planning on replicating our refined process using the takeaways from Dallas with this group to help fill that gap of having an Owner’s perspective represented. My intent is to continue to push the ideas out there, to have more events with other groups, perhaps of Engineers and Architects, Suppliers, and any and every stakeholder in a project team.

I want to thank everyone involved in helping make this a successful event and believing that we can collectively make our industry better. There are too many thanks to list them all, but I hope each of you who were able to take part felt the same energy, the same excitement I did and will take a small flame from Dallas and use it to light the torches of change in your region or your particular areas and specialties in the construction process. Be on the lookout for more blogs soon as I feel like I am getting the writing bug and I will definitely have something to write about again after our meeting with CURT.

The Evolution of the Dork-a-Thon

I’ve detailed somewhat how the idea of having a Construction Dorks came together in a previous blog post but, now that it has become a thing, I thought I should detail out a how it started and how we got to where we are and what the event will look like. I hope that reading this and seeing the additional info that will be coming as we approach the date (December 11) will inspire you to want to take part (register at constructiondorks.com).

The Dorks had a humble beginning. I still attribute DJ Phipps as the originator of the moniker. It seemed to fit those of us in the newly minted Construction Technologist role in the industry and many of us have latched onto it. Embracing our slightly “off” personalities, having fun with the title, building a tight community that promotes and helps each other as we navigate this new and exciting path. I might argue at times that we would probably more identify as Nerds if we were to consult the Venn diagram. I would venture to say most of us are fairly intelligent and only slightly socially inept while also passionately obsessed, but I digress.

Who doesn’t love a Venn Diagram?

The concept of a gathering of the Dorks began when we would all run into each other at various trade shows and industry events and talk. We would talk about how it would be nice to break away from all of the sessions and exhibits and have an event where we all just talked and shared ideas of how to work within this new role and how to help each other bring success to our organizations as we go through this digital transformation.

That is how the idea of getting the Dorks together started to gain traction and gather momentum. I began working different connections to see what was possible. One thing I kept coming back to with the Dorks was passion for the industry first, technology second. This is a theme that kept coming up in conversations. With that in mind, the idea of the Dork-a-thon transformed from focusing on how we might share some conversations around using tech to improve our workflows to how can we use our collective brainpower and passion to drive the industry forward beyond just a digital transformation.

Also, during that time I’ve had the opportunity to experience Design Thinking events as well as reading on different types of ideation and inspiring innovation. I also have been talking with a few other people with a similar bent on doing more than just implementing technology, wanting to implement true, pivotal change. With that in mind, I wanted to publish a blog that spoke in depth to the purpose and structure of the Dork-a-thon that we’ve been envisioning, and I have been pushing to make a reality.

That’s when I started to toy around with the idea of having roundtable discussions facilitated by someone from the industry. Those sessions are DfMA, Analog Workflows in Digital World, Contract Documents vs Shop Drawings, drawing from the CPC CDX Challenges, or for those interested to offer their own. The early returns have DfMA as the most sought after topic, then Analog Workflows, then a few compelling “Others”. I plan on keeping offers for facilitators open until the end of October. At that time, 6–8 sessions will be chosen based on interest and the number of registrations we receive.

We will contact the facilitators of those sessions and start sharing content for them to help them prepare for their groups once we close the facilitator submissions. The idea is to apply some accelerated design thinking and lean methodologies in roundtable groups of 6–8 participants through the morning part of the day. Each group focusing primarily on the “Anchors and Rockets” of their topic. What we are looking for are the things that we feel are going well (Rockets) in our industry so we can find ways to strengthen and promote them as well as identify the challenges (Anchors) keeping us from progressing forward.

<Insert Rocket Noise Here>

At the end of the morning session, we will look to have a working lunch where each group presents their findings on Anchors and Rockets, allowing the rest of us the provide input on what the group has found. The goal after these presentations is for our inaugural event to provide to the industry some real, actionable insights going into 2020 to continue to drive positive changes.

Now, we’re all tech geeks and much of the interest in this event is some time for nerds to talk with nerds. I’m hoping to have networking type breaks between, but also allow for two hours at the end of the day for those able and interested in sticking through the afternoon for us to have some short sessions centering on the struggles and successes we’ve had in implementing technology. An important note on these sessions, while they may be lead or include individuals from the technology side, there will be no selling or promoting of particular solutions. We’re not looking for anyone to sell their programs or platforms, but help others learn how they can get better adoption of technologies and new workflows.

I have been approached from many different sectors of our industry and told there is a great deal of interest in what we will do here. I can’t say we are going to change the world, but we have a great opportunity to press forward true transformation in our beloved industry and the organizations we passionately serve. My goal is that this will be the first of many such events. Perhaps we can have mini Dorks meetups throughout the year coupled with other conferences where those gathered can keep moving the ball forward and then we can gather once more at the end of the year and report on how far we’ve come and work to bring another set of Anchors and Rockets for the industry.

To close this, I’d like to make a call out for the Dorks to share this event with their Dork friends. We have a fair amount of interest from within the ‘C’ of AECO as well as from tech, but really want all stakeholders represented. If you think there are like-minded individuals that would bring value in these discussions, please share this post and the website with them. In the coming days, I will be updating the website so that it contains more information on the day of the event and provide more detail as it becomes more formalized.