Next up in our series of speaker Q&As, we talked to David Ayeni, strategy and business development director at Bentley Systems. He’ll be joining his colleague Greg Demchak to present their session ‘OIL & DATA DON’T MIX – Or Do They? Exploring the Possibilities’ in the Main Stage at Digital Construction Week.
We caught up with him ahead of the show to find out more.
Tell us a bit about your background and how you came to work in digital construction.
I am a chemical process engineer by training – I hold a Master of Chemical Engineering Degree from University College London. I continued my ‘education’ by working for large contractors such as Stone & Webster, then Technip, and Bechtel.
In my latter roles with the contractors mentioned above, I led high-performing teams re digital design and fine-tuning the implementation of DevOps within engineering and technology.
I am now working for a joint venture between Bentley Systems and Topcon, focused on digital automation, integration, and twinning services for the construction industry.
To an extent, I have always been involved in some form of digital design work – which has led to some of the biggest industrial facilities in the world being constructed and operated. My past and present in digital design and now, digital construction has been relatively seamless.
What is the most exciting thing about your role?
Working in a JV where we have top talent is extremely exciting. This top talent has been assembled from a premier software/technology house, a premier hardware house, a world-class project delivery services organisation, and construction industry domain expertise. This means we have an opportunity to shift the needle in ‘what is possible’ for our current customers, and the whole industry (future customers) alike.
And the most challenging?
I’m new in the role (less than two months) – we are still in the honeymoon period – ask me the same question next year!
Tell us about a recent innovation or technology that you’ve been most impressed by.
For us, the constructors, in the past few years, I’d have to say blockchain. Dependent on implementation, platforms built with the premises of blockchain in mind have the potential to revolutionise everything about our industry – particularly the smart contracts use case. Platforms like the iModelHub do have the sought after blockchain characteristics including:
– Openness
– Data Immutability
– Implicit Security
– Decentralised
– Distributed
– Implicit Provenance
Can you tell us a bit about the projects you’re working on and what role innovation and technology is playing?
We are actively working on translating the capabilities of the iModelHub platform into real-life use cases for our customers.
Can you tell us a bit about your session at Digital Construction Week 2019?
We were originally going to present ‘Data is the new Oil’ – however, while no analogy is perfect here, data is not oil – yes, they are both raw commodities (they have a ‘likeness/is like’ – but not ‘same-as’ characteristics, affect economies/economics of wealthy states and high-net-worth companies and individuals. However, we are in a position to discuss our new thought-provoking title because we have very rich domain expertise with both oil and data.
I don’t want to give too much away, however, during our digital construction week presentation, re data and oil, we will explore the difference, similarities, and new opportunities for the construction industry (via iTwins and their/its capabilities) – it’s about time we put the ‘Data is the new Oil’ analogy to bed!
How important is Digital Construction Week to the industry?
Extremely. It is one of the forums where we can continue to communicate and echo the words of a mentor of mine, Tom Dengenis:
“The construction industry needs to take responsibility for going digital and start improving project site operations. Stop owners from requiring 2D drawings and the traditional CPM project schedules as a submittal requirement, as if they were making a positive contribution and observe the impact on the project. Will stopping conventional CPM change daily project operations, affect monthly progress analysis, and will the dispute process erode into chaos? I know from experience that it will not. As long as the contract requires 2D design and 2D operations planning documents, no new disruptive software tool is going to stop project failure.”
What do you see as the most interesting and exciting future applications for digital technology in construction?
The future of digital construction is digital twinning, and it does drive improved results. Ask Boeing. Projects that are going digital (either with successes with digitisation or digitalisation) are inspiring the industry, impacting it more than we could have imagined in the last ten years – and they haven’t actually achieved digital twinning – we have some exciting times ahead!
What challenge in your work life would you most like a technology or process to help solve?
In my role, people (expectations and change management) are the most challenging. No technology can solve the people challenge – you can read lots of HBR posts, follow LinkedIn influencers, watch TED/TEDx ideas, go to MBA/Data Schools, etc. – in the end, and in my opinion, you’re either good with people, or you’re not.
What piece of advice would you give to someone starting out on a career in digital construction?
Be thoughtful. Think about why you want to work in the digital construction domain. Be patient. Choose a market segment (e.g. heavy civil, oil & gas, etc.), learn about the end-to-end business processes that start with inception, design, logistics, acquisition, construction, and operation of asset(s) in that market segment. Be realistic with your time frames; it takes time to gain domain expertise. Acquire domain expertise. Work on real projects so you can eventually abstract the processes and lessons learned, and apply what you can to other market segments – no one in construction wants to work with pure theorists. Continuously hone your data chops. Use data to help you navigate the terrain – you need to have analytical and or data management skills, as well as understanding business processes – aspire to be a double/triple threat. Get a mentor. Someone who has domain expertise and can help you plan short, medium, and long term goals for your career.
See David at Digital Construction Week 2019
OIL & DATA DON’T MIX – Or Do They? Exploring the Possibilities in the Main Stage theatre at 1.25pm on Wednesday 16 October
This session also features Greg Demchak, Industry Solutions Advisor at Bentley Systems