How VHB Conquered the Cloud: Redefining Design Collaboration

BRIANNE BELSCHNER: Hello, and welcome to "How VHB Conquered the Cloud-- Redefining Design Collaboration." My name is Brianne Belschner, and a little bit about myself, I am the Autodesk model-based design lead at VHB. I am based in the greater Boston area, Watertown, Mass, to be specific.

I have 13 years of experience in the civil engineering industry, seven years in land development, two years in highway. And then the last four years or so I've jumped over to the IT/technology side, where for the first two years I was a design technology specialist, and for the last few years, I've been the Autodesk model-based design lead.

Today, what we're going to cover is a little bit about VHB, who we are, and why we're doing this, talk a little bit about, why ACC, discussing VHB's decision to move to ACC, about the importance of collaborative design, the benefits of leveraging collaboration during the design process, and then really getting into the deep adoption of ACC, implementation challenges, strategies, and lessons learned.

And what would an Autodesk University presentation be without our learning objectives? So today we'll be learning about the strategic importance and function of Autodesk Construction Cloud as a cloud-based storage solution in improving our design process. We'll learn how to use Autodesk BIM, Collaborate Pro to enhance performance for our design teams. And we'll learn how Autodesk Construction Cloud can help elevate collaboration with clients, subconsultants, and stakeholders to better project outcomes.

Let's talk about VHB. VHB is 2000 passionate professionals. It includes engineers, scientists, planners, and designers. It was founded in 1979, and we have around 30 locations up and down the East Coast. As you can see from this map, we're pretty predominant on the East Coast.

We essentially have our company structured into two categories. We have our core services, which include transportation planning, engineering, land development, planning and design, environmental, and applied technologies. And our second category is our markets, which are transportation agencies, real estate, county and local governments, institutions, federal government, and energy. And really, this is our markets focused on the clients while our services are focused on delivering solutions to those clients.

So an example would be that our real estate market would leverage our transportation planning and engineering as well as our land development services to produce what our client is looking for. This leads to what VHB refers to as an integrated thinking rather than integrated services and the idea that integrated thinking will allow us to be a trusted advisor for many of our clients.

And being that trusted advisor means that we think a little differently. Earlier this year, VHB rolled out with our new strategic plan, which is called our Pathway to Prominence. This strategic plan is intended to help guide our vision over the next five years. As you can see from this really fun pyramid on my screen here, our future is really built on the foundation of transform, and transform meaning that we need to fundamentally change the way we work and deliver our products. And everything we do is built on that transform.

And as part of transform, you can see we have innovation. We have data and technology. And we have sustainability.

As part of innovation, we really want to create a culture of innovation at VHB by implementing new programs and tools and sharing and fostering innovation. And this leverages technology, harnessing the power of that data and technology to fundamentally change our workflows, developing a robust and inclusive system to Make our relevant data accessible to our people. This also helps us to develop in-house expertise in all of our data analytics and our artificial intelligence. And that way we're able to offer a more data driven-solution to our clients.

Everything we do at VHB needs to be innovative and focus on the technology and data. It's shifting our mindset around what it means for our work and how we deliver that to our clients. And it means that we're challenging the current process and workflows so that we can meet these ever changing needs of our clients.

And as many of you know in this AEC industry, change is happening at a rapid pace. And by rolling out this innovative and technology-based foundation to our goals, VHB really is supporting that change. So let's talk about, why ACC? And before we talk about, why ACC, I want to talk a little bit about VHB's journey to ACC.

VHB recognizes the value of a cloud-based storage solution, so it started really from that idea. We knew that it would improve performance. It would improve collaboration as well as access to our data. So we knew that a cloud meant that that was the way we wanted to go and that was the way of the future.

And then as we started researching and pulling in information on each of the different clouds out there on the market, VHB kind of determined it was best to leverage the cloud-based solutions that our product companies built. So that meant, for Autodesk, it was ACC. For Bentley, it was ProjectWise. For ESRI, it was ArcGIS Online.

And now that we've kind of determined that by leveraging these tools we were seeing the benefits of each of these clouds, this meant that we needed a kind of really good way of exposing that data to our users. This is where the idea of developing an internal pool known as Hub was born. It's an internal program to help organize our cloud and provide the different links to the different cloud environments that we are using.

And you'll see here a little display on how Hub works. We can type into the search just any piece of the puzzle. There's filters on the left-hand side there, so it enables us to filter through and pick the projects that work best for us and what we're looking for. And then once you click on that, you can see that it gives an overview of that project.

And you'll see it also shows the location. You're able to turn it on and look at those surrounding projects. But really, the key is that project clouds. And as we click on that Autodesk link, it brings us straight to ACC, and this is where all of that project data lives.

And you can search and filter through and pull out that data associated with this project. And as we flip back into Hub, you can see that we have some of those little buttons grayed out. That means that there is no cloud data associated with those. But it also allows us to have those links and that connectivity.

So now, why ACC? Why did we pick ACC? And really, it that ACC was not just a storage solution but a design management system. The idea that ACC meant we could have additional benefits for our design process, for project management, allowing us to really expand and advance our technologies and our innovations.

Benefits of ACC were improved file performance. It means more time in the design and less time waiting for your data to process and open. Previously we have a server based in New England, but we also have offices down in our Southeast. And purely by location in the Southeast, they experience a slightly longer open time just based on where the data is located. And in combination with our Southeast works on some of our largest projects, they were really experiencing some decreased performance in their files.

So we were seeing, as we shifted to ACC, file times going from 20 minutes down to 5 minutes. And that really helped us to better understand of our collaborative process as well. With increased performance, we're able to enhance our collaboration with our different services and subconsultants.

In a technology driven-world that we are in today, there's no time to wait. Our projects need to be done quicker, faster, more efficient. Our stakeholders are making quick decisions, and they're looking for us to turn those decisions around without sacrificing quality. And that means us having confidence in our tool and giving it the ability to be more integrated into our services, our subconsultants and giving us the ability to solve those design challenges.

The design build projects are becoming more and more commonplace in our industry. This means that not only are we now including our contractors in the design process. But it means we have to move quicker, and it means we have to make decisions more quickly. And this work within ACC allows us to do that in a very seamless way.

And it also provides a centralized data environment. This is where we can understand how the design interacts with one another but also create that one source of truth and where everyone looks for that project data and knows where it can be found. And at the end, ACC benefits us by streamlining our project management.

It's not only about understanding how our designs interact with one another. But it's important to know how our designs, team design teams are interacting with one another and what our design process looks like as we start bringing those groups together. Tools like issues tracking, photos, RFIs, submittals, they help and allow us to keep that data together but also provides us that connection between the different design teams and key stakeholders. They can give us better ability to interact and ingest that data and get feedback more quickly.

And the key here-- and I'm going to play this little video as we talk through-- because we're talking about collaborative design. We're talking about, how do we solve these complex design challenges? The benefits of internal and external collaboration with our clients, our subconsultants, our stakeholders, this is watching an issues as we are able to see photos and the photos interacting with the different files and really allowing our integrated services to leverage this data as we move through the process.

We're seeing that, by information sharing, we can solve problems more effectively. Our design process becomes more efficient. And we can really integrate that design and that workflow and shift that current design process to be more integrated. And it really helps improve that communication.

And by improving communication, we're able to solve more problems. We're able to address concerns before they become bigger and crazier things. It's an important step in the direction of this integrated future is collaborative environment.

So ACC adoption, now we get into the real meat of this conversation. So with any good plan for adoption, we have to have an implementation plan. And this really started out with determining our pilot projects. We knew that we needed to include many of our different groups across the company. Each of our groups works differently, so when we were picking those pilot projects, we wanted to make sure that we were incorporating the different aspects of our company so that we were better able to define some of those processes.

Some groups were using ACC for the whole design process, from pursuit all the way through construction. And other parts were pocketing in there at different parts of the design process. And it was important to us to make sure we were representing each of those different groups.

Another key piece was meeting with the design team. And this was meeting with the design team first. We wanted to be focused on how they would use this tool and not just throw anybody into the deep end and say, figure it out. We wanted to go over how they would access the data, how they were going to interact from multiple platforms, what their current workflows and processes were, and how that looked when we shifted it into ACC. It also gave us a really good opportunity to tease them about some of the cool features that they may or may not have access to if they weren't working in.

And another key component to this was adapting to the feedback. Once our group started using the tool, we were able to hone in on different workflows. We were able to solve their problems, but we were able to translate that back. It helped to build that trust between our technology and IT teams and our design teams.

It meant that we were adapting and changing to their feedback. What was also key was that we were providing that feedback to Autodesk, and Autodesk was also making changes and adjustments to their tool to meet the needs of VHB. And it was really cool to see that partnership evolve and change over the process of understanding how ACC fit into the mold.

Now, it wouldn't be an adoption process, it wouldn't be new unless we had our challenges. And we wanted to fight those head on. We knew that the challenges would be there, and we wanted to address them.

One of the big changes-- one of the big challenges was change management. This was a big difference between our how people worked on their projects and understanding that this was hard for a lot of people. We work with engineers. Engineers aren't known to be super adaptable and changeable, so we wanted to make sure that, as we were coming across these challenges and this change, that we were really talking it through and understanding where our users were coming from, where the engineers were coming from so that we're better able to address those.

And when we first kicked this off, there were performance issues. I won't be-- I won't be-- lie about it. Desktop Connector wasn't my best friend for a while. But I think the idea that they've constantly been improving it and listening to our feedback, I have been given an abundance of confidence as we've moved through and have a seamless experience with our users and getting everyone comfortable with the tool.

Large project migration was another challenge we came across. We weren't just moving new projects into ACC, but we were moving existing projects into based on some of the feedback we were receiving from users. And this brought about its own challenges, and it's not something I think we previously had realized. Moving into that data and understanding how that worked really was a challenge for getting everyone up and running.

And then we also have familiarity with new tools. This is a different workflow. It's a change to their process. And we really understand that, when we shift and change those processes, we wanted to make sure it felt very familiar, even with the new tool. So it was a challenge to address those and make it feel familiar but understanding that we knew we had that challenge to address.

So now we have strategies. And our strategies-- and I'm going to play this little video because I love playing little videos. One of the key pieces to our strategy of implementing ACC was making ACC exciting. This wasn't-- and you can see that we can access data and open data and move around in 3D models.

Key features, that file performance that you see, our users were incredibly excited to be able to open files faster and move more quickly through their design process. There was also the mobile access. Being able to go in the field and access your design data was incredibly helpful. And then also being able to share that data you received in the field, photos, and notes and different pieces, and be able to share it almost immediately back into the office was incredibly helpful. So it really got people excited and wanting to use the tool.

And then for collaboration, internal or external, being able to understand how the groups interact with one another, it made that ease of transition. Understanding and visualizing what the other team was dealing with was incredibly important. And we also wanted to improve the current process. This meant strategies of listening to feedback, providing the feedback to Autodesk.

ACC is a tool that's constantly being updated, and it's been super exciting to see feedback we give is implemented into the tool. And because it's an online-based tool, that feedback is seen much more quickly than some of the other updates we may see. And that's been a really key piece in having that trust built between our design teams and both IT and Autodesk.

And now I wanted to show a quick little video here. And if anybody knows, my friend Charles just presented right before me, and he actually showed the same video. And I think this is just so insightful. We have running next to one another a project in ACC and on our internal server.

And you can see on the ACC process that not only are you opening the file, but you're connecting to the data. It's the entire process. And watching that internal server just churn and churn and churn, and now, all of a sudden, on our ACC side, we're starting to see some changes. We're starting to see that open. And there we go. We have our completed process.

And now you can see he shuts that down, and he's going to open it again. And this is demonstrating to us that when you open it that second time, once it's cached locally, you're seeing even more performance improvements as you're opening projects on ACC. And our internal server is yet to even figure out where it is and what it's doing.

And as you can see by the screen, these aren't-- there's not a ton of data in this file. And it's still-- I mean, we're only out a minute here. All right. Now we're starting to see some pieces to this.

And this is some key performance improvements that our users are looking for. And when they see this and when they experience this, it's hard to have them go and use any other tool when you can see that this is the process. And you can see the difference in time it takes, and it means spending more time on your design and less time waiting for your file to open.

Now, lessons learned, because what's a good pilot project when you don't learn anything? So planning for the large project migrations, we mentioned that as a challenge. Migrating large projects, we knew that we needed to plan. We needed to clean up.

Not every project was able to move into ACC. But if it was a large project, we needed to do a lot more legwork and understanding the structure of that project. We wanted to-- we actually ended up working with Autodesk to develop a tool so that we were more quickly able to migrate projects, just the project data, up into ACC, which bypasses Desktop Connector. And that allowed us to get the data up there.

But we also still needed to understand, for large project migration, this meant that there was a lot of data that needed to be vetted and made sure that it was checked back when it got-- once it got into ACC. And with larger projects, there's just more data, so that process takes a little longer. And we really relied on our design teams to do that because they worked in the projects. And it just meant allowing that time.

The other part of large projects was that typically large projects mean large design teams. So moving the data was impacting more people, meaning we had to have more conversations around what data needed to move, how it was moving. And it was clear that when we were migrating large projects, we needed to be aware of some of these components.

And we had to make a plan. And for some teams that time and energy associated with shifting the project into ACC was worth it. And for other projects, it didn't make sense.

Having an ACC kickoff meeting, now, this was something that we knew we needed to do. But we also realized as a lesson learned that it was a necessary step to get people comfortable with this tool. This was something that our current projects and understanding how that shift happens when we move those projects into ACC or we start a new project in ACC, having that space so that they understand that there's flexibility to the tool, understand that there's frequent updates and that, by providing us that feedback, it wasn't just helping their process. But it was helping other teams' processes and other people's, through using Autodesk products, processes.

And then we talked about storing design data together. That was a lesson learned that a lot of our teams we now were realizing needed more than just Autodesk products in ACC. They wanted to keep all their design data together, which meant design calculations, stormwater reports, other hydraulic analysis tools.

Our Florida region uses ICPR. We also have up in our New England offices using HydroCAD. So more than just Autodesk products had to be stored in there. So we wanted-- we were testing those out, making sure they worked, making sure they aligned.

And really, one of the key lessons learned was it's not all or nothing. And really what this meant for our users was they had the flexibility to use some of the tools, and we weren't going to force them to use all the tools when they jumped into ACC. And that really gave people a comfort in knowing that they weren't going to have to spend all their time learning a new tool and advancing their process, that they could focus their time on really honing their skills on the different parts of the tools, different parts of ACC that were beneficial to them.

And one of the really cool pieces to that is because we weren't-- it wasn't an all-or-nothing approach, we had way more adoption for some of those other tools, those other pieces to make their design process better, understanding that they were now looking at them from a different perspective, a different lens. And they weren't saying, OK, it doesn't accomplish-- if it doesn't accomplish 100% of my tasks but it accomplished 70% of my task or my workflow, It's still worth the investment into that tool. And it was really cool that it was-- it gave everyone the ability to feel comfortable and confident with these tools, knowing that they didn't have-- we weren't forcing them to do anything but that they could adopt the tools that they felt necessary.

This also meant that we, with each of these different groups using each of these different tools, had more support. We had users that were talking to other users, saying, hey, have you used RFIs and submittals in ACC? Oh my gosh, it is so much better. You should try it.

So adoption started not just being our technology and IT teams promoting the use of ACC but other users promoting the use of ACC, which, as we all know, when somebody tells you to use something and they're using it themselves, a lot of times that holds a little more weight. And that just really meant pushing and giving our teams the best tools possible.

And in conclusion of this, as we wrap up this entire presentation, the different pieces of ACC have really, really elevated VHB. And ACC has enhanced our design management, collaboration, and data performance. ACC has also allowed VHB to centralize our data.

It means streamlining our project management and improving our file performance. ACC by implementing through a pilot projects, it has also enabled VHB to adapt to the feedback, solve the problems, and ultimately improve workflows. And so overall, ACC has proven to be a very valuable tool for VHB, benefiting both our internal and external clients, subconsultants, and stakeholders. Thank you everyone for attending my session. And good luck using ACC, and thank you again.