Bridging Innovation and Efficiency in Construction

[00:00:36] Gary Fischer, PE: So today we’re really privileged to have Martin Fisher from Stanford here today. So Martin, tell us a little about yourself and how you got into the role you’re in today.

[00:00:44] Martin Fischer, PhD: Yeah, so I’m having fun teaching the next generation at Stanford and working with many leading organizations around the world doing research, but It really started I think when I was about eight years old back home in Switzerland when I was helping my father who was an interior architect construction manager and there was a lot of old crooked houses in Switzerland, and it was always a pain to find the exact quantities of flooring, etc, because everything was so crooked.

[00:01:16] Martin Fischer, PhD: So when I was about eight, the first kind of affordable calculator came out that did square root. Yeah it revolutionized our takeoff process. So I helped him sort of automate takeoff for crooked homes and that got me into thinking tools, automation, efficiency, doing more with less, and that has really stayed with me and inspires me still today in my work at Stanford.

[00:01:42] Gary Fischer, PE: Wow. So how did you come to Stanford?

[00:01:46] Martin Fischer, PhD: I studied civil engineering in Switzerland, because it was needed around the world. And so I thought, okay, I should get myself experiences around the world. So my vision was that by my early thirties, I wanted to have worked on every continent, not Antarctica, in some capacity as a civil engineer.

[00:02:01] Martin Fischer, PhD: So it was time to move on and go to the U. S. I found a job here and then also got into a master’s program at Stanford. And yeah, the rest is history.

[00:02:11] Gary Fischer, PE: And you just stayed.

[00:02:13] Martin Fischer, PhD: And I just stayed. Well, I managed to do shorter assignments in Asia, Australia, and Africa.

[00:02:16] Gary Fischer, PE: Yeah.

[00:02:16] Martin Fischer, PhD: So I was able to sort of do my plan. But, yes, I ended up staying.

[00:02:22] Gary Fischer, PE: Wow, that’s interesting. So you leave CIFE. So tell us a little bit about CIFE.

[00:02:26] Martin Fischer, PhD: That was one of the reasons why I stayed when I was, just finishing my master’s at Stanford. Some of my then professors started CIFI, Center for Integrated Facility Engineering.

[00:02:38] Gary Fischer, PE: Yeah.

[00:02:39] Martin Fischer, PhD: Because they saw on the horizon a very different way of using information technology.

[00:02:44] Gary Fischer, PE: How long ago was this?

[00:02:46] Martin Fischer, PhD: That was 1987.

[00:02:48] Gary Fischer, PE: Okay. Yeah.

[00:02:49] Martin Fischer, PhD: And so they saw object oriented programming emerge out of computer science. And they realized, ah, this is interesting. Because now computers are not only numerical machines, they allow you to represent things.

[00:03:05] Gary Fischer, PE: Objects.

[00:03:06] Martin Fischer, PhD: Objects. And that’s what we do. Right, we create products. We have activities. Processes. It consists of objects.

[00:03:13] Martin Fischer, PhD: And we thought, oh, this could be super helpful. But we will require two things. We will require formalization of new knowledge. So we can have these objects. In the computer.

[00:03:23] Martin Fischer, PhD: And it enables, and probably requires, a reorganization of the industry. We can get away from the sequential treatment of topics to parallelization, concurrent handling of topics and optimization and so on in that respect. And that’s too big a question. Those are too big questions to handle by any one entity.

[00:03:43] Martin Fischer, PhD: So they started this consortium industry affiliates program at Stanford called Center for Integrated Facility Engineering. With owners, engineering, architectural companies, construction companies, and technology providers. And first I was a student there, then I was a professor, got some money, and now I’ve been leading it for over 20 years.

[00:04:03] Gary Fischer, PE: Yeah, wow, that sounds like really interesting work. So you’re really in an interesting position to observe what’s going on around the world, in the industry, what’s good, what’s not so good. So how would you, how would you characterize the state of the construction industry globally?

[00:04:22] Martin Fischer, PhD: First of all, most mornings when I wake up, I’m proud that I’m part of the construction industry.

[00:04:27] Martin Fischer, PhD: Because, I mean, look around, right? Everything we do, almost everything we do, is in the, uses infrastructure, buildings, you know. So, it’s an absolutely essential part of society, and I’m super proud that I’m part of that. Having said that, some mornings I wake up and I’m not so proud because it’s basically too expensive.

[00:04:48] Martin Fischer, PhD: Projects take too long, projects cost too much, are too unreliable, the environmental impact is too big, the social impact, safety, all of that needs to be improved dramatically. So we’re too expensive. We have to, we simply must find ways of improving our industry.

[00:05:05] Gary Fischer, PE: So what are the implications of the current performance of the industry? How does it affect society?

[00:05:14] Martin Fischer, PhD: Yeah, we don’t, we don’t get what society really could use or need. We don’t get the renewable energy infrastructure in time, at a scale that really we should have.

[00:05:24] Gary Fischer, PE: Right.

[00:05:24] Martin Fischer, PhD: We don’t get to renew our infrastructure, in time to make it productive and keep up with the times. We don’t get to have affordable housing that would address many social challenges.

[00:05:36] Martin Fischer, PhD:  And that’s in the U. S., that’s really everywhere in the world. So I think the implications are very profound. And urgent that we handle them.

[00:05:46] Gary Fischer, PE: Yeah. So then the big question, what do we do about it?

[00:05:49] Martin Fischer, PhD: The way I think about what we do about it, is that first we need to understand how we actually create what we produce.

[00:05:58] Martin Fischer, PhD: Whether that’s the digital things we produce that are part of a building and that are part also increasingly of sort of the operating environment.

[00:06:06] Martin Fischer, PhD: And when I say buildings, I mean very broadly, any, anything built. So we really need to understand better how we produce the digital and physical things.

[00:06:15] Martin Fischer, PhD: It’s, it’s surprising even though we have built for thousands of years, we don’t, it’s still very anecdotal. Because in the absence of actually really understanding how we produce.

[00:06:26] Gary Fischer, PE: Yeah.

[00:06:27] Martin Fischer, PhD: Everything needed around the building. We cannot then allocate our resources better. We cannot make a prediction.

[00:06:37] Martin Fischer, PhD: Whether that’s a construction schedule, whether that’s the energy needs for a building, whether that’s future infrastructure demands, I mean, we cannot, we don’t have a good basis for a sound prediction. So then we allocate our resources wrongly because we don’t have a good prediction. We don’t understand our production method system very well.

[00:06:56] Martin Fischer, PhD: And so we get into firefighting right away on projects. And for me, that’s really the source of the problem. So, unless we tackle that, in engineering, in construction, in operation and maintenance, I don’t see how we will systematically improve our industry to the extent we need to.

[00:07:17] Gary Fischer, PE: Yeah, so that kind of leads us to project production management as a new foundation. So planning or replacing the foundation that we currently have, which is kind of shaky. So what, how did you get started with production management? What’s, what began this, this understanding or seeing that? This production element was so important.

[00:07:37] Martin Fischer, PhD: I mean, in a way, that was always in the back of my mind, because maybe it’s my Swiss upbringing, where you are supposed to be efficient and use the resources well. And I think if you think about using resources well, understood very broadly, whether that’s materials, whether that’s time, you will realize that you have to have an idea of your production system.

[00:08:02] Martin Fischer, PhD: Otherwise It’s just stories, which are fun too. But it’s not a system.

[00:08:9] Gary Fischer, PE: It’s not very effective.

[00:08:10] Martin Fischer, PhD: It’s not a system. Without a system, you cannot be systematic. Without being systematic, you cannot be efficient across the board from project to project.

[00:08:16] Gary Fischer, PE: Yeah. Yeah. So you’ve got a nice partnership with the Project Production Institute. It precedes me. So how did that come about? How did you get connected up with the Institute?

[00:08:25] Martin Fischer, PhD: So my connection with the Institute goes back quite a long time. Predates the Institute.

[00:08:31] Gary Fischer, PE: Yeah.

[00:08:32] Martin Fischer, PhD: It really happened when I had to teach my first class as an assistant professor at Stanford. So I took over the project planning and controls class.

[00:08:43] Martin Fischer, PhD: That was one of the, or has been one of the hallmarks of the program since it started because my predecessor in my position, John Fondile, brought the critical path method to the industry.

[00:08:53] Gary Fischer, PE: Okay.

[00:08:54] Martin Fischer, PhD: And after he saw like what it could do, because it’s a helpful tool. He also saw what it couldn’t do and how it was abused in the industry or misunderstood.

[00:09:07] Martin Fischer, PhD: And he desperately tried to communicate what it’s good for and what it’s not good for. So that was the tradition I walked into. And so I wanted to keep that tradition going, but also having always been interested in tools and digitalization, I was looking for the best tool at the time. This was 1991.

[00:09:26] Martin Fischer, PhD: And so I went to this Primavera seminar, because that was considered the best tool at the time. I said, okay, let me just learn what they do, and then I see if I use it in teaching or not. And at that seminar, it was about ten dozen people. There was also this guy called Todd Zabelle. And ten seconds after the seminar was over, you wouldn’t have known anything had happened in that nondescript hotel room with some Marriott or something at Fisherman’s Wharf.

[00:09:56] Martin Fischer, PhD: But except Todd and I were still there. And we looked at each other and said, what’s wrong with all of these people here? Like, now is the time when we should sit down. The instructor left, like, we said, okay, what did you make of it? What, you know, did this make sense to you? Are you going to use it etc?

[00:10:11] Martin Fischer, PhD: You know, we could build a network. Why did these people come?

[00:10:14] Martin Fischer, PhD: But, okay, we were there, so we started to talk, we went for lunch, and then we started to talk very regularly, because for me it was great to have a sounding board of a reflective practitioner, somebody who was in the trenches. Todd seemed to appreciate, I was trying to push the envelope in terms of what we can do.

[00:10:32] Martin Fischer, PhD: With digital methods. And that forces you to think more deeply. It’s not just about the digital methods, I found, when you use digital methods you really have to think much more deeply about the things you do back to production systems that’s how we met and we we stayed in touch. And so we kept working together and when PPI was started,

[00:10:55] Martin Fischer, PhD: I was invited to participate which I gladly accepted.

[00:10:59] Gary Fischer, PE: Sure. Wow. So you were before the ground floor. So, you know John Fondile

[00:11:03] Martin Fischer, PhD: Yes.

[00:11:03] Gary Fischer, PE: You knew the guy?

[00:11:04] Martin Fischer, PhD: Yes, I knew the guy. I’ve been at his house. He, he gave me his materials, everything,

[00:11:09] Gary Fischer, PE: I find it interesting in reading his frustration with what happened with what he created. And the shortcomings of that.

[00:11:15] Gary Fischer, PE: How did it, that must have been very frustrating.

[00:11:18] Martin Fischer, PhD: It was very frustrating.

[00:11:19] Gary Fischer, PE: He seemed to have a good handle on what it was good for and what it wasn’t good for.

[00:11:22] Martin Fischer, PhD: Yes. Definitely.

[00:11:23] Gary Fischer, PE: Better than the industry does today.

[00:11:24] Martin Fischer, PhD: Yeah, still better than the industry today. Yeah, If you just read his periphery award paper and actually really think about it.

[00:11:29] Martin Fischer, PhD: Then you’ll use CPM better. You’ll use it for what it’s good for. Because it gets a lot of bad press. But it is, if you just use it for what it’s good for, it’s totally fine.

[00:11:39] Gary Fischer, PE: But that’s not what it’s used, how it’s used today.

[00:11:41] Martin Fischer, PhD: That’s not how it’s used, unfortunately. Yes. That’s true. It’s just too bad.

[00:11:44] Martin Fischer, PhD: That’s also a warning for me in terms of, you know, emerging digital methods, right? Because we see similar things. In some ways, we see similar things with BIM, for example, Building Information Modeling, right? It’s used for many good things, but it’s also, I would say, not truly understood, or AI, or many other.

[00:11:59] Gary Fischer, PE: So what do you think the shortcomings are with the way BIM is used today?

[00:12:03] Gary Fischer, PE: Yeah, I think it’s, it’s seen, it is of course a tool. And it’s typically seen as a tool, but I think the understanding could be a lot richer. It starts with the word building. Which is a wonderful word in English, because it means the building. And building as a process. And we really need an information.

[00:12:25] Martin Fischer, PhD: We need information about the building and how we build

[00:12:29] Gary Fischer, PE: and the building.

[00:12:30] Martin Fischer, PhD: We need exactly information about the building

[00:12:32] Gary Fischer, PE: and the process

[00:12:33] Martin Fischer, PhD: And the process. And we need it to be a model. So it’s repeatable from project to project and in a company, you can build up a system of information management. I’m not sure that’s fully understood this way, because I think we would have better building understood very broadly, information, information, if it was understood that way.

[00:12:57] Gary Fischer, PE: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, yeah, interesting. I’m just collecting my thoughts. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Question here, you got me, you got me thinking about that, I can see, I can definitely see that.

[00:13:08] Martin Fischer, PhD: I mean, I’m known in the industry as sort of a big evangelist of BIM.

[00:13:11] Gary Fischer, PE: Yeah.

[00:13:11] Martin Fischer, PhD: And. We built, it’s difficult to prove, I think we built one of the first, if not the first actual BIM system, a prototype in my PhD in the late 80s.

[00:13:21] Martin Fischer, PhD: And I mean the idea had been around before from people like Chuck Eastman and so on.

[00:13:25] Gary Fischer, PE: Yeah.

[00:13:25] Martin Fischer, PhD: But I don’t think a tool existed that you could use. And I’m always like, okay, idea is good. We need tools.

[00:13:32] Gary Fischer, PE: Yeah.

[00:13:34] Martin Fischer, PhD: So what it showed me is that BIM is the first tool that I know of that connects the visual part of our work we need to do and the information part of our work we do.

[00:13:51] Martin Fischer, PhD: Because if you think about it, for pretty much anything we do, you have to show something to colleagues in another discipline, etc, to say, Hey, do you like this? Do you like that? We have to see it to believe it. And you need information about it in your engineering and management systems.

[00:14:11] Martin Fischer, PhD: So without BIM you are doing everything twice if you’re lucky, only twice, because we need to put it into a, something into an information system. And you need to create some visualization. And then over time you have to keep it current. We keep comparing lists and lists and updating things. I think if we really looked at our work, how much is spent doing that work?

[00:14:33] Martin Fischer, PhD: A lot of waste. And BIM gives us a chance of connecting the two. And I’m again not totally sure that that vision is truly seen by the leaders and practitioners.

[00:14:45] Gary Fischer, PE: Yeah. And what you said about the building process itself, one thing that was a discovery for me personally was discovering we needed not just the basis of design, but the basis of process. They need to coexist.

[00:14:58] Martin Fischer, PhD: Great way to put it.

[00:14:59] Gary Fischer, PE: Right up front.

[00:15:00] Martin Fischer, PhD: And they are obviously connected. If you have some constraints on the process, it might lead to some constraints on product and vice versa.

[00:15:08] Gary Fischer, PE: And that’s still a gap

[00:15:09] Martin Fischer, PhD: That’s still a gap, and that’s where the concurrency becomes, in my experience, super important.

[00:15:14] Martin Fischer, PhD: And that’s where it’s painful when I see project teams struggling because somebody decided to engage people sequentially.

[00:15:22] Gary Fischer, PE: Yeah. So, Stanford and, and PPI have a really nice education effort underway. We had a first course in Peru recently. How did that go?

[00:15:33] Martin Fischer, PhD: Yeah, it is fun to work again together.

[00:15:37] Martin Fischer, PhD: Yeah as you, I know, you know we did the virtual design and construction program together for a decade, till that became kind of straightforward and we could pass it on to the Stanford Center for Professional Development and go into a more pioneering endeavor again. And so we call it modern construction, focusing on digital industrial methods and autonomy.

[00:16:08] Martin Fischer, PhD: But in the context of understanding production system,

[00:16:12] Gary Fischer, PE: right?

[00:16:12] Martin Fischer, PhD: Understanding how you make things, how you make the digital things you need to produce, how you make the physical things, how they connected, etc. It was exciting to work with 11 professionals who really wanted to learn this, who were there because they really wanted to be there and not because somebody said this sounds interesting. Maybe check it out. So that was really the most rewarding part because they suffered through, well suffered, I don’t know.

[00:16:43] Gary Fischer, PE: Yeah.

[00:16:44] Martin Fischer, PhD: They endured, they participated, let’s say, in long days with us, PPI and me and an assistant from Stanford. Now we are working with them to bring these methods to practice, because just talking to somebody, yes, is a salt of learning, but then you actually have to do it and get feedback and redo it and get feedback, to really make it part of the work you do.

[00:17:11] Martin Fischer, PhD: That’s our aspiration. We want them to work this way and they want to work this way. So I lookforward.

[00:17:17] Gary Fischer, PE: So they’re going to start by putting into practice the production side or under getting the foundation right and some experience in practicing it. Using that, improving that, and managing that. And then they’ll move on to other things hopefully after that.

[00:17:32] Martin Fischer, PhD: Exactly. So they start by really understanding through production models, production process models, how they’re doing work today.

[00:17:40] Gary Fischer, PE: Yeah.

[00:17:41] Martin Fischer, PhD: Which is already eye opening. It is. As you know once you start to look at it.

[00:17:44] Gary Fischer, PE: Yeah.

[00:17:45] Martin Fischer, PhD: And then we will look at what could you change. Could you adjust the process? Could you change priorities?

[00:17:53] Martin Fischer, PhD: Could you digitize something, make something autonomous, industrialized? We’ll have to see depending on the situation.

[00:18:01] Gary Fischer, PE: Sure, yeah. Well, that’s exciting stuff. It’s gonna be exciting to see where they go. And as we move into new new classes with different student bodies.

[00:18:10] Martin Fischer, PhD: Yes. And certainly also looking forward to bringing that back to the classroom at Stanford and hopefully other classrooms around the world.

[00:18:16] Gary Fischer, PE: Yeah. Yeah. I absolutely agree. So one thing I And they kind of should have asked you this earlier is how did we get to where we are in this in industry? How did the world? You know, if you look at manufacturing, it just blew past where we are in construction. How did we get here? Why did we stay here?

[00:18:34] Martin Fischer, PhD: Yeah, I ask this. I ask myself this question every day, too. I think it has a lot to do with the project based nature of the industry. The way I think about it, at least that’s how I was able to explain it to people at Stanford. Yeah. When we asked for some money for some, an internal project and they said, yeah, but Martin construction industry has a lot of money, so it’s perception.

[00:19:02] Martin Fischer, PhD: Yeah, if this is a good idea, surely they can find it. Yeah. And I said, okay, let’s look at our projects at Sanford.

[00:19:09] Gary Fischer, PE: Mm-Hmm. ,

[00:19:11] Martin Fischer, PhD: we expect every project to give have the lowest price. So that lowest price, somebody prices innovation into that cost, they won’t have the lowest price and they won’t get the project.

[00:19:24] Martin Fischer, PhD: So they won’t be able to do the innovation. Oh,

[00:19:29] Martin Fischer, PhD: . Hmm. Hmm.Maybe we do need to give you money to get started. Right. So I think that has quite a lot to do with it. Having said that, there’s still many clients and many companies, engineering construction companies that have a project based business. So you would.

[00:19:45] Martin Fischer, PhD: So I think the second gap is leadership to create a vision for the company that’s pretty exciting and then make the investments to get there. I know companies are trying, I’m not saying they’re not trying, but I feel like that’s the other part where we could do a better job. But then that goes back to, I think it’s difficult to believe the predictions they make because we don’t have particularly good data about our current production system.

[00:20:14] Gary Fischer, PE: So it’s difficult to say this is the improvement we should get.

[00:20:18] Gary Fischer, PE: Yeah.

[00:20:18] Martin Fischer, PhD: And this is how we will know, say, after six months that we are on the way.

[00:20:23] Gary Fischer, PE: Yeah.

[00:20:23] Martin Fischer, PhD: And so that’s, so I think it goes back to also understanding, better understanding of the current lack of understanding of how things are done.

[00:20:33] Gary Fischer, PE: Yeah. I think that’s at its, at its core. I agree with you. So with this convergent of production management. IOT, machine learning, AI, where do you think, where do you see things going down the road here? Sounds like a pretty exciting place and maybe a little scary place. I don’t know. What are your, what’s your vision?

[00:20:54] Martin Fischer, PhD: Yeah, no, no, I think it’s an exciting place. Take robotics, for example.

[00:20:59] Gary Fischer, PE: Yeah.

[00:21:00] Martin Fischer, PhD: So we’ve been, thanks to my PhD student Cynthia and some of her colleagues, been able to do quite a bit of study. Say, 20s of the use of robotics on site. And so it’s a crew without a robot or a crew with a robot.

[00:21:21] Martin Fischer, PhD: It’s not like crew or robot. So it’s a better tool and actually interesting. When the tool, sorry, when the crew sees the robot as a new tool, typically it gets adopted quite easily. When the crew sees the robot as competition. Then, exactly, you could quickly find ways of not making it work. But what we learned in that comparison is that it’s relatively easy to get data about robotic supported construction.

[00:21:52] Martin Fischer, PhD: Because as the robot works, it also collects data automatically.

[00:21:55] Gary Fischer, PE: Right.

[00:21:56] Martin Fischer, PhD: And then you can kind of figure out the rest. Try to get data on how exactly, how much effort you have in the layout of the hangers for this mechanical system. Well, but yeah, but it’s done by subcontractors here. We could combine it with everything.

[00:22:12] Martin Fischer, PhD: I mean it iscrazy. It’s a lot of effort. And so that goes back to the point of, yeah, we need to understand how we do our work today better. Then we can really bring these innovations. It’s much better to the industry, but these innovations tend to also give us more data. So yeah, it’s a little bit self reinforcing, which I think is great.

[00:22:36] Martin Fischer, PhD: And then with more consistently collected data, I see a chance of using AI methods.

[00:22:42] Gary Fischer, PE: So tell me more

[00:22:42] Martin Fischer, PhD: Because, the application of AI, yeah, depends largely on the quality of the data.

[00:22:50] Gary Fischer, PE: Sure.

[00:22:50] Martin Fischer, PhD: And I should say, because a lot of people are fixated on that and we have to pay attention to that. What you want to learn from it.

[00:22:58] Martin Fischer, PhD: So that’s the other part that I’ve learned is often missing a bit of where we business leaders, operational leaders should articulate better. What is it that you want to find out? How do you want AI to help you? That would clarify the value proposition of AI and maybe provide. to resolve the budget to get better data.

[00:23:21] Martin Fischer, PhD: It’s a little bit of a chicken and egg, I understand. Because I definitely see that we can gain insights into patterns and projects much, much better, with AI tools than we could, we could never do. This was, I had a wake up call in this respect from one of my first sort of AI machine learning projects, over 10 years ago with one of my colleagues, Rajagopal, we were successful in getting a statistically significant sample from PG& E, on both smart meter data for every type of business and homes that PG& E served.

[00:24:00] Martin Fischer, PhD: We preserved anonymity, so nobody needs to worry, but we had a statistically relevant or whatever it’s called, sample, and we wanted to learn how do people actually use electricity? I mean, it’s like, you know, and PG& E told us, nah, you don’t need to worry. We know how people use electricity in California.

[00:24:24] Martin Fischer, PhD: They use, have a peak in the morning and then a bigger peak later in the afternoon, evening. So it’s this kind of double pump use of electricity. Everybody uses electricity. They plant, their whole planning, everything was based on that. This is how we use electricity. Well, we’re scientists. We’d like to, we will trust the data.

[00:24:44] Martin Fischer, PhD: So we did the analysis. And we did see that, indeed, 14 percent of the customers used electricity this way.

[00:24:50] Gary Fischer, PE: 14 percent?

00:24:21] Martin Fischer, PhD: 14 percent, 86 percent of the customers use electricity in other ways. They’re totally different. They’ve got all kinds of patterns all over the place. We needed 200 patterns. We had 66 million consumption days and we needed to 200 patterns to explain like, you know, the 66 million days.

[00:25:13] Martin Fischer, PhD: So it was not 66 million things. It was not two patterns, whatever. So that was also a question we had, like how many patterns are there? Because then you can start to learn, like, where do we see this pattern? Where do we see this pattern? When do you see this pattern? Right. And that’s when you could make better planning.

[00:25:28] Martin Fischer, PhD: So this goes back to production systems, understanding what’s going on. You can see, is it okay? Can I change something about it? Yeah. And then you can make a better prediction, you can make a better resource allocation and that’s where you then become more cost effective.

[00:25:43] Gary Fischer, PE: So I think I hear you say

[00:25:45] Martin Fischer, PhD: So it’s totally impossible for us to look at 66 million data points and say, ah, these are the 200 patterns.

[00:25:51] Martin Fischer, PhD: But the machine can help us with this. And I suspect there might be something like this in our industry as well.

[00:25:58] Gary Fischer, PE: Yeah, but I, but I also hear you saying is, gee, just connecting AI up to existing systems, You’re probably not going to get anywhere, because we have really poor data.

[00:26:07] Martin Fischer, PhD: We have poor data, and the system will be also totally different if you use an AI based database method.

[00:26:14] Gary Fischer, PE: Right.

[00:26:16] Martin Fischer, PhD: So, um, yeah, that’s a bit of the conundrum today.

[00:26:19] Gary Fischer, PE: You’re not going to get anywhere. Or you’re going to make it easier to do the wrong thing.

[00:26:24] Martin Fischer, PhD: Yeah, we do more, we can be more efficient in doing

[00:26:28] Gary Fischer, PE: visualization of a lot of things just makes it easier to do the wrong thing.

[00:26:31] Martin Fischer, PhD: Yes, that’s always in the back of my mind when we do work or when we do research.

[00:26:35] Martin Fischer, PhD: Yeah. Is, is automating this really good? Because I find automating forces you, as I mentioned before, forces you to be very clear about how something works.

[00:26:46] Gary Fischer, PE: Yeah.

[00:26:46] Martin Fischer, PhD: Otherwise you can’t automate it. And so it’s a good scientific instrument. And if you succeed, you have something that’s a business value.

[00:26:54] Martin Fischer, PhD: Um, and so there, but I do question, like, should this just be eliminated? Or should we actually automate it?

[00:26:59] Gary Fischer, PE: Automate it.

[00:27:03] Martin Fischer, PhD:  Yeah.

[00:27:05] Gary Fischer, PE: Interesting.

[00:27:08] Martin Fischer, PhD:  And I think that’s a, that’s a key question as we think about the use of AI. But, I mean, we have to get to more use of robotics and AI and these kinds of methods. Because I don’t see. Anybody, anywhere in the world that says, yes, we have people that are willing to put in five, ten years in the trenches to learn the business and every aspect of it. We simply have to find ways of making engineering and project managers, construction managers, more efficient, effective, without increasing the risk, more quickly.

[00:27:38] Gary Fischer, PE: So where do you see the limitations to robotics? Are there limits? Where are we going with that?

[00:27:46] Martin Fischer, PhD: So the robotics people at Stanford tell me, uh, that it’ll still be a while till robots can fully autonomously navigate complex environment, construction, like a construction site. But can they, can they support us?

[00:28:00] Martin Fischer, PhD: Can they take away dangerous work, etc? Absolutely. I mean, that’s what we saw in a roughly 20 case studies we have done. The quality and the safety was better in all those cases.

[00:28:12] Gary Fischer, PE: All of them?

[00:28:13] Martin Fischer, PhD: All of them.

[00:28:14] Gary Fischer, PE: Wow.

[00:28:16] Martin Fischer, PhD: And money and time was a mixed bag. Might be early, so I’m not surprised. But it was really eye opening for us to see.

[00:28:23] Gary Fischer, PE: Quality and safety matter. There’s a cost of both.

[00:28:26] Martin Fischer, PhD: Exactly, exactly. Yeah. So, I would be really surprised if we didn’t see more and more.

[00:28:36] Gary Fischer, PE: Is it the building industry that’s making more, most rapid gains in using robotics, or is there any particular industry?

[00:28:43] Martin Fischer, PhD: I would say, um, I was really stunned in infrastructure. I think I see opportunities, big opportunities in infrastructure. And also in industrial. Because there’s a bit more typical kinds of works. Take a tunnel. Of course each tunnel is a bit unique. In other words, there’s a lot of parallels between a tunnel, between two tunnels. And I was really stunned in terms of the level of mechanization and automation that already exists in the machines there and the data that’s being collected.

[00:29:11] Martin Fischer, PhD: So there’s one operator can achieve a lot more now than when I studied tunneling, many years ago. So the work still looks very much the same if you sort of went to a project in 1985. And today, you still see many of the same machines, etc. But how they actually work is dramatically different. So that, for me, made me think, okay, that’ll probably happen in the, in the building sector as well, but probably in industrial facilities first, I would expect.

[00:29:41] Gary Fischer, PE: Yeah. Interesting. Is there anything in particular that I’m leaving out that you’d like me to explore?

[00:29:45] Martin Fischer, PhD: Um, I mean, should we talk a bit more about sort of the next generation and attracting, uh, yes, good people. I mean, always here on the work on the blue and white color side.

[00:29:59] Gary Fischer, PE: Yeah,

[00:29:59] Martin Fischer, PhD: I keep hearing that. And yes, I understand. It’s a challenge, but it’s, uh, um, also, we just dive into it.

[00:30:10] Gary Fischer, PE: Yeah, no, that’s a good one. We just explore that.

[00:30:11] Martin Fischer, PhD: Okay.

[00:30:14] Gary Fischer, PE: So when you look at. All the work the world wants to get done and the people that we have to do it, there’s the disconnect.

[00:30:21] Martin Fischer, PhD: Yes.

[00:30:22] Gary Fischer, PE: And the construction industry is definitely not attractive to many early career folks who want to, you know, a career in construction, it’s like, oh, it’s kind of hit or miss.

[00:30:31] Gary Fischer, PE: So where do you see us going with it? That’s a really big threat.

[00:30:34] Martin Fischer, PhD: Yeah.

[00:30:35] Gary Fischer, PE: And what can we do about it?

[00:30:38] Martin Fischer, PhD: I mean, it’s actually crazy pretty much every day, right?

[00:30:44] Martin Fischer, PhD: Our industry makes society possible, the way we live possible.

[00:30:49] Gary Fischer, PE: Yeah.

[00:30:49] Martin Fischer, PhD: And I haven’t met many people who say, yeah, I’d like to go back to making fires in the cave, you know? So no, and that we are not able to communicate that to the next generation. It’s just crazy. In my mind, I mean, that’s a little quick soapbox.

[00:31:08] Martin Fischer, PhD: If professional organizations did one thing. That’s what they should do.

[00:31:14] Martin Fischer, PhD: American society, civil engineers, take whatever you, take whatever society. They should just focus on explaining the importance. I know they try to, but they are doing it generally in too old fashioned a way. Which is really a bit sad, which also tells me people, the leaders there need to understand better where we are actually going in a way that attracts the next generation.

[00:31:37] Martin Fischer, PhD: Um, and the same is true on the blue collar side. So, um, Something I need to work on, maybe something we should work on together, is really communicating the exciting work, the contribution our industry makes, and then the exciting work, and the future, that a really great future in terms of getting rid of many of the dirty, dangerous disease that are typically associated with our industry.

[00:32:10] Gary Fischer, PE: That prevent people from. Wanting to come into the industry.

[00:32:12] Martin Fischer, PhD: Exactly

[00:32:13] Gary Fischer, PE: Because the nature of the job can be different, then it’s been in the past.

[00:32:17] Martin Fischer, PhD: Because we saw that, now for the last few years as we have been doing a workforce VDC program every once in a while in Santa Clara County. So focused on sort of everybody that teaches blue collar and their management community colleges apprenticeship programs, etc and and, the kids are actually kind of, kids, high school kids typically are, kind of happy to explore, or at least enough of them, but the bottleneck is their parents.

[00:32:45] Martin Fischer, PhD: They’re like, what? Construction? Well, that’s not, why would you want to do that, right? And I don’t mean to sound arrogant here, but it’s, it’s good when they can say, hey, I’m going to Stanford for a BIM class this Saturday to learn about construction, in terms of the perception of the parents.

[00:33:04] Gary Fischer, PE: Yeah.

[00:33:04] Martin Fischer, PhD: Um, and I think more places around the country, the world, um, should do, can elevate, the reputation, exactly. That this is, yeah. Um, so that’s a small thing that maybe we could do more of.

[00:33:19] Gary Fischer, PE: Yeah, I’ve had some real interesting conversations with several early career folks who are in the trades.

[00:33:26] Gary Fischer, PE: And were going to college, decided they didn’t really like that and have gone into the trade and said, well, why did you do that? And said, you know, I like the work. I’m getting a paycheck. I see stability in my life. I know where I’m going to work. I can have a kind of a normal life and I’m happy. And it’s like, wow, you know, we need to find a way to capitalize on that message or that thinking and get it out more broadly.

[00:33:51] Martin Fischer, PhD: Yeah.

[00:33:51] Gary Fischer, PE: Somehow.

[00:33:52] Martin Fischer, PhD: Yes.

[00:33:54] Gary Fischer, PE: We need it.

[00:34:00] Martin Fischer, PhD: And if that’s what you like, even in 10 years or 20 years, fine. If you want to grow into management or design. It’s absolutely still possible.

[00:34:06] Gary Fischer, PE: Oh, that’s right. You know, I think, I really like your idea about your robotics and IT assisting people to do the work.

[00:34:16] Gary Fischer, PE: Because I can imagine, well, I just recently saw a major contractor who is really using automation digital technology in their earth moving equipment. And it’s a very different job being an operator there. Because you’re sitting in a control room and you’re operating a machine that’s remote.

[00:34:34] Martin Fischer, PhD: Yeah.

[00:34:34] Gary Fischer, PE: And it’s like, wow, you know, I never thought of that.

[00:34:37] Martin Fischer, PhD: Everything you learn about gaming.

[00:34:39] Gary Fischer, PE: Exactly

[00:34:40] Martin Fischer, PhD: You can use

[00:34:41] Gary Fischer, PE: You’re playing to the strengths of what, in the interest of a different generation.

[00:34:44] Martin Fischer, PhD: Yeah.

[00:34:44] Gary Fischer, PE: That could be very powerful.

[00:34:46] Martin Fischer, PhD: That was also an eye opening experience as I was watching my son. Games may be enough, let’s put it.

[00:34:52] Gary Fischer, PE: Yeah, Understand that.

[00:34:53] Martin Fischer, PhD: Yeah. Um, so at some point I said, okay, you know, my wife was a little bit critical because I spend too much time outside. Right. And I’m like, well, I see you interact with a lot of people. Um, let me understand before I criticize, let me try to understand. I said, okay, Brandon, take me through.

[00:35:13] Martin Fischer, PhD: What happens here?

[00:35:14] Gary Fischer, PE: Yeah.

[00:35:15] Martin Fischer, PhD: And I said, well, we should actually do work this way.

[00:35:17] Gary Fischer, PE: Really?

[00:35:18] Martin Fischer, PhD: Because, okay, so I’m on a mission, I become part of a team, we have a clear goal for the mission. It’s visible. Our progress towards the mission is clear at every moment. The role of everybody on the team is totally clear.

[00:35:36] Gary Fischer, PE: And different.

[00:35:37] Martin Fischer, PhD: And different. And the contribution everybody is making is visible. I hear, I see what they do. I get the data and I listen to what they say. I learn quickly. Can I trust this person or not? Because these things have to come together. And so we get feedback. We learn rapidly. And I was like, what the heck?

[00:36:01] Martin Fischer, PhD: Imagine, imagine a crew in the field or an engineering team being able to work this way. The objective is clear. Mostly, it’s not so clear or misaligned. We are really clear about the roles of the team members and why they are needed for this objective. Yeah, so so, right? And we get rapid feedback on the individual and team performance, and we together figure out how we make it better, like, as we work.

[00:36:28] Martin Fischer, PhD: So

[00:36:29] Gary Fischer, PE: So.

[00:36:29] Martin Fischer, PhD: So so, right? Yeah. So I thought, okay.

[00:36:31] Gary Fischer, PE: That’s a really interesting observation.

[00:36:33] Martin Fischer, PhD: This approach would be not make work worse, at least, using Swiss understatement.

[00:36:40] Gary Fischer, PE: We should be able to capitalize on that.

[00:36:41] Martin Fischer, PhD: So we should be able to capitalize on that. But I’m a little bit hopeful now with augmented reality, becoming much more less obtrusive and more out of the box, that we could get there.

[00:36:51] Martin Fischer, PhD: This is something like a dream project I have. I mean, the focus has been on sort of checking, did you build the thing that is in the design? Fine. Um, but let’s also understand building information model as a building process model and learning how a crew is advancing towards what they need to do and how they’re doing, and then see where do we need to support them, where do we need to help them.

[00:37:16] Martin Fischer, PhD: I saw this in place a little bit. The best I’ve seen so far was in this, offsite model or offsite fabrication facility. I mean a company called BoKlok. Built smartly in Swedish, which is a joint venture between Ikea and Skanska.

[00:37:32] Gary Fischer, PE: Okay.

[00:37:32] Martin Fischer, PhD: And they build affordable homes, 3D modules.

[00:37:35] Gary Fischer, PE: Yeah.

[00:37:36] Martin Fischer, PhD: And, I had a pleasure to visit them a few months ago, see their updated production facility, which includes some robotics and, but not only robotics. And so they’ve made a few changes to an earlier visit since I was there before. One thing that, I thought was really interesting is they changed from a worker being part of only one production step to sort of a crew being in charge of several steps. And then they also give total process visibility, to that crew in terms of its steps and how the whole factory is working, the other crews that are responsible for several steps. So you can see right away in the crew, Oh, over there is yellow.

[00:38:19] Martin Fischer, PhD: But we know how to do that so let’s go help over there because otherwise before we know it it’s red and then we are stuck and the whole factory is stuck.

[00:38:26] Martin Fischer, PhD: So this, they’re really able to push decision making down through multi skilling and process, rapid process feedback.

[00:38:34] Gary Fischer, PE: And they have real time information.

[00:38:35] Martin Fischer, PhD: Yes, real time information, exactly.

[00:38:36] Gary Fischer, PE: Huge.

[00:38:37] Martin Fischer, PhD: And making it visible to, to everybody.

[00:38:39] Gary Fischer, PE: Yeah.

[00:38:40] Martin Fischer, PhD: And so the other thing they also brought in is, yeah, everybody has suggestion boxes, like what ideas. They implemented in the first year something like 300 or 350 or 500 ideas that were given.

[00:38:55] Martin Fischer, PhD: The workforce, everybody has their head in the game. I think it’s, to me it looked like a much more attractive off site fabrication environment than I had seen before.

[00:39:07] Gary Fischer, PE: That’s really interesting.

[00:39:09] Martin Fischer, PhD: And it again it shows this combination of, right, there’s digitalization some automation.

[00:39:13] Gary Fischer, PE: Yeah

[00:39:13] Martin Fischer, PhD: And but understanding the production system and how to make it better how.

[00:39:18] Gary Fischer, PE: How to make it better, yeah, that’s the key.

[00:39:21] Martin Fischer, PhD:  Yeah, we’re not just having a point solution here and there

[00:39:23] Gary Fischer, PE: Or doing out of gut feel.

[00:39:25] Martin Fischer, PhD: Yeah

[00:39:26] Gary Fischer, PE: Yeah for sure. Wow, that’s really insightful. That’s really good. This is it’s been a fascinating conversation I’m sure we can go on for another hour.

[00:39:35] Gary Fischer, PE: So this fall Stanford and PPI are going to do something special together.

[00:39:39] Gary Fischer, PE: We appreciate the invitation, gracious invitation you gave us to host our annual symposium at your facilities.

[00:39:45] Gary Fischer, PE: Any thoughts about the upcoming symposium?

[00:39:49] Martin Fischer, PhD: Yeah, I think it’s great that you are putting a lot of energy into this annual event, which my knowledge is really the premier event globally.

[00:39:59] Martin Fischer, PhD: I’m looking forward to it. Project Production Management a much, much needed topic. In my mind, the most needed topic these days. We are super excited, um, to collaborate even more on the upcoming symposium. Show a little bit of what we’re doing, but also learn from, your network.

[00:40:20] Gary Fischer, PE: I’m excited about the opportunity of just doing it at Stanford. On the doors that that’s going to open for our audience to maybe get a little peek into some things like the robotics laboratory or other things that we still got to work out. So I’m really excited about that. I think it’s going to be a really interesting symposium.

[00:40:37] Martin Fischer, PhD: Same here. So we also always get feedback, from looks on people’s faces, the questions they say, the surprises they have, etc. So very excited.

[00:40:46] Gary Fischer, PE: Very good. Martin, thank you so much for spending as graciously giving us your time today. And we look forward to continuing to work together in partnership.

[00:40:54] Martin Fischer, PhD: Yep. Very much.

[00:40:55] Gary Fischer, PE: Thank you.

[00:40:55] Martin Fischer, PhD: Same here. Thanks.