Sowing Seeds of Change in the AEC Landscape with Kelli Lubeley

To kickstart Season 4 of the Future Construct Podcast, Women in Construction Week, and Women's History Month, we highlight some of the industry's most influential women. Unlock the secrets to revolutionizing construction workflows and saving costs as we sit down with the trailblazing Kelli Lubeley from Cupertino Electric Inc. From her beginnings in drafting to her current role as a Construction Technology Manager, Kelli's insights are a goldmine for anyone keen on understanding the intersection of technology and construction. Her personal drive to optimize processes and mentorship in the field of BIM has not only reshaped her company’s standards but has also set a benchmark for the industry.

Journey with us through the unexpected lessons of tomato gardening and the steadfast pursuit of rock hunting, drawing parallels to architecture and construction. These narratives are more than just hobbies; they're a testament to the importance of innovation and sustainability in our industry. The stories of change management in the garden and the meticulous craft of turning rocks into jewelry mirror the precision and adaptability required in AEC. These reflections serve as a reminder that growth, whether in nature or technology, demands patience and a willingness to adapt.

Finally, we take a visionary leap into the future of construction design, where virtual reality and mind-to-display technologies are just around the corner. With Kelli Lubeley's expertise, we discuss the transformative potential these tools hold for architects, engineers, and construction professionals. Join us for this compelling exploration into the innovations that are set to redefine the way we conceive and construct the spaces of tomorrow.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:27

Welcome to Future Construct. I'm Mark Oden, the CEO of Ben Designs Inc and guest host of Future Construct. Today I'm hosting Kelly Lubili, construction technology manager at Cupertino Electric Inc. Welcome, kelly. Thank you for making the time to join me.

Speaker 1: 0:40

Thanks, I'm excited to be here. As you've moved into the AEC industry, you've serendipitously discovered unique opportunities that ignited your passion for standards and consistency, particularly in how they enhance the user experience. Over the years, you've embraced these opportunities and even carved out new ones for yourself, transforming your passion into a fulfilling career. During your career, you've had many notable accomplishments. You've reduced BIM related expenses, revitalizing project workflows for a $750,000 annual cost savings. You've implemented cutting-edge data management systems across 20-plus technologies, developing robust technical standards. You've achieved a 20% reduction in total project man-hours, resulting in cost savings while increasing deliverable value by 50%. And you've also improved job satisfaction and streamlined technical processes, reducing average user downtime by 40%. Those are amazing accomplishments and I'm very proud of you, kelly.

Speaker 1: 1:37

Over the course of our conversation, I'd love to take a deeper dive into those accomplishments to understand how they've impacted your career. With so much experience, you're continually and positively influencing the digital construction market. Thank you for all your many contributions in the AEC space, kelly. To get started with your extensive experience in the AEC industry, I'd first love to learn more of your story and what led you to the industry and ultimately to where you are today at Cupertino Electric.

Speaker 2: 2:06

Yeah, absolutely. I really got my initial introduction in high school when my school offered a hand-drafting class as kind of just an elective and I really really enjoyed it. It ended up taking all the electives that they had available. We didn't have had technology in place yet, but it did exist at the time and I ended up taking a different path out of high school and came back around in my mid-20s to see what AutoCAD was about, take a couple of CAD classes and see if that was a path that I would be interested in.

Speaker 2: 2:42

And my very first job immediately working as an architectural drafter, I just absolutely found that it felt easier for my work. I felt more organized, like I could help and be more effective if I provided myself some structure around what I was doing. And the architect I worked for at the time allowed me to kind of step into that space and create standards, create some kind of formal processes for our company, and it really just absolutely became this passion that I found, which I enjoyed. I didn't even realize it was really an option as a career or anything like that, but I did get to move from there into learning Revit just actually as a originally marketed, as a vision excuse me, a review tool, a way to look at the model and sort of analyze the model, and I jumped at the chance because it looked like a lot of fun and it turned out that a lot of higher education was starting to move that direction. So the community college where I had taken my classes asked me to write some curriculum so that they could propose teaching it. When they did, they actually came back and asked me to teach the course. So I got into doing training that way and I found that that was very, very rewarding.

Speaker 2: 4:09

And after having been a trainer or technically a teacher at the community college, having done some Revit work, I was asked to be a BIM manager and I didn't know it until I was asked. But I realized this is what I want to do, this is kind of what I want to be when I grow up and it's just sort of kind of continually advanced from there where, okay, what are other things that I can do? That kind of help people and put things in place that make the job easier? So I made the leap from working design the manager over to construction. I worked for GC for a while and then Cupertino asked me to come work for them.

Speaker 2: 4:50

I actually started working on a couple of projects so that I could get familiar with the kind of construction side of the world and just kind of the electrical too, because my background was in architecture and BIM and now my current role is BIM program manager. The majority of my duties revolve around standards, processes, documentation and training for a BIM department, and I also work outside of my official title. I do a lot of construction technology management within the company where especially things that I'm quite familiar with, familiar with like project management and document management tools, I will work with another department that wants to implement a process, bring in a new technology, things like that, to just help advance the users in other areas as well.

Speaker 1: 5:43

I love it. Thank you so much, Kelly. How's speaking of serendipitously finding your way? It's so true, and I love how it also came full circle, too, where you're again focused on standards and processes, and that seems to be your true calling.

Speaker 2: 5:56

It is. I really love it, so, so much. It's a true passion of mine that I would have never known existed if I didn't get start, start to work in the industry too and experience the frustrations of of others. You know, I went through the same thing that they did when I first started and I think to me that's that's what drives me to do it and it's I joke a lot with people but I say you know, I don't do what I love, we, everybody's just do what you love, and you won't work a day in your life.

Speaker 2: 6:23

I'm like there's a lot of things I love. I love pet, I love my pets, I love my hobbies. You know, I love my partner, all sorts of things, but those things don't translate into work very well. But what I am passionate about, what I will argue with somebody every day, no matter how frustrated I get about my job, is how important it is to help other people be successful at their jobs. And so that's how I knew, kind of what to do and the direction that I wanted my career to go, and so far has fairly successfully gone that way.

Speaker 1: 6:55

So cool. The other thing I, the other thing I really value is that you've you've got your hands dirty when joining Cupertino and said, hey, let me work on those, those electrical projects, so I can, you know, I can really learn the tools of the trade, if you will, or the trade itself.

Speaker 2: 7:10

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think a critical part of being on any team, honestly is epistemic humility. It's a big fancy word, I learned it from an NPR?

Speaker 1: 7:20

Yeah, help me understand that one. You learned it from what?

Speaker 2: 7:23

I learned it from an NPR episode. Oh cool, but it was. It was a great show and it's went through and to me it had just really resonated because it's something I think our industry struggles with a lot, which is acknowledging that you don't know what you don't know and being able to work with that, because it takes a lot of confidence to get done what we need to get done in the construction world, and a lot of times that also translates into ego, which is where we start to struggle, right when we say I can do something or I know enough about this to get it done, when maybe we don't. And that's where you know.

Speaker 2: 8:02

The area that I like to work in is hey, I know this part, like I'm not going to pretend to know exactly what a project manager goes through every day or exactly what a superintendent or an superintendent or even an installer goes through every day, but I've done work on projects to get a better idea and I want you to tell me, as a user, in whatever role I'm working with at that time.

Speaker 2: 8:27

You tell me what it takes to be a project manager and what is going to make your life easier, and I'll work with technology and standards and training to help you be more successful in that, and that's, I think, one of the bonuses of my job, but also one of the challenges of the type of work that I do and where we run into how we get to the future of construction in the industry is getting someone who's maybe a C-suite or a site superintendent versus the foreman to acknowledge that they're not as familiar with the experience of another person or a different area of the industry that they haven't worked in and bring in an expert or someone who has that experience to assist, as opposed to attempting to kind of fumble through it or confidence their way through it.

Speaker 1: 9:36

Yeah, thank you for sharing that. Kelly, appreciate your focus and you call that epistemic humility. Epistemic humility yes, great, that's something for me to research. I love that. So I really want to talk about your accomplishments and your stories behind those accomplishments, and I'm really excited to talk about the love of the hobbies that you have. From the pre-show research, I know that you've taken up gardening and that you see this as a big science experiment, including, which creates that unique perspective. How do you see the principles of experimentation, continuous learning and your gardening hobby translating into your approach of tackling technological challenges and industry challenges?

Speaker 2: 10:18

You know that's an excellent question and I think it translates over extremely well. And it's humbling for me, in both my professional career and as a hobby gardener, that you know we can always try something different. But if you're not careful about how you try something different, you can't be confident with the results and make those repeatable. Because you know I can go in to a project and I can change out the technology that they're using and they do it successfully. But I also change the standards and I changed the people that were interacting with it at a rudimentary level and I changed the process right. And so I go to another project and I try to repeat that and it doesn't always work Because I changed too many variables. And gardening frequently reminds me of that, because you know, maybe I didn't get a good crop of tomatoes this year. I actually didn't. My tomato struggled this year and tomatoes are interesting.

Speaker 2: 11:24

They're always abundant, but you also get a lot of varied results. And you know, I realized that last year they grew really well, but I changed too many things. So now I'm not sure why they didn't grow well, because I changed which of my raised beds that they were in, which is a recommendation to cycle your beds. I also changed what other plants were around them, which also has an effect on how well the individual plants grow. I added more pets to my household, which of course you know pets that go outside tend to be a little bit nosy and kind of get into things and they make it a little bit more challenging. And then I also changed my watering habits that I had to because of the drought that we had this year, and so it just became too many things that changed from this year to last year to be able to say, oh, the problem is this, and now I can move forward and have better results.

Speaker 2: 12:18

When I plant my tomatoes, it's coming here, and that is a constant back and forth to me as much as I do that in gardening it's. You know, if I want to see a difference, if I want to see growing, I have to limit my variables, and it's the same thing when we take changes into the workplace right, any kind of change management. I know we usually talk about that in terms of change orders and project changes, but to me change management also applies at that corporate level or that program level where if I change the technology and I change the process and I change the people, well, there's no way to know what was the, either the factor that caused, you know, the success or the lack of success.

Speaker 2: 13:01

So that I can then make improvements moving forward.

Speaker 1: 13:04

Beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing that. I love the correlation. I'm also excited to get into a second major hobby of yours, which is which is rock hunting. So tell me about rock hunting. I've never heard of it, I don't know about it. I'm super excited to hear about this. This this.

Speaker 2: 13:20

I feel like this is pinnacle nerdness right here. So this has been a family tradition of mine since my grandparents started, when they started dating, and it was much bigger back in the 30s, 40s and 50s. We're a very nature loving family, and rock hunting is literally going out into nature and finding interesting rocks and minerals. So you know, a lot of people enjoy the beauty, the math, the you know beliefs that can be placed on different types of minerals, how they're formed, things like that. So that is what I do.

Speaker 2: 13:59

I actually just took a trip over New Year's out to West Texas to a one of the largest ranches in the world I believe it's half a million acres and they they have a small group of people that they work with to pick up agates. And you know I'm just constantly fascinated by all of the, the geometry that goes into how different types of minerals are formed, all the colors that can show up based on the conditions that happen, things like that. And then I also, extending it into an even crazier hobby will take those rocks and minerals sometimes and cut and polish them to be used in jewelry Beautiful, very cool. So have you made jewelry out?

Speaker 1: 14:42

of it.

Speaker 2: 14:45

I have about three pieces so far that I've made. I'm still learning the silver smithing part. That parts a little bit more in depth. But the, the rockhounding is where I've pretty much been doing that my whole life and sometimes it's, you know, just a half hour drive. Other times it's, you know, hours in a weekend out somewhere picking up you know, fluorite or quartz in Arkansas or, like said, agate in West Texas. So there's a lot of different kinds of different minerals that are that are interesting and beautiful to me Very cool and you mentioned the math behind it.

Speaker 1: 15:17

So I imagine there's repeated geometric structures and things like that. Have you, have you dug into further the math or the structure of?

Speaker 2: 15:26

Oh, there is so many different structures and there's a lot behind the chemistry and the physics of what happens with with the different minerals as they form. Manel, my favorite mineral, is fluorite. It most commonly forms in kind of cubes, and so I think it looks very starting, startlingly geometric and not really something that a lot of us assume we would see in nature. Right Rocks are kind of these rounded boulders or these really jagged edges, and these are a bunch of cubes that are kind of like stacked up and overlapping and there's very obvious math done to where it almost looks like it couldn't be done by nature, but it is, and I just find that so fascinating that you can get different size cubes slightly different. There's what's called etching, that kind of shows the different lines of how things are rode over time, and then you get the whole spectrum of colors based on what other minerals may have been seeping in at the time while those crystals were forming. So it's a lot, yeah, and there's definitely some math and some science to dive into with it as well.

Speaker 1: 16:28

Sure, and I'm starting to see the tie-in back to the start of your career in architectural design. That's so cool. Yes, absolutely. How do you feel like this hobby ties into your perspective on sustainability and environmental considerations within the AEC industry, especially with the excitement of treasure hunting as a metaphor for discovering innovative solutions?

Speaker 2: 16:51

Yeah, I mean, and honestly, when people ask me what rock-counting is like, I usually describe it as treasure hunting or hiking with a backpack or with a hiking and adding weight to your backpack.

Speaker 1: 17:03

You can't just pick it up heavier and heavier rocks until you can't carry anymore.

Speaker 2: 17:07

But yeah, it is a lot like treasure hunting, where you find a place where you think there's going to be minerals.

Speaker 2: 17:12

You go out to that area, you search around. Sometimes you find what you're looking for and sometimes you don't. To me, the benefit along the way is the actual journey itself, and I know that that sounds so cheesy and trite, but it's really true, and I think that applies to how we decide to make things better for the users in the industry is. I may start with a journey to implement a particular tool, a document management tool, for our field team, and along that journey what I find is that document management maybe isn't what suits them, or the tool that they had in mind isn't the best tool for the job, and so to me it's very similar in that looking for that perfect treasure, that perfect mineral or specimen that I would love to have at home is the same as finding that thing that fits just perfect with the technology that we need, or the tweak to the process to fit in to help the users that are getting the jobs done, that are working on the projects.

Speaker 1: 18:22

Very cool. Yeah, thanks for sharing. And then also, I know that I've introduced you as the construction technology manager at Cooper-Tino Electric and you mentioned that is a part of your responsibilities and your proper role title is BIM Program Manager. In the context of acting as construction technology manager or BIM Program Manager, you successfully mentored and trained over a thousand users, which is an incredible career feat, and you mentioned earlier your passion for training and helping others grow in their industry and in their field. Can you share a particularly challenging training scenario that you've encountered and how you successfully enhance the team capabilities and streamline workflows through mentorship?

Speaker 2: 19:04

Ooh boy, I think you know I actually ended up having some very similar experiences. But I had one particular project where we were implementing just some basic standards as far as kind of the data points that were being entered and how we wanted to format the data. And I had one particular user on the project who was just not used to using technology. Their age kind of put them out of, kind of that natural introduction or immersion into technology, and so there was, you know, initially a lot of resistance to the idea of making the change, and I think that's very typical, right? We have all different types of personalities, all different kinds of experiences and skill sets.

Speaker 2: 19:52

When I worked with this individual person, what I did was I spent a lot of time outside of our actual training sessions. I would do group training sessions. I told the individual like you can attain a chain, excuse me, attend the training sessions if you would like, but let's do this instead. I said you know, I think what might be helpful is for us to have someone on one time together, because you're, you know the training session overall, you're just gonna have really different questions and you know, what do you think of that? He was particularly. He said no, I think that would be really helpful, and so he did not attend the training sessions. We did that with the group overall and then I met with him individually to kind of slow the training down a little bit and focus on different things, because he understood the content and how to get his job done, but it was literally a matter of more of understanding the true picks and clicks right.

Speaker 2: 20:46

Why do I click on this? Things that we don't think about too much anymore, like what is a tap versus a click, what is a right click versus a left click we don't talk in those terms anymore. But there are still people that need that type of training and I think also we didn't discuss it directly. But I think, especially for people that struggle with technology and get put into a situation where they kind of feel forced into it, there's a level of pride that's attached to it and a level of dignity that needs to be preserved for them to make sure that they feel like people are still acknowledging their expertise and not dismissing that because they happen to not be familiar with how to use an iPad or where to go on an Android phone to find a setting, things like that. So that's what I try and find ways to get to that and I think that was one time where it actually worked pretty well was reducing the challenges that that person was experiencing, but also being able to get them the training they needed to be successful.

Speaker 1: 21:57

I love that so much, kelly, as you were sharing that story. I thought in multiple instances in my life where the teacher stepped out of the classroom to help me one-on-one and really spent probably much of their own personal time to make sure that I understood the topic at hand and moved past it, and each one of those moments in my life were pivotal for the life that I've led, and so I really commend you and all the teachers out there that understand the challenges of each individual and really focus in to help each person outside of a group setting if that's needed.

Speaker 2: 22:29

Thanks. I actually was just sharing with a friend yesterday. I aspire to always be a teacher. I used to be married to a high school teacher and had a lot of friends that teach high school, grade school et cetera, and I still think, as much as I do corporate training, that that's another level that I haven't hit yet of being able to do that. And teaching being a true teacher is about focusing on each student and getting the student what it is they need to succeed, not about how much you know about the topic or what someone expects of you or this nice universal idea that everybody is at this exact benchmark. It's setting the student up for success and in most cases that means doing some individual work with them, because everybody's different.

Speaker 1: 23:20

Yeah, beautiful words that can be applied at the journeyman level teaching an apprentice or at the manager level, at the executive level, and certainly for teachers. Yeah, thank you for that contribution. Additionally, I understand that you've been able to reduce BIM related expenses by $750,000 annually. That's an astounding number. I don't know what the super set budget was, but sign me up in any case. Could you walk us through the specific strategies or initiatives you implemented to revitalize project workflows and achieve such significant cost savings?

Speaker 2: 23:57

Absolutely, and so that particular number comes from actually one implementation. That was done.

Speaker 1: 24:04

Oh incredible.

Speaker 2: 24:05

That was a single technology that was introduced for the BIM modelers, and I think one of the things that we struggle with a lot is we constantly get little, tiny things added to our plate. We don't always realize that, oh, hey, could you throw this on the drawings? Or oh, while you're installing this, could you just do this part real quick. And we do that a lot because we wanna be team players. Most people are there for it to get the job done, but it starts to add up after a while, and one of the challenges that we've seen, especially over the last few years, is that those little things have gotten individually bigger and there's gotten to be more of them as we have this exponential growth in technology in the industry. And so now, instead of, oh, hey, could you give me a little bit more information about these racks that we're gonna install so that I can make sure I get them built correctly? Now it's gone from that to about 10 different levels of these questions for just a little bit more that now we're saying, hey, I need a full-on prefabrication deliverable that I can give to my shop guys, and then I need the install deliverable that I can give to the guys out in the field to take the assemblies and install them out in the field. But we don't always realize that step one and step 10 is really one big implementation that we need to do because we're getting asked these little questions along the way and I recently had the opportunity to sit down and look at kind of those steps that we had been asked and when and where we had been asked.

Speaker 2: 25:38

Lots of projects were asking for different things based on the project needs and location and type of construction, and so what we did was we made a large investment in an add-in that specifically helps with our prefabrication effort, and then I also brought in our prefabrication manager and our senior manager that sits over BIM, prefabrication and pre-con to sit down and create formal, structured deliverables to provide to our prefab department that come out of our Revit model.

Speaker 2: 26:13

And so by doing that, what we did was reduced all of the unexpected asks that were happening on every single project into this.

Speaker 2: 26:24

You can tell me up front do you want prefab deliverables from us or are you guys gonna kind of do your own thing outside of BIM and all they have to do is say, yes, we would love those deliverables and we have a plan in place that immediately tells them exactly what to do every step along the way. And by doing that, we've reduced the amount of time that we spend on placing hangers, updating hangers, working with trench card supports, things like that, so it's really facilitated taking out all those things that we get asked for here and there and combining them into one unified thing that says even if you don't ask for it, we have this for you and we can give it to you. And by doing it this way, it cuts the cost of the step that we were doing here, the step that we were doing here, the step that we were doing here, and really combines them into a process as opposed to a bunch of favors.

Speaker 1: 27:17

Have you shared that larger story and the specific implementation or integration that you did on, maybe on the conference stage or publicly somewhere that the listeners could look into?

Speaker 2: 27:27

I haven't yet. We have talked a little bit about it. We are trying to get a C-suite approval to be a little bit more open about the exact numbers and results of that story.

Speaker 1: 27:39

Very cool. Well, when you do, let us know and we'll help you get the word out Absolutely, thank you. So I would love to understand about how you work to reduce total project man hours and increase deliverable value. The BIM process has been shown to save upwards of 40 percent of the construction budget. How integral was that into your reduction of the man hours and delivering the value?

Speaker 2: 28:05

Yeah, it's always very integral because for me, the things that we're looking for are, or should always be, focused on one how do we get the deliverable but two, how do we make it easier for the end user?

Speaker 2: 28:17

And if you don't take both of those into consideration, one or the other can get extremely out of control in in a way that's going to negatively impact your project. So we actually had a parallel effort that we were running as a way to automate some of the data collection that we do of our users time, so that we took some work off of their plate that they were doing for sort of administration or tracking type work and then let them also focus that on to the additional deliverables of the prefab if they weren't doing that on the project already. And we found, I mean, even one tweak that that we made that took about. I think it was about 100 hours of development, so pretty low development for a web application reduces every one of our users down our extra time if we take one man hour out of their admin so that we can put an hour towards production every single day for every single user.

Speaker 2: 29:21

To me yeah, to be able to take and have a whole one eighth of your time or one tenth of your time given back to you every single day to progress the project instead of just make sure that data is getting passed around. You know that that makes my day, because people that are doing work whether it's, you know, a modeler or an installer they want to do the job they signed up for. They want to work, model to install, they want to manage the project. They don't want to sit and fill out paperwork.

Speaker 1: 29:54

Yeah, and thanks for putting it into perspective too, because if we're reducing one hour, you know that that may seem like one hour in a week, one hour in a year, right, but it's one hour per day, one hour per workday, specifically, so one out of eight or one out of 10, beautiful. Yeah, thanks for that, kelly. I feel like there's so much I can learn from you and I hope that there's a there's a future podcast recording that I can continue learning from, and we're at time, so I would love to share that. As the final question of the show and a traditional future construct, if you could project yourself out 25 years and wanted to have any device or technology that would benefit you personally, what would that be and what would it do?

Speaker 2: 30:33

Man. I mean I can think of so many different things, whether there are things that already exist now but could be tweaked, or things that don't exist. But I think my brain always immediately goes back to one of the things that my very first co-workers in the industry and I used to joke about, which was having like a little plug on the side of your head that you can plug into the computer so that I can just think about the drafting I want done and it drafts itself. I think you know we obviously get closer and closer to automation, but there's still a human component to the design and the choices that we make and I think that helps with that. I think that would be such a cool thing to help streamline that is, to take away the fingers, typing and the clicking and all that and be able to envision it and see your vision break. You know, display in front of you as you think about it. It's beautiful, yeah.

Speaker 1: 31:24

It took me to the white room in the matrix. Yes, yes, absolutely Very cool.

Speaker 2: 31:28

Awesome Kelly.

Speaker 1: 31:31

Well, thank you so much for your time today. I really enjoyed speaking with you and learning from you, and I look forward to continuing the conversation in the future.

Speaker 2: 31:39

Absolutely. It was wonderful being here. I love chatting with you, thank you very much.

Speaker 1: 31:42

Talk to you soon, bye.