Discover the remarkable transformation of Dr. Carrie Sturts Dossick, who went from an undecided college major to an esteemed figure in construction management and technology. In a candid conversation, Carrie recounts the pivotal moments of her career, from her early intrigue with materials in architecture to the invaluable guidance of her mentor, Bud Griffiths. Her story is an ode to the profound impact mentorship can have and a celebration of the innovative spirit that defines her path, offering listeners a unique perspective on the evolution of construction management education.
Join us for a deep dive into the complexities and triumphs of creating the National BIM Standard as Carrie opens up about her experiences merging teaching, research, and administrative duties at the University of Washington. She navigates through the challenges of harmonizing disparate industry groups into a cohesive framework and offers a glimpse into the future of digital construction. Her insights are a guiding light for those interested in the synergy of policy, project management, and the progression of industry standards.
In our episode, technology and personal passions intersect, revealing how Carrie's lab tackles the intricacies of IoT, digital twins, and the evolution of BIM. She discusses the symbiotic relationship between technology and human interaction within building operations and the necessity of cybersecurity in today's connected world. Listen as Carrie shares how her love for dance mirrors the creative processes in construction innovation, and don't miss her insights into the collaborative approach to education that's fostering the next wave of industry change.
Contact the Future Construct Podcast Produced by BIM Designs, Inc!
Discover the remarkable transformation of Dr. Carrie Sturts Dossick, who went from an undecided college major to an esteemed figure in construction management and technology. In a candid conversation, Carrie recounts the pivotal moments of her career, from her early intrigue with materials in architecture to the invaluable guidance of her mentor, Bud Griffiths. Her story is an ode to the profound impact mentorship can have and a celebration of the innovative spirit that defines her path, offering listeners a unique perspective on the evolution of construction management education.
Join us for a deep dive into the complexities and triumphs of creating the National BIM Standard as Carrie opens up about her experiences merging teaching, research, and administrative duties at the University of Washington. She navigates through the challenges of harmonizing disparate industry groups into a cohesive framework and offers a glimpse into the future of digital construction. Her insights are a guiding light for those interested in the synergy of policy, project management, and the progression of industry standards.
In our episode, technology and personal passions intersect, revealing how Carrie's lab tackles the intricacies of IoT, digital twins, and the evolution of BIM. She discusses the symbiotic relationship between technology and human interaction within building operations and the necessity of cybersecurity in today's connected world. Listen as Carrie shares how her love for dance mirrors the creative processes in construction innovation, and don't miss her insights into the collaborative approach to education that's fostering the next wave of industry change.
Contact the Future Construct Podcast Produced by BIM Designs, Inc!
Welcome builders, innovators and construction professionals to another exciting episode of Future Construct. I'm Mark Oden, the CEO of BIM Designs Incorporated and your guest host today. Today I have the privilege of delving into the dynamic world of construction management and cutting-edge technologies with a true trailblazer in the field and the very first construction educator to be featured on our show. Our distinguished guest today is Professor Kerry Sturtz-Dossick, a powerhouse in construction management and the associate dean of research in the College of Built Environments at the University of Washington. Dr Dossick's influence extends far beyond the classroom as she navigates the forefront of collaboration methods and technologies, leaving an indelible mark on the industry. As a professor of construction management, dr Dossick brings over two decades of invaluable research and teaching experience, focusing on emerging technologies such as BIM. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. She wears multiple hats, holding an adjunct professor appointment in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and currently serving as the vice chair of the National BIM Standard US Planning Committee of the National Institute of Building Sciences, otherwise known as NIBS. What sets Dr Dossick apart is not just her academic prowess, but her hands-on approach to shaping the future of construction. She co-directs the Communication Technology and Organizational Practices Lab, a hub of innovation in the Center for Education and Research in Construction, cerc. This is where theory meets practice and groundbreaking projects come to life.
Speaker 1:Our guest is not just an academic luminary. She is deeply embedded in the industry's fabric, collaborating with giants like Skanska and Turner Construction. Dr Dossick is spearheading initiatives like the Introduction to BIM for Construction Management Certificate and an online certificate for digital fabrication workflows for concrete formwork. And that's not all. Dr Dossick's recent work includes revolutionizing BIM-based information exchange, setting standards for the Port of Seattle and exploring the immersive world of virtual reality for facilities management training. Today I will dive into her insights, experiences and the impactful journey she has had in pushing the boundaries of construction technologies. With so much experience, dr Dossick, you've had a profound and positive impact on the digital construction market and continue to do so. Welcome to our show and thank you for all of your many contributions in the AEC space.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:To get us started today, could you share with our listeners a bit about how you first became interested in the field of construction management? How far back does that go and how did it show up for you then?
Speaker 2:Well, great, we're going to start at the beginning, sounds like so. I was an undecided college major at Columbia University, actually started in the humanities side of the Columbia College and decided that when studying architecture initially that it didn't really understand materials. So I ended up going over to civil engineering to understand more about steel and concrete and how they the materials and how to create with them. But I never made it back over to architecture.
Speaker 2:I ended up getting recruited out of undergrad into graduate school by my advisor, professor Bud Griffiths, and he recruited me to masters and then recruited me into a PhD. So I was really fortunate to have a mentor that saw my potential and drug me into the, into the, recruited me into the industry so, and he really got me started on the interest in technology as well. So the lab that I had there at Columbia University we looked at emerging technologies we didn't even call it BIM at that time. We were looking at 3D models, 3d CAD and databases is how we talked about it and had a number of industry partners and I was funded by the Construction Industry Institute for my PhD studies. So that's how I got I got started in the fields and started on tech, on technology.
Speaker 1:Yes, beautiful. Who did you mention?
Speaker 2:your mentor was Professor Bud Griffiths.
Speaker 1:Is he? Is he still on on campus?
Speaker 2:He's not Suddenly. He passed away a few years ago.
Speaker 1:Oh, I'm so sorry to hear it's. Your story just brought me back to you know, my days in college and the professors that had such a strong impact on my path, and you know who. I'm just amazed, always amazed, with how teachers and professors you know really help each student understand their, you know, help them shine their light, if you will, and shine as bright as possible. So I'm so glad that you had that, that fortunate experience with with Professor Bud Griffiths.
Speaker 2:Yeah, now, he was instrumental in setting both my career, but also giving me a great model for being a mentor.
Speaker 1:How did how did the transition take place in terms of shifting your focus from? You talked a little bit about architecture and civil engineering, and then can you elaborate more on how you ended up finding what you called emerging technologies, or what later became them, in your space?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So after I received a PhD I ended up working in the industry for five years and then finding my way back to academia. So, starting in 2005 at the University of Washington as assistant professor, I needed to kind of relaunch my research momentum, unlike coming out of a PhD program when, kind of running with that momentum, I needed to restart so at the time. So I got my PhD in the 90s and so, coming back to academia in 2005, I was kind of looking at what are the emerging technologies? I had studied technology in my PhD, so what are the technologies that are going on? And in 2005, if people remember back or if you are around or in the industry at that time, you will remember that BIM was the new hotness, the new emerging technology. So I decided that and there were many patterns of the discussion around BIM that sounded very familiar to the studies that we had done around 3D, cad and databases in the 90s. In the 90s I was focused on the process and power sector, so the BIM conversation was happening more in the building sector in the 2000s. So that's kind of how that's. Well, when I was restarting my research momentum and when I started at the university, I was trying lots of different ideas actually to see what stuck, and what stuck was the BIM trajectory. So that's how I end up there, and what was really exciting to me is that when I got into BIM, one of the things that people talk about BIM is they talk about how it's used for collaboration and how it supports collaboration, and so getting into the kind of exploring the space and understanding what the questions are, I realized that it was more about studying people than studying technology. I mean we need to study both. We need to have our information flow from one system to another. Interoperability is a big BIM question, but what I was seeing was well, how does it help us collaborate? And as an engineer, I wasn't trained to study people. I was trained to study things. I know how to, how a BIM in bending works, I know how to break things and study that modality, but I wasn't trained to study people. So I ended up collaborating with a social scientist who has become my career-long partner, dr Gina Neff, and we work together Gina bringing her expertise on social science and communication in the ways that we are able to study people, and I bring the deep industry sector knowledge of ASE or engineering design and construction processes. So we've been a team and I have to credit Gina as my collaborator on a lot of the work that I've done throughout the years.
Speaker 2:So as we started to develop our understanding of how people work with technology, that got us into questions of collaboration in general but also other technologies that we were seeing. So in one of our early BIM studies they were also using Webex. So you had virtual collaboration or distributed team collaboration, and I got into a partnership with other scholars to look at distributed teams and global teams and collaboration and how all this media right. We are collaborating right now on this conversation across technology. So we're mediated by technology. So I got not only was I studying BIM, but I thought the term emerging collaboration methods or emerging technologies was a good term for what my lab does, because as the technologies change and evolve, we're not necessarily just studying one type of technology, but we can study lots of different types of technology as they emerge. So, gotten into global teams virtual reality, augmented reality, digital fabrication, right all the fun tech side of the industry have had a chance to work on a variety of projects in that space.
Speaker 1:I'm so excited for you, carrie, if I may call you Carrie, and just a couple of points there. One is being an engineer myself. I completely 1000% relate to in that regard and I've actually really enjoyed, you know, running and growing this company in the BIM space because of the focus on people and, for myself, the challenge of, you know, learning the work with people, and there's so much I have learned and so much I'm grateful for and so many people I am grateful for, my team included, and I now love bringing teams into collaboration and this is a really, really big joy point of mine. That's a lot of fun and you know it's so funny. This show absolutely is about you and I can't resist but say that most of my early career was working for Cisco WebEx. So it may have been. It may have posted your time there was around 2010 to 2016. But I was. That's maybe for a whole other conversation I'd love to share with you some. You know how you explored that and what your experience was and working with those teams. That's just outstanding.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in the 90s actually, my research team with the CII we were our team piloted the first WebEx team that was using WebEx within the CII, so I'd spend. I've been hanging out with WebEx for a while now.
Speaker 1:Oh my God that's so incredible and that's you know you really were working in the 90s on highly innovative things that were, you know, futuristic, because it's you know, 2024 now and everybody's living on the world similar to WebEx, right. So that's just outstanding. I'm so excited, as we get deeper into the show, to talk about what your lab is working on today and it sounds like that'll be, you know, somewhere in the 5, 10 to 20 range, 20 year range so cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, two decades.
Speaker 1:Incredible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, two decades. Yeah, let's call it two decades. I wanted to add a thought that just came up. So, when you're talking about, it's interesting how I find a lot of the experience in someone's life. While you don't know it at the time, they kind of accumulate and when you get to a place you're like, oh, that random thing I did 20 years ago actually is contributing to the thing I'm doing right now. And one of those things is is an undergrad. I seriously considered anthropology instead of engineering, and what I find really cool about what I currently do is I become an engineer who does ethnography, which is a method, a primary research method of anthropology and arguably was developed within that anthropology sector. So I think it's kind of fun that are cool, that that interest that I had kind of in the undergraduate years and I didn't follow that direction but I've been able to incorporate that interest within my research in the engineering domain.
Speaker 1:So for what it's for. Yeah, thank you for sharing that so much. I know that as an engineer I I do now, but I did not in college value all of the extracurricular activities that I could have participated in the humanities courses, things like that, psychology courses and otherwise and so, yeah, I love that you had that strong interest and background and then that allowed you to become a well-rounded engineer. That has been amazingly successful, sticking with the education theme and the student theme. As a student, did you ever see yourself transitioning to the other side of the whiteboard? So did you see yourself as a teacher when you were a student?
Speaker 2:It's interesting, my early part of my career was defined a lot of my saying no and then ended up becoming that thing. So when I was recruited to master's, I was like I'm not going to do a PhD, I know he's going to ask me. And then he asked me and I started to do a PhD. I did a PhD and then, as I was doing my PhD, I was like I won't become a professor. No, no, no. And then five years later I become a professor. So I was kind of saying, oh, actually, even before that, when I graduated from high school, I was considered high aptitude for engineering and I even said no, I won't do engineering, so be careful what you say no to, because you'll end up doing it apparently.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I didn't. I was a little bit. I was actually to be to be really open with the audience. I was actually pretty terrified of public speaking and in high school and college and I don't know if it was at the level of phobia, but it was really afraid of it. So teaching was not appealing because you'd have to get in front of a class and a few times that I did it I was terrified. So I wasn't really seeing myself as like, oh yeah, I'm going to become a professor and that's, you know, my dream. It was more of a Brownian motion random walk career path for me for to geek out on the engineering side. I sure.
Speaker 2:So that's kind of it was, each door would open and I would assess it and it seemed like a great door to walk through and I would do that and then you know. So that was. That was more my experience. I haven't been kind of a while. I'm very planful person. I haven't been a long long range career goal oriented career person.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you for sharing when you in terms of the fear of public speaking, how did you face that and what did you do to overcome it?
Speaker 2:It was a long, multi year process. I actually signed up for Toastmasters and I can, I can, I can highly recommended. I thought it was a very good experience and I, when I was engineer in California, was a practicing engineer and the company had a Toastmasters club and so I practice and I just made myself get up and do it and those days I had to speak I was so nervous I couldn't eat lunch, you know, and I just kept practicing and it wasn't really until you know, and I did a couple of public talks at that time because I had my dissertation work and people invited me to speak and it was. I was terrified and then, when I became a professor, it was really exposure therapy, I think, because I had to show up in front of the class twice a week. In fact, I think my first class was three times a week and I just every time I had to get up there and do it.
Speaker 2:So within a couple of years of being a professor, I became much more confident and comfortable public speaking and recognizing. I actually have a natural aptitude for it. I think that I am pretty good at public speaking and extemporary speaking and mentorship, so being able to recognize that and rely on that was was good, but it took me many years of practice to get there. So just perseverance and sheer power of will and I'm stubborn, so pushing myself to do it is really how I got there.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm glad you did. I'm glad you did, Carrie. I'd love to continue exploring your career projects, industry involvement, publications, as well as your future vision for the AEC industry. Does that sound fun?
Speaker 2:Let's do it.
Speaker 1:All right. As the associate dean of research in the College of Built Environments at the University of Washington, and with an adjunct professor appointment in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, can you elaborate on your current role and key responsibilities you hold with these positions?
Speaker 2:Yes, so I wear at least two hats at work a professor hat and a and the associate dean hat. And as a professor, I'm a professor in construction management as my primary appointment and then adjunct faculty in civil and environmental engineering, secondary or adjunct. So I have teaching, research and service work. So I teach classes, I advise students and I do research in my lab and I do service, meaning I spend time in committees and working with journals external to the university and the national BIM standard is one of those services. It's kind of a combination of service and research role for me In my associate dean role that's working at the college level and our college has five departments and so I'm an associate dean for research.
Speaker 2:So I focus on the research mission of the college and try to promote and extend and expand and network all of the college researchers and help support their work and help communicate their work and extend their work. So I get to think about research at this bigger scale and the impact of research at a bigger scale across the whole college. I found it to be a lot of fun. I really enjoy the work. There's some infrastructure building where you're doing policies and procedures which I never thought I'd be into.
Speaker 2:In fact, that's another no I used. I said, ah, I never do policy and here I am doing policy. And then I'm also helping network, so meeting with people from across the campus and helping connect the researchers in my college to their programs or within that network. I'm mentoring researchers to write proposals and grants and help disseminate the findings, building mentoring programs. So there's all kinds of great work that happens at the associate dean role. So it's lots and lots and lots of big and small tasks and a lot of juggling. So I get to use my project management skills to manage all of those pieces and I have some really great staff that I work with that help keep it all straight as well.
Speaker 1:So earlier you mentioned geeking out on engineering. Could we geek out on P6? P6 scheduling?
Speaker 2:Sure, I don't know if we want to mention names, but I don't use P6 for my internal task management tools. But I have a soft spot. I used to be a scheduler in industry, so I do enjoy a good construction schedule.
Speaker 1:Sure, yeah, you're welcome to mention any tool that you prefer. I'm sure the audience would love to hear what's actively used out there. But I'd really be interested in diving into you being the vice chair of the National DEM Standard US Planning Committee and there's a new version coming out. We'd really love to hear your involvement in that. What brought you into the involvement there, how the collaboration formed for that V4 and what it looks like and where you are today with it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have a long history with the National Institute of Building Sciences. I started with the National DEM Standard and V2. When I started my research in BIM I realized I wanted to know more about national trends and what's happening, and so I volunteered to be on the technical subcommittee for V2. And then I ended up on the National BIM Guide for Owners Committee and was one of the authors on that product and then dabbled in various other roles and then, for version four of the National DEM Standard, was first the chair and now the vice chair of the Planning Committee. So in the heart of the work of setting the vision for the national standard for the United States and navigating and supporting the writing of the products that are just about to be published from that effort. So there's a lot to talk about within all of that journey. What I think is interesting about the US market is it's very ground up, that kind of like, because we are a federation of states. It's almost the industry mirrors that structure where there's lots of different industry groups and different associations and lots of different political interests within the industry. So what we did when we started before we were looking at D3, how did it go? And there was actually a formal assessment of D3 and some identification of some of the shortfalls of that version, and so we took that as a lesson and to design the next step. And the goal right now of the current structure of the Planning Committee and the BIM Council is to create a more agile system where we create modules and create a library of a standard, as opposed to a unified document. So there's so much to do within the BIM environment and really it's kind of BIM and beyond it's like digital construction or digital work and there's so much to do there that it's not a single standard but lots of difference. We can envision lots of different standard components that need to be internally coordinated but can be also standalone products. So it's now the vision for the National BIM standard is a library of standards and guidelines and support products like spreadsheets and forms that help people implement BIM design, construction and operations of the built environments. So we I was part of designing the model and the structure of the organization, creating the planning, the current formation of the Planning Committee and the modules and the working groups, and there are still working groups. While we're publishing V4, there are still working groups that are working on future content that are overlapping right. We have a line in the sand called V4, but there's still other work continuing and those modules may be published in the interim phase and then another will kind of scoop up all the modules that are ready and do a V5. So we're trying to get into a routine where modules are independent of the overall versioning process, can publish at any time, but then each version will kind of package up what's ready. So that's the structure.
Speaker 2:And then in this last phase of the V4 development I was the Planning Committee liaison to the Project BIM Requirements Subcommittee and my lab received some funding to support the writing, the research and writing of that standard. So what we did was we collected example products from across the world for BIM requirements and BIM guidelines. So we have a whole library of kind of the best of BIM requirements for buildings, transportation. We had a working group that includes lots of different industry experts who were able to recommend, and we I think we even put it out to the whole membership of the Nibs BIM Council to say you know anybody who has a BIM requirements document that they love to use or they think highly of, please send it to us an example. And then we did what's called a content analysis, a research method where you go in and you analyze the content of the documents, and we were able to create a set of shared themes that then became the structure of the soon-to-be-published project BIM requirements. Then the subcommittee we divvied up all those sections and each subcommittee member took the examples from the content analysis and drafted their sections. And then, painfully, we walked through as a committee, line by line, the whole document and refined and made it a unified, unified voice, unified standard.
Speaker 2:And we have the standard which is the requirements for project BIM requirements. So it's the necessary elements that you need to have in order to have a comprehensive project BIM requirement standard or, sorry, project BIM requirement specification. So it would be something you'd have as part of your contract. You need to do these things in your contract and we recognize, well, just saying that you need something maybe not helpful to the industry where they're like well, I need this thing, but I don't know what it is.
Speaker 2:So we have a second document that's a supporting document, that's example language of all the sections, all the required elements of the project BIM requirements. So we have example language that will support implementation. So if you're an owner who doesn't have your own language. You need somewhere to start. Just pick up our example language and start there and we anticipate you need to revise and edit that example language. In fact we would call it mad libs, because there would be some places where you literally have to fill in the blank because to make it general enough for to be applicable across the sector. You know, a bridge is different than a road, is different than a building, is different than a facility.
Speaker 2:So you needed, we needed to have, we try to create language that was universally applicable and that people could then modify for their own context and own their own own organization and their own context, project context. So we hope it's a useful document. I'm really excited about it because it creates a standard that establishes the kinds of the kinds of specifications you need to do to specify BIM and on a project. And that's, in our analysis, really needed because we did this content analysis and we found even the best of in the industry was still missing major components that other best of had right. So there was no industry example that had all the elements in it. So I encourage everyone, even if you are well established and you have a really great guideline. I believe you probably used it in our analysis. But take our new standard and walk crosswalk it with yours and see where your gaps are, because I can guarantee there are gaps and it'll be really helpful to fill those gaps for your projects and your organization.
Speaker 1:Thank you again for stepping us through the, the v4 of the BIM standard, kerry, I want to transition to talking a little bit more about what's happening in your research lab today, which really means what's happening in the future, 10, 20 plus years from now. So, for as much as you're able to share, can you please share about your you being the co-director of the Communication Technology and Organizational Practices Lab in the Center of Education and Research and Construction, and what's the lab's focus? What are you doing today and what are you? You know, what are you seeing for the future?
Speaker 2:Thank you. So, yeah, as we started our discussion, we work on emerging technologies. So you will not be surprised when you hear the technologies we're working on today, which includes IoT and digital twins. Those are kind of some of the hot new terms in the industry and the new technology typologies and what I'm seeing. It is very much a natural progression from the BIM work that we've done and we actually had some energy modeling work that we've done in the middle there that I haven't talked about yet, but that all leads to this next phase of technology and the digital twin work. So we've had a chance to do a study where we've done a preliminary study of defining digital twins in design construction operations and what they are and how they work, and our current research projects include looking at the work that it will take to get digital twins to work. So that's kind of coming back to.
Speaker 2:You asked about the lab. So we look at practices and we look at the ways technology is used in practice. So organizational issues, communication issues as well as the technological issues. So thinking about the work that people do with and around technology is a focus of the lab's work. So some of the emerging work that's happening is we're looking at organizational changes, how team structures need to change, where we're introducing if we think about the operations of a building we're introducing IT into systems that didn't typically have internet capabilities. Right, so we're being able to run window shades or run lighting, connecting those things to the internet. That introduces all kinds of interesting new challenges that building operators may not have the skill sets to do. So it's understanding their capacity and what they need, but also thinking about the kinds of teams. So now you have internet capabilities in your building systems, well, now your IT departments may be needing to partner with your building operations. So a lot of the work that we've been doing over the last, I would say, five years is looking at those relationships. We had a National Science Foundation funded project to look at cybersecurity related to IoT and operations and that was looking at that team environment and the challenges of working across disciplines.
Speaker 2:And the work that I've done through BIM and collaboration all just naturally leads our lab to be really well positioned to answer those kinds of questions, because we've been studying people and studying the way they work together and studying interdisciplinary collaboration and as well as teaching it. I'm really proud of one of the classes we teach here. That is a collaboration class with architects, engineers and contractor construction students and they collaborate together to work on a shared project. So I've been thinking about not only how to study it, how to understand it, give the industry insight into working across disciplines, but also then teaching people to work across disciplines. So I have the whole arc there of the work.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, and it's exciting to partner with some new folks around creating digital twins and getting into that kind of painful first step of creating a pilot and understanding and hitting those boundaries of what the technology can actually do and some of the language around it, some of the work around it is very reminiscent of the previous cycles that I've experienced the first cycle of 3D, cad and databases in the process of power sector 90s, bim in the 2000s. Right, here we are in this digital twin cycle. I'm like, yeah, this sounds familiar, like these cycles are. There's some things that are different, but some things are very familiar with the way that technology is introduced into the space, the way people debate and discuss and struggle to implement it. All of those have some more patterns.
Speaker 2:So what I'm excited about is working with my colleague, gina Neff, on a new book to talk about innovation in the industry. So that is probably a year out from publication, but maybe I'll get to come back and talk about my book because I'm really excited about where we are going with the book and thinking more holistically and broadly, not just about BIM, but about how an industry innovates and where those tension points and challenges are at all of the levels, because social scientists have really great ways of thinking about technology change in terms of the practices and structures and rules of the way that we work together. So the book hopefully will bring insight across the industry in terms of helping us answer as an industry why it's actually so hard to implement technology. Well, I'm excited for that.
Speaker 1:Now you would love to have you back and I feel like there's so much that you and I could talk about. I'm just so thrilled to pick any topic and sort of you know, play tennis with you. In a sense, I love the fact that you're looking at you know, if I may in my own words, you know, you're looking at digital twins and say, okay, you know how, what? Like you said, what is the practical practice of digital twins? How can the industry apply it? It's a great idea, great, you know. Great concept. It will serve a lot of purposes, bring a lot of benefits. But in practice, what can the industry do? And I love that you're connecting that dot, because that's a very big bridge to build, and I love that you're building that bridge.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Yeah, as you can tell, I'm pretty excited about the work, so always happy to have a conversation about it.
Speaker 1:Cool, well, I want to start to look into the future a little bit here, if you could share, outside of the construction space and all of the successful success that you've had in your career. What other passions and interests have you explored?
Speaker 2:Well, no, but I know that I have a secret identity. I'm actually also a modern dancer.
Speaker 1:Very cool which dance style.
Speaker 2:Oh well, modern and contemporary dance.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, okay, modern is the style itself. Got it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So in I grew up dancing ballet, tep, jazz and then I went to school in New York so I had a chance to dance there and I've just kept kept it up. So I have a small dance company and we make dances together and perform. So it's a wonderful balance of the you know, artistic brain and the engineering brain and I find that keeping dance in my life has been really helpful to keep keep me creative, help me being balanced, and I also have this wonderful network of dance friends that I wouldn't otherwise know because we're connected through our dance passion.
Speaker 1:So that's incredible. Even the whole other angle that I look forward to exploring with you.
Speaker 2:You surprised yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, I clearly haven't heard of or, can say, explored, modern dance, but I've explored other forms of dance that I've really enjoyed as well and in my mind I was seeing those as modern. So I'm even, you know, I'm interested in diving deeper into you know, what does modern mean. But I can imagine now I've seen, you know, clips of videos of you know, you know, dance methods in in New York City specifically, and you know just how, I guess, maybe outside of the box, they might, they might be be represented as Well, the famous names you might know Martha Graham, marce Cunningham, alvin Ailey those are some of the early developers of modern modern dance and today contemporary dance is is more the term that people use in the everyday performance.
Speaker 2:Performance of this modern slash, contemporary space.
Speaker 1:So yeah, Well, thank you for sharing that and congratulations on your success with your alternate identity. Sounds like any hat. We, we, you know the world has you where the universe has you, where you'd be successful in it's. It's absolutely outstanding.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Yeah, it's been. It's been a really great part of my life, so I'm glad to keep keep it going.
Speaker 1:As a final question of the show and a tradition of future construct, if you could project yourself out 25 years and wanted to have any device technology that would benefit you personally, what would it be and what would it do?
Speaker 2:I initially didn't like this question and then I decided that I really like this question, and the reason I really like this question is because I can think of what we really need now, but it probably won't happen until the future is getting the right information at the right time. So I think we are just barraged with information. I've been trying to like figure out better ways of managing my email and going on to LinkedIn and going on to Facebook or whatever your social media platform of choices and you're just barraged with random ideas and thoughts all day long and I don't necessarily when I'm looking, opening these, these tools, I'm not getting the information kind of when I need it and I'm constantly parsing through information that is is feels like randomizing my day, like oh, this random thing just came in, and even like the text messages that you get every all day long and email is in a random order list. So I would love a technology that serves up the information when I need it. So, if I'm ready to sit down and relax, okay, give me my socials. Okay, now I'm ready to think about teaching.
Speaker 2:Okay, where are my students? What are they doing? Right? Okay, now I need to think about my research. Okay, where's this project? What's happening with that? I would love to have that kind of information. I think everybody you know in their jobs and in their personal lives would love to be served up the information of interest kind of when they're ready to consume it, as opposed to having to constantly parse through information all day long and, and you know, when we're doing our work, trying to find the document or the piece of information or document management. Information management is still such a big part of the task and the technologies we have currently are only helping us get there a little bit. You know we're trying to centralize, we're trying to create a single source of truth for information, but it's still a long ways from getting it to really work for us, I think.
Speaker 1:Well, I love that and I can't wait for the day either. I think that's gonna be a really, really exciting day, and hopefully it shows up sooner than we know it for the better. And with that, I want to thank you so much for your time. Congratulations on all of your accomplishments. I really enjoyed delving into who you are as a person and your experience and background. Thank you for joining us on Future Construct today.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me. It's been fun.