Future Construct: Thought Leaders Discuss BIM and Construction Solutions for the AEC Industry
The Future Construct podcast features thought leaders from around the world working on innovative technology solutions for the construction (AEC) industry. This podcast is hosted by Amy Peck, CEO of EndeavorVR, and Mark Oden, CEO of BIM Designs, Inc., and is produced by the team at BIM Designs, Inc. Amy is a recognized thought-leader and speaks globally on the future of VR, AR and emerging technologies including AI, blockchain, robotics and autonomy. Mark leads the growth, strategy and execution of BIM Designs, Inc.; his acute ability to develop and implement strategic processes that scale the company's capabilities, drives efficient service delivery, increases client satisfaction, and builds cross-functional teams. The podcast has already featured industry experts from Fortune 500 companies, venture capital firms, and construction startups. To suggest a guest or to be featured as a guest, visit https://www.bimdesigns.net/futureconstruct.
Future Construct: Thought Leaders Discuss BIM and Construction Solutions for the AEC Industry
From Building Sites to Digital Heights: Jason Howden's Journey in Construction Innovation
How does a childhood spent on construction sites turn into a career at the forefront of digital innovation in construction? This episode of the Future Construct podcast features Jason Howden, Chief Innovation Officer at Revizto, who recounts his remarkable journey from the dusty building sites of New Zealand to revolutionizing the industry with cutting-edge technology. Jason's early exposure to construction and his father's introduction of AutoCAD Sketch 1.0 ignited a passion that transformed his career. Listen as he reveals how hobbies like remote-controlled model aircraft and a knack for problem-solving, fueled by his dyslexia, laid the foundation for his innovative approach to construction technology.
Leadership and automation take center stage in our discussion with Jason, as he delves into how breaking down complex projects into manageable components has been key to his success. He introduces us to the concept of a "digital custodian" and explains how automating processes such as collision detection can streamline projects and mitigate costly errors. Jason's real-world anecdotes illustrate the tangible benefits of these methodologies, making a strong case for the progression from traditional CAD to Building Information Modeling (BIM).
We also take a futuristic leap into the integration of AR and gaming technology within the construction sector. Jason's firsthand account of overcoming skepticism and adopting these innovative tools for project collaboration is inspiring. He shares an intriguing story of a foreman in Christchurch, New Zealand, who went from mocking digital tools to embracing VR for enhanced project efficiency. As we anticipate the upcoming RevUp conference, Jason teases some groundbreaking advancements in construction technology that promise to reshape the industry landscape. Join us for a riveting conversation with one of construction technology's leading voices.
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Welcome to the Future Construct podcast, where we explore the cutting edge innovations shaping the built environment of tomorrow. I'm Mark Oden, the CEO of BIM Designs Inc. And your host today. I'm thrilled to introduce our guest, jason Howden. A trailblazer in the intersection of technology and construction, with over three decades of experience in the industry, jason has been a driving force behind the development and integration of emerging technologies worldwide. From his early days shaping complex projects in New Zealand, australia and the UK to his current role as the Chief Innovation Officer at Revisto, jason's expertise spans the spectrum of construction and digital innovation. As we delve into his journey, insights and vision for the future of construction technology, thank you for all of your many contributions in the AEC space, jason.
Speaker 2:Thank you, mark, and thank you for having me here today, looking forward to this podcast.
Speaker 1:I am as well Super excited to host you, Jason. Let's jump right in and start from the beginning. Can you recall any specific childhood experiences or interests that you believe shaped your eventual career path? And technology for the built environment.
Speaker 2:It's a wonderful question and I've got many memories. My father was a builder and both of my grandfathers were builders as well, so building was in my blood from a very early age. Me and my brother, we used to help dad on construction sites all over the bottom part of New Zealand, from new homes to farm sheds to light commercial buildings. We were involved in a lot of stuff and that kind of really shaped um, I guess my makers um component of my, my passions, um. But in the mid 80s dad came home with a computer. Um, we were always into technology. He'd, he'd give us the remote control for the vcr. You know, vcrs came out in the early 80s in new zealand and we figured it all out. It didn't have a manual, didn't have an internet or anything like that. And one day you came home with a computer and I was like wow, this is cool. And on that computer was AutoCAD Sketch version 1.0. Like it was so old when I think back now, but back then it was like amazing. And what was on it as a sample file was the space shuttle. Um, and I was just fascinated that you could dive into this 3d model of the space shuttle and somebody had created it and I wanted to do that.
Speaker 2:Um, I wanted to work in a profession where I could use computers to build things. Um, I'd gotten not tired but I I felt, you know, working outside wasn't for me. I wanted to work in a virtual environment but I wanted to build things. And as I went through my high school years I started to align my I guess my childhood upbringing in construction with technical drawing and drafting, and I found myself in a course where they had specialised in computer aided drafting in the early 90s and I excelled in that. I got top of the class every year running and that set me on a pathway where I had to do CAD in the construction sector.
Speaker 2:And my first job, my first role, was a CAD manager for a firm in New Zealand and I was, you know, automating things with scripts. I had a friend that I found via a bulletin board when the internet finally arrived to New Zealand, taught me how to write Lisp and I was automating Lisp, that the next thing, you know, downloading 3d studio max, writing animations, um, just getting immersed in this virtual environment. And then, over the years, it kind of stuck and as each new technology came along, I couldn't help myself. I had to have a part of it. Eventually, adt came along, archicad came along, 3d studio, max viz, theyt came along, archicad came along, 3d Studio, max Viz they all came along. Tools like MaxMailRender came along, revit came along, bim came along. It's got involved in everything.
Speaker 1:That's fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing. I'm just really excited to hear you know not only about your family's you know history of building but also your. You know your maker. I appreciated the how you said that sort of your maker influence or maker focus and that's you know. That's that's eventually led you down this digital world and led you to where you are today. Just absolutely incredible. What other particular hobbies or activities from your youth sparked your interest and led you to where you are today. Just absolutely incredible. What other particular hobbies or activities from your youth sparked your interest and brought you further into construction and technology.
Speaker 2:Remote controlled model aircraft. I was a teenager. I was, like probably every typical teenager out there, just kind of not really sure of what I wanted to do in life and stuff. And and mum said to me, why don't you go along to this model aircraft thing, you might enjoy it? And I was like, oh, and I originally thought model aircraft was like those little plastic planes that you stick together and I was like, oh, I'm not really interested. Anyway, I went along, um, and it was this team of people that were building stuff out of wood and making planes that actually fly. And I was like, whoa, what is this world? Um, they have engines, they have um wires that move, the ailerons and rudders and stuff.
Speaker 2:I got completely immersed in that and would start designing new wings, um, entering competitions, um finding ways to finding ways to refine things, and I think that just really kind of propelled this kind of maker's attitude. You know, I even went down as far as designing a remote controlled scale land yacht and remote control a car and remote control a car. I had an idea for making a car out of tubing brass tubing that we would use in the model aeroplanes. So it's just kind of inventive and making stuff and then, as computers came along, a lot of that just transcended into that, particularly with Revit. Revit being a parametric engine really sparked my interest and I would make complex families to automate things. If there was a way to make a family do 50 different things efficiently, I was all over that and just really trying to find innovative ways to save time to provide a better outcome in the built environment.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. I love the car, the remote car, the remote planes, but tell me what is a land yacht?
Speaker 2:A land yacht is. Think of a canoe with wheels and then a big sail on it. Think of a canoe with wheels and then a big sail on it. And it was a load of fun. You know, in the bottom of the South Island we didn't have much at that time of, I guess, the development of the world and I would go to the movies and I'd watch one of them.
Speaker 2:One of my favorite memories and movies was a movie called bmx bandits. Um, probably no one on this call apart from myself actually probably knows what that movie is, but nicole kidman starred in it as a, as a teenager, um, and they basically rode bikes around. I think it was australia, but it was um, kind of filmed in a way that it was, uh, north america, america, and off the back of that film it spawned a whole interest in New Zealand and BMX and my dad was actually involved in building the BMX track in our local town and I got onto BMX and you know that kind of again, you know, just being inventive, making things was part of it. So I ended up making a land yacht because I was um, I'd been to a movie, I'd seen something.
Speaker 2:It might have been I think it was water world, um, when that came out and he had the big yacht and it was like moving really fast and I wanted to make one and we didn't have a lake nearby so I put wheels on the yacht, um, and I would, I would race it around um the high school playground and it was a load of fun. And people would be like, what have you built? And I'm like, oh, this is a land yacht and it would zip around, you know, 10 miles an hour, 15 miles an hour, just under wind power and for scale.
Speaker 1:How big was this?
Speaker 2:um, it was about a gay big, probably a foot and a half um foot long, about the length of a subway sandwich.
Speaker 1:Oh, very cool, Well fun. So how did your? Furthermore, how did your upbringing and early education influence your fascination with emerging technologies? And I know you touched on that a little bit, but could you dive deeper into that for me?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I struggled at high school with English and it took me a long time to realize that in my family we actually have a gene that predicates dyslexia, and when I went through school there was no acknowledgement for it and no understanding for it. It was just that you couldn't spell and you went into the, the, the slow class, and but I was incredibly intelligent in every other aspect Physics top of the class, you know, technical drawing top of the class, engineering top of the class. So there was this kind of polarized thing going on in my brain. I didn't understand it, but the dean of the school, when I'd finally decided what I wanted to do for a career, um, I had was having an interview about subjects, and they were like oh well, you know, you're not very good at um, your english, so we feel you should be in these subjects. And I'm like but I want to do this career and I need these subjects. And the the dean came and said well, we're going to take a gamble. Where there's a will, there's a. We're going to take a gamble when there's a will, there's a way. We're going to put you in these classes and you prove to us that you can do them.
Speaker 2:And from that moment forth it triggered something in me that where there's a will, there's a way, and I have used that and relied on that to propel my career projects forward. If there is enough will, you can solve any problem, and if you work with a great team around you, that just magnifies that and I've taken that forward. And then probably the other thing that helped me on this journey was reading Richard Branson's first autobiography and he talked about his challenges with dyslexia and how he overcame it, and that gave me an appreciation that there was this thing out there where it was okay to be able to not spell correctly, but have these incredibly bright, intelligent conversations and ideas. You just need to find the people to work with that can balance that. And then I've just leaned into that. And ideas, um, you just need to find the people to work with that can balance that. And then I've just leaned into that.
Speaker 2:And as my, my own children, um, came on the scene. Um kept a watchful eye out to see if they had the um, the dyslexia gene as well. They both do um and worked with the schools to ensure that they had that kind of support um, and now both of them are doing subjects in ai. I think it's incredibly fascinating. One wants to be a game developer, the other one wants to, um, create uh robotics, um for prosthetics, um. So you know this is. I guess it's in the genes that's beautiful.
Speaker 1:I really, really believe in these moments, these powerful, powerful moments where you know, particularly people can really influence the trajectory in a very positive, healthy way of someone. And it sounds like that principal, you know, saw your talents and saw you know the ability to transition you, you know, from remedial school, uh, into um, you know, into a, a career path or an education path that he felt would would be more resonant with with you and um. I want to, I want to drill into do you recall at all that conversation or that moment that that principal had with you, that that, you know, effectively changed your life?
Speaker 2:absolutely vividly, um it is, is burnt into my my memory banks. I can remember sitting there with both my parents, two very senior people of the school who were trying to convince me that the career path that I wanted to embark on was not for me. For me, um, and the dean came in and was like actually, this guy he's probably got a strong will and if he wants to do this, we should let him do this. Um, and I'll never forget that. And as I've um traveled forward in my career, when I've noticed um other people might be colleagues, peers, people in the industry who um had that will to um, you know, propel forward, I've always offered a guiding hand. You know that kind of pay it forward approach, and it's been incredibly enjoyable to watch people that I've had an influence on go forth and realize their dreams, goals and ambitions and be inspired to work in this industry and to evolve it to a new plateau, above and beyond where we've always been.
Speaker 1:I love that. Thank you so much, jason. Before we dive more into your extensive project experience, I'd love to take a moment to thank our sponsors, whose support makes this podcast possible. Stay with us as we take a short break to hear from them, and when we return we'll continue our conversation with Jason Howden, chief Innovation Officer at Revisto.
Speaker 3:Welcome to the Future Construct podcast brought to you by BIM Designs Incorporated, where innovation meets construction. Stay tuned as we delve into the latest trends and technologies shaping the future of the AECO industry.
Speaker 1:BIM Designs Incorporated your partner in building the future. Hello and thank you for your interest in our firm. I'm Mark Oden, ceo of BIM Designs Inc. Our firm is one of the largest premier single-service union signatory, with over 25 National United Association and sheet metal workers locals utilizing US-based detailers. For over six years, our union members have provided high-quality BIM detailing deliverables, coordination, schedule, construction management and project controls consulting services for over 100 projects to construction companies working in large commercial projects in the areas of education, government, hospitality, healthcare, biopharmaceutical, semiconductor, entertainment, as well as mixed-use residential and commercial buildings. We have become subject matter experts in not only the execution of using BIM technologies but also the management of the BIM process. We have proven to be dependable consulting professionals with strong communication skills, leadership skills and technically sound backgrounds. We hold ourselves accountable to the highest ethics, where our core values are quality, performance, trust and ethics, solutions driven innovation, teamwork, community engagement, ownership of commitments, diversity and inclusion. Bim Designs Inc can help your construction, general contracting, engineering or architecture firm by providing expert tradesmen who know how to precisely design, model and manage your systems, as well as dependable consulting professionals who can make strategic and timely decisions. We are BIM professionals, industry experts, strategic thinkers who align people, processes, technology and metrics. Contact us at sales at bimdesignsnet for a consultation and to discuss your project needs. We'd love to work with you, thank you.
Speaker 1:Welcome back to the Future Construct podcast. I'm your host, mark Oden, and today we're in conversation with Jason Howden, chief Innovation Officer at Revisto. Before the break, we were discussing Jason's journey and childhood influences. Now let's dive into his extensive consulting experience. Leadership and collaboration is something I care very deeply about and it's something that the industry is constantly looking for new leaders and new ways to collaborate. I'd really like to dive into your experience, jason, as someone who excels at leading project teams in the implementation of advanced digital automation. What strategies do you employ to foster collaboration and innovation among diverse stakeholders?
Speaker 2:Wow, that's a really good question. I guess the strategy I employ is to take complex problems and simplify it down to a human level. You know some of the feedback when I left my previous role at Waranamani Architects to join Revisto. You know it was amazing to get. You know the comments from the teams that I'd worked with on numerous projects in New Zealand, australia and further afield.
Speaker 2:But one comment that stuck out to me was my good friend and colleague, daryl Haynes. He came up to me and he said you know, what you do is you take really complex situations and problems and just make it human. You just simplify it so I can understand the most complex things easily. And I think that's something I do naturally and I credit a lot of that to actually my dyslexia. I break these things down without even thinking about it. I don't have to struggle hard to create a pathway through complex problems. Maybe I feel a wee bit like rain man, that scene from tom cruise and rain man where the numbers are going um. It's kind of what goes on in my head and I just see a clear pathway from um a to b to c and I'm able to articulate that and um very succinctly and simply so everybody can come on the journey.
Speaker 2:And I think that's part of the challenge is taking a world as diverse and complex as the construction industry and simplifying it. We have hurdles of standards, we have hurdles of regulation, we have hurdles of technology and, at the end of the day, we're're building while we're building. But we need this orchestra of people to come together on the same song sheet, at the same rhythm, for it to all work and fit together as planned without interruption. So the conductor of that orchestra has to be able to read the room at the same time and direct change to keep the pace of the project moving forward.
Speaker 2:And what I've found over the years is that nexus of being able to take complex problems and describe them simply, empowered by technology, through collaboration, really provides what I'm coining, or calling the digital custodian, to act as that custodian to flow information from all of the facets of the construction industry to bring this project to life. And I think that's this next kind of frontier that we're maturing into. We've had, we've had CAD come along and that helped us do better drawings. Then we had bim come along. That helped us prototype digitally, prototype a building before we go and build it and find errors and emissions and fix them before they become errors and emissions on construction sites. I think the next evolution of this is around understanding the need and the importance of that digital conductor, that digital custodian, to flow and manage that information on projects. So everybody has consolidated information that is reliable and they can then forge ahead fast with their piece of work and that part of the tune for the beat of the project.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you, and you navigated. I love that statement of you. Know make complex problems human and I see that in you. So in managing all of the complexities and multi-layered projects, how do you bring automation into that to streamline those processes?
Speaker 2:Another good question. You know breaking down those problems into their bite-sized pieces. There's a phrase that I often throw out you know how do you eat an elephant? Well, it's one bite at a time. And construction projects, particularly hospitals, are the largest building into its most binary packets, and then you can find the patterns in those packets. And when you start to align the patterns in those binary bits that make up a building, you can then create a I like to call it a framework and then, with that framework, you can then look for opportunity to automate it.
Speaker 2:One of the things that I did a lot of work with prior to joining revisto was automating collision detection, clash detection. It's so important to be able to find a lot of these things that you know often bump into each other in the design process, but can't bump into each other in the design process but can't bump into each other in the construction process. Find them early and then mitigate them, and it's actually quite well. I find it actually quite satisfying when you start to see a framework that is highly automated, empowering teams to build better together With less effort. So they're prototyping the finished product. They're doing it in a methodology that actually is less effort than what they would do traditionally and they're enjoying the process. And I remember back to one of the first ever BIM projects I did 20 years ago so it's one of the first ever BIM projects I did was 20 years ago and I remember teaching the sub trades, the precast detailer who was doing the precast reinforcing. I taught him a workflow, a process that I'd broken down, and he said to me Jason, I can't do this workflow and I've priced to do this job and you've shown me how I can do it with 10% of the effort. I feel really bad and I said, well, pricing's not my problem, that's a different department. If you have a problem with the price you gave and the amount of effort that's going to take you to do this job, go speak to them, but you need to do it this way. So I have confidence in the work that you've done is coordinated and accurate. So he carried on, did the work. We didn't have any problems on that project. Every panel was accurate and every panel went together like it was lego. And I've taken those kind of fundamental break it down, find the bits, align the bits, create a framework, automate the framework, communicate it simply forward to numerous projects. Um. You know another project I remember doing um. As architects we were engaged to do the shop drawings for mechanical services for a couple of office towers and um again, we automated all of that. Um I I went out and met with the guys who were making the ductwork, like the machine shop, and he showed me the cnc machine and my brain just went, wow, this is amazing, this is like remote control airplanes on steroids, um.
Speaker 2:And and I was like so what information do you put into this cnc machine? He's like, oh yeah, we need these dimensions, we need these vectors, we need these angles. I said then I was going I can build a family that can give you that information. And he goes what? I was like what if I gave you a spreadsheet with all of the cutting list, um, would that help? And he goes no, you can't do that. And I was like yes, I can. So I went off and I made a whole bunch of kit of parts, ducting and this is um in revit 9.1 um. So it was like 2008 or something like 2009 um. And then we had all these kits of parts. We modeled it all in Revit and it was probably like version two of MEP for Revit. We produced all of the cuffing lists directly out of Revit just to schedule export to CSV, send it over to the machine shop.
Speaker 2:And they were making duct work six months ahead of time, barcoding it, wrapping it in Gladwrap, sticking it in a warehouse. And when the actual site was ready to install it, they just said we need, you know, xyz parts. They came on a truck, they scanned them, they put them up, incredibly efficient. And one of the other stories from that project was the tilt beams. We'd modeled everything down to the millimeter, including all the hangers. So we hung all the hangers in advance. We finished the ceiling, it was all exposed and then they came to hang the hangers and they put them on lifting jacks and lift them up and screw the bolts up the the guys that were doing it.
Speaker 2:Originally they had allowed a week per floor per tower to install these chill beams because they thought they'd have to, you know, lift them up and fiddle around and you know, take a few hours to get one of these beams.
Speaker 2:And they actually got it down so they could do a floor of an office tower in one day and the other floor of the office tower in the other day. So they shifted their entire construction methodology to do um the install on a saturday and a sunday, and then they had a week free up their sleeves. They went and did other stuff um the. The bottleneck then became the manufacturer couldn't make them fast enough to get them installed and the other the. The most amusing bottleneck was there was not enough hydraulic lifting jacks to lift these things up fast enough, so they had to hire them from all over the country. And I was like, wow, who would have thought that lifting jacks would have been the bottleneck of all of this? Because typically on a project it's like oh, this hanger doesn't align with this one, and now we're gonna put you know, redraw this, hang this. Um, it was the lifting jacks well.
Speaker 1:Thanks, jason, for sharing that example of that project um shifting into gears into your current role as your chief innovation officer of Revisto. I'm super excited to hear everything you have to share about this role and I'm super excited to hear your experience in entering the company and what you've done to leverage your experience in digital innovation and what you're driving in terms of Revisto's changes and how you're impacting their clientele.
Speaker 2:Yeah, taking on this role is a big challenge and there's a lot of responsibility that goes with it in terms of you know, what are we doing as a construction industry? We're designing a collaboration platform to allow people to collaborate better together. Um. I've been using revisto for a very long time as a customer um. I fell in love with it when I met armin at las vegas um. We had a conversation about his dream for building um a construction collaboration platform on gaming technology. And we had a? Um a strong conversation about why gaming technology? Because there were other technologies out there in the market. And he explained to me it was about getting people lots of people into this environment so they could see information the same way. And I stood there and I thought about it. I was like damn, you're right, we've been doing this with the wrong tool all this time. Um and um.
Speaker 2:So we bought some licenses, we got into it and the thing I loved the most about revisto was there were three things that I needed to teach my team 2d equals 2d, 3d equals 3d. And the issue tracker is where you go to sort all of your issues and you take those three things and you apply it to any project and you suddenly had this ability to communicate like you haven't been able to communicate before, but, more importantly, check information that was on detailed drawings against the prototype, the 3D model, and see if they were aligned or not. The biggest problem I've seen over the years is, for all the right reasons, the wrong things get done, the 2D drawing gets modified, but the original model is left behind and the two get out of sync with each other and that's where the errors emerge. So, having this responsibility, um to then, how do we take that foundation and build on it for the future? You know, I worked hard with the dev team, um as a customer, around all sorts of things reporting, dashboards, clash detection, a whole bunch of things that came into revista and and now I'm on the inside, working intimately with the developers, working intimately with our customer success team globally, but, more importantly, connecting with our global customers around the world to understand their challenges, understand the problems they're having, so I can start to break them down and create patterns and find new ways of solving what we take for granted. As this is the way we do things, and I think that's one of the things that inspires me the most with revisto our mantra is to understand the problem and reimagine the problem with today's technology.
Speaker 2:We've got some exciting things coming out at our rev up conference in a couple of weeks. One of the ones is one of the ones I've been hanging out for so long for the industry. This recording will probably go out after it. But, yeah, we're bringing AR to construction, and AR is one of the things that I've longed to have in the construction industry.
Speaker 2:I grew up watching Star Wars and Star Trek. Being able to dial up on your mobile phone and say, hey, computer, show me my issues on this floor. Who wouldn't want that on a construction site? And then to be able to then look at your screen and go actually I can see what I need to do and then make those decisions in real time with confidence and track them so you know why the decisions were made and this is how this building has come together, and leave that as a record, as a warranty manual, as a blueprint, as an x-ray of the building when it's handed over to the client for its operational lifetime that's great, jason, and yeah, very excited to hear more about RevUp and that conference and the announcements that you have there.
Speaker 1:And tell me what are some specific challenges that you anticipate facing and promoting the use of digital technologies and, for example, ar and construction, and getting that implemented into into the clients, and how do you plan to address some of those challenges?
Speaker 2:that that's. That's a really good question, um. You know you've given me so many good questions to tap into um. Some of the challenges I've had in my career um being able to educate um and um break down those barriers around the way we've always done things. I remember vividly walking into a project the first of its typology in New Zealand to ever be constructed, a very significant project that was part of the Christchurch rebuild, and a very experienced foreman approached me and saw my laptop bag, saw my shiny shoes, made a comment about the laptop and the shiny shoes. We're all sitting on a construction site and I took that as a challenge. I was like I'm going to work with you. You've got experience and that experience in the built environment is invaluable.
Speaker 2:But there were, I guess, fundamental cautions or personal fears around this new thing. You know people don't like new. It's part of our DNA. That's how we survived on this planet. We were cautious around new things, proposing new ways of working or needing to modify what you've already done for many decades. In some cases it's natural to have that fear, have that concern. It would be wrong if you didn't. So I work with people to understand where their knowledge is. I work with them to showcase the power of the technology and how it can augment their knowledge and how they can become more engaged. So there's one example and it's a great example because to my knowledge it was probably one of the first Revisto projects in New Zealand. It was definitely the first to be using VR on a construction site.
Speaker 2:I ordered the oculus goggles they were the beta, the developer version um, I had to get them from america and um we got them through. I got them into the site hut and I set up in a, in a container you know those site hut container things and I put on the door bim cave. Um, so you step inside the bim cave and there were just computers and servers and vr goggles and um. So that this senior foreman who um challenged me on my first day within three months, he was regularly in the bim cave going, jason, get me in the model and and he put on the vr and he'd stand there and he would see how he was going to build the building digitally before he was building it months in advance. And there was one day he came up over from the construction site.
Speaker 2:There's a big construction site, you know, a couple of thousand people working on it and he was having an argument and he stormed in through the door and I'll never forget it and and he's like I'm having an argument and he used some other very colorful words um, and I, I need to get it, I need to get in the model, fire it up.
Speaker 2:And he put the goggles on and I fired it up and he goes now go over to the xyz part of the building and he goes and he's looking down and he's looking down at the framing and he's like now, turn off the plasterboard, turn on the structure. And he, yeah, I knew I was right and he took it off and he stormed out, slammed the door. You could probably hear him from the other side of the site as he clarified his understanding of the building to his team who were thinking it needed to go together a different way, and it was incredibly enriching and empowering that the model, the digital environment, was empowering these conversations that you know traditionally would have taken days to resolve, and he was able to kind of walk across site, understand it, go back across site and move forward at pace.
Speaker 1:Well, thanks for sharing that, Jason, and I'm so excited to just tease into your background of Revisto and also tease into what's coming out in the future, and I look forward so much to sharing more time with you in the future. As a 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 it?
Speaker 2:be, and what would?
Speaker 2:it do technology that would benefit you personally. What would it be and what would it do? Oh, wow, so much, so many ideas. Anything, anywhere. Anyhow, you know, my mind spins from warp drive to travel the universe to time machine to just revisit things over and over again. But I think the ability. Ability because we have tools that bring ar onto construction sites. We have tools like um ai right now, where I can do speech to text recognition and create an image, create a movie. Um, I think I would like a teleportation tool where I could be anywhere on this wonderful planet and a moment's notice and experience and help people with their projects and feel like travel was not a limitation.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. I love that too, and I know that I would be able to be everywhere all at once, which would be amazing. As we wrap up today's episode of the Future Construct podcast, I want to extend a heartfelt thank you to our guest, Jason Howden, for sharing his invaluable expertise and insights with us. I've personally enjoyed learning so much about you, Jason. Your wealth of experience in navigating complexities of construction projects and your passion for driving digital innovation is truly inspiring. From discussing your childhood influences to your role at Revisto, Jason, you've provided us with a wealth of knowledge and inspiration for the future of construction technology. Thank you again, Jason, for joining me, Mark Oden on Future Construct and to our listeners stay tuned for more fascinating conversations on the forefront of construction innovation. Thank you so much, Jason thank you, mark.
