VDC for Infrastructure: Less About Tools, More About Outcomes

Virtual Design and Construction can help teams identify risk earlier, evaluate alternatives and make better-informed project decisions. But for many transportation and water/wastewater Owners, the technology (and even the terminology) can still feel unfamiliar.

In this episode of the Design-Build Delivers Podcast, DBIA Director of Virtual Design and Construction Brian Skripac joins Patty Scharf of Burgess & Niple, Jon Berkoe of Arup and Jeff Scarano of HRSD to discuss what DBIA’s VDC Committee learned from conversations with infrastructure Owners and practitioners.

The group examines how models improve constructability, operability and maintainability; how Owners can use project data after turnover; what changes when models become contractual documents; and why leadership and trust are essential to getting full value from VDC.

Guests

Patty Scharf, DBIA, PE
Director of Digital Engineering | Burgess & Niple

Jon Berkoe, PE
Associate Principal | Arup

Jeff Scarano, PE, BCEE, DBIA
Chief Engineer | HRSD

Brian Skripac, CM-BIM, CDT, LEED AP, DBIA
Director of Virtual Design & Construction | DBIA

Resources

Explore DBIA’s VDC resources in the DBIA bookstore.

Register for the VDC Leadership Exchange in Cleveland this November, taking place the day before the Design-Build Conference & Expo.

Access all our free design-build resources and learn more about Design-Build Done Right® at dbia.org.

DBIA members are shaping the future, one successful collaboration at a time. 

Transcript

July 2026 ep

Thu, Jul 30, 2026 10:16AM • 41:21

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Virtual Design and Construction, VDC, DBIA, digital twins, model coordination, clash detection, digital deliverables, risk management, cost certainty, operability, maintainability, progressive design build, digital assets, owner expectations, project data.

SPEAKERS

Erin Looney, Jon Berkoe, Patty Scharf, Brian Skripac, Jeff Scarano

Erin Looney  00:08

Probably one of my most toxic personality flaws is that if the robots ever really actually do take over, I'm gonna be first in line to take their side. Maybe that's self-preservation, but mostly I'm here for anything that makes life and work more convenient, more efficient, and more thorough. So, what does any of that have to do with DBIA, or is it just a look you didn't want into my psyche? Well, today we're going to talk about virtual design and construction. So, yes, it does have to do with DBIA. Sometimes that conversation can get really technical really quickly. You hear clash detection, you hear model coordination, digital twins, common data environments, and depending on who's explaining it, VDC can start sounding like construction wizardry practiced by a small group of cloaked people with extremely powerful tools. Thankfully, underneath all that technology and the cloaks, VDC is a lot more practical. It helps people see a project more clearly, ask better questions, and make decisions while there's still time to do something about the answers. I am Erin Looney, and this is the two-time Stevie Award-winning Design Build Delivers podcast, brought to you by Archons, an Autodesk Platinum partner. Joining this conversation are DBIA Director of Virtual Design and Construction and Head Wizard Brian Skripak, along with three members of DBIA's VDC committee, also wizards in their own right. Patty Sharf, Director of Digital Engineering at Burgess and NIPEL, John Burko, Associate Principal at Arup, and Jeff Scurrano, Chief Engineer at HRSD. Now, a couple months ago, at DBIA's Spring Specialty Conferences, they spoke with transportation, aviation, and water wastewater owners and practitioners about how VDC is currently being used, where the industry is still struggling, and what kind of guidance project teams need next. So we're leaning on them in this conversation to clear up some of what could be and probably is self-inflicted mystery, and to highlight some of what they learned. What we do know is people have moved past hearing about the next tool for the sake of the next tool. Project teams really want to understand the outcomes and where VDC fits in the project. You're going to hear today that many infrastructure teams are already doing this work, even if they might not call it VDC. You'll also hear how models help teams uncover risks earlier, what changes when digital models become formal project documents, and why trust in the team, the process, and the model itself is key to everything. So DBIA's VDC committee just recently gathered some feedback from both owners and from practitioners, specifically in transportation and water wastewater. Now, before we get into some of what that means and what that looks like, can you all paint a picture of the survey, the process, and how it came about?

Brian Skripac  03:00

It was interesting for us to go to the transportation, aviation, and water, wastewater conference and really ask a deeper dive on the questions because I think one of the things that we saw was maybe a little bit less of a response to what type of information we were getting from our members, but we wanted to get some insight and really just be in front of that group because we had a captive audience to say what challenges are you having, where do you see the opportunities are, and what can DBIA do to help deliver the information and provide the insight to really expand this conversation and these these two market segments, and that's when it actually you know Patty and John and a couple others and Jeff, they all put together the list of questions, and we were able to get in front of the owners forum and the practitioner forums to really, really ask a series of pointed questions about what we were looking for and how you know where the challenges were, where the opportunities were, and how can DBI help? And they delivered actually asking those questions to those audiences.

Patty Scharf  04:00

What kind of came to the top was the answers were very kind of in alignment across the water, wastewater, and their transportation. They're looking for outcomes. They want cost certainty. They want risk avoidance. People are kind of tool tired. They don't want to hear about all the different technologies. They want to hear about the outcomes and how these particular technologies can actually affect the outcome of their projects.

Jon Berkoe  04:21

We recognize internally that we have to accelerate and kickstart this conversation amongst the industries that we're talking about. And if we don't, the gap between those who participate in the building industry, between those and the horizontal industries, will just grow. So we have to accelerate, kickstart this conversation. I think the surveys are a great way to do that because people feel like they're contributing

Jeff Scarano  04:43

from an owner perspective. I'll put it this way: the perception I had when I was asking the questions of the owners, I got the impression that there was a hesitation in answering the questions, and I don't think that hesitation was because they were uncomfortable providing information. But when I was reading the room, just kind of looking at people, and we see this in general with DBIA, the practitioners are there. They've been there. They're doing these. They're leading the efforts to implement VDC, to implement best practices. The owners are lagging, right? We talk about it in general in the industry. If if you know you look at distribution of owner to practitioner attendance, the owners are outnumbered like I don't know three or four to one. That was the impression I got. Was I was asking these questions and

Patty Scharf  05:30

it was sort of falling on blank stares. Like I'm not even sure what these terms mean. Why I care as an owner because there were actually people in the room like we had 100 people and I would get 80 answers on each survey question. I was like, "Why are 15 of you not responding? So that was the impression I took away that owners are lagging on their knowledge, their understanding of how it adds value to their programs. I have no data point for that, other than I was reading the room as I was asking those questions. Well, and I think you hit on a really key point when you said the terminology because it doesn't always translate exactly from the vertical world to the horizontal world. And I personally had people coming from my company that are doing this in transportation coming to the conference because I was presenting the VDC rules, and they're like, "We don't do VDC. I'm like, "You do. You just call it something different. And when you start to talk about BIM and you say building information model, a lot of times, at least in my roadway transportation world, they start to glaze over. Like you're talking about buildings that doesn't really translate, and so it's almost overcoming this terminology gap. That even we're calling it a lot of different things, but really it comes down to smart designing, having actual geometry with information attached to it. I'm trying to define to them what BIM is because a lot of the documentation, the support, all of the hard work that's been done by our vertical world uses the word BIM. And if I just start to call it something different, they might miss out on all the resources that are already out there that actually do translate. So that was a conversation I have to have internally a lot. I actually just started looking at the VDC primer from the lens of the transportation world, and just changing a couple key words. I think will start to help people see that we are talking about things that will benefit your industry as well.

Brian Skripac  07:18

And I think that's important as we set out to start defining some of these and the the documents that all of you have helped contribute to as part of the committee is really using the word virtual design and construction. Sure, that came obviously came from the building market. I think you know the vertical construction side because evolution and adoption of these technologies and tools. But it's we're virtually designing and constructing something doesn't matter what it is, and I think when we ask the questions, certainly the first question we ask is, you know, where do these tools provide the most value? That really level set the conversation. The biggest thing that we saw, the biggest response was constructability and risk reduction. The next response was better cost certainty and quantity validation, and that was followed by owner decision making and stakeholder engagement, and then improved coordination and clash avoidance. And those terms are completely void of being a road, a water treatment facility, a building, a hospital, whatever it is. These are activities that designers and contractors and design builders and trade partners have to deal with, and I think when they saw those questions, granted we didn't have everybody respond. We're not going to get full participations, Jeff said, unfortunately. But I think that kind of took that initial terminology away. And kudos to this group. You know, you were the ones who wrote the questions. Being able to get that information out, I think that was really key.

Erin Looney  08:39

And to kind of bring this back to this was actually a part of a conversation behind the scenes with me and Brian that this was going to be a really big piece of this conversation and so it's really good to hear you just kind of tease out this difference in terminology in my limited experience writing and talking about what you all do in the industry I see that a lot it's one thing for somebody who is not a professional to hear these different terms and then go, I got to go figure out what that means. But to be acting on it, to work in that space, and to be able to convince other people that what they're doing is exactly what you're telling them they should be doing or not, it's interesting to hear you, like I said, tease that out. Part of VDC's value is in helping teams see things earlier, preferably when there's still time to do something about it. So, let's talk about that a bit. What types of risk management, risk mitigation, and and opportunities does the BDC reveal kind of early on that potentially traditional delivery models might miss?

Jon Berkoe  09:35

Well, being at the design side of things, frequently we see these opportunities earlier and first. So, as a design engineer, first and foremost, our obligation is to truly collaborate with our builder because the contract is enabling that to happen, and BDC is literally the process that enables that to happen much more efficiently, much more proactively. Produce data that can actually be used to evaluate cost estimates. For instance, that's huge, and also the health of the design that's being proposed. The more value engineering we can do earlier in collaboration with those that are actually using the design to build, the more we can identify risks and opportunities to lower cost of the project, and also identify potential design improvements that can be more constructable, and also advance the schedule to be more expedited. But it depends on the data, and it depends on the coordination and collaboration. So VDC is really the driver of all this.

Jeff Scarano  10:35

So owner perspective, and I just I lived this recently. I was in a 60% design review meeting, or something like that, for a very complex design at one of our treatment plants. They were retrofitting a building where there was all this structural work, all this piping work, pumps, chemical feed lines, and and literally one of the electricity staff was like, "Can you please pull up the model? Because I'm staring at these 2d drawings, and it was just like it was like a checkerboard of lines, and and you you couldn't tell what was up, down, left, right. And so engineer just moved into the model, navigated through the model, walked us down this hallway, this pipe gallery, and said, "Here are clearances. Here's where you're going to set up ladders to to maintain this equipment. They did takeoffs, measurements, and very quickly staff was saying yes, that works. Whereas looking at the 2d drawings would have been absolutely impossible. So from an owner perspective, we've adopted, we require a certain level of VDC, and I use that term loosely. Builders, practitioners, you use it differently, right? For us, it's operability and maintainability. Seeing it in space, all the different disciplines together on the same page, rather than flipping back and forth. And so, what used to take us hours takes us minutes. Like that meeting was the perfect example, right? In five minutes, the designer was able to pull up the model, walk us through it. We had resolution on that that that issue. There was a quote in there. It says, "You know, moving from models for modeling and documentation to models for decision making. Jeff, you just responded to that without even asking about it, right? The other evolution of this is this is no longer just a design tool. This isn't a construction tool. This is a team tool, and this is a tool that's leading into unique new opportunities for water, wastewater, and transportation owners to utilize this through the life cycle of the built asset.

Patty Scharf  12:29

There's so much more valuable review comments when you're actually looking at the model and not plans, because sometimes a lot of the the really hard to kind of grasp concepts that are just really hard to tease out in 2D plans, it sounds really simple when you're looking at the model. But for instance, very close to what you're saying, Jeff, we're doing a review of a wastewater treatment plant, and the operator was like virtually standing in the model, and he's like, "If we could move this valve two inches up, it will save all of my operator's backs. I mean, and this is something that that would have never come from a 2D set of plans. You're not going to feel that kind of two inch variance. We would never get that comment on 2D plans, and and those are the things that make a project great. When you have this virtual model, you have a lot more opportunities to also manage everybody's expectations. We have a better idea of what this is going to look like when we're done, and are we all okay with this kind of thing.

Brian Skripac  13:20

We keep talking about owner decision making, managing risk, cost alignment, schedule alignment, constructability. I want to ask both you, John, and Patty, because you've talked about this before. How does VDC in the early design process start to transform progressive design build?

Jon Berkoe  13:38

Hey, Brian, that's a great question. Pretty much every major transport project I've been involved with since joining Arab that is progressive design build has uncovered design issues that would have created additional costs and potentially massive schedule delays. And so, in progressive design build, you have these validation periods at the beginning, and that's where you can really, if you work together with VDC and use the models and get them to be developed at a high level of quality, not a high level of detail, but high level of quality early, then people will coordinate and collaborate earlier and identify these areas where what the owner thinks was the right design has some potential flaws in it, and design engineer and builder who are hired because they're great can can fix these problems and actually come up with solutions earlier before it's too late. This has happened on every billion-plus-dollar project I've been on, so invariably, it's just the nature of the process

Patty Scharf  14:45

in the progressive design, build, delivery model. That planning stage gets kind of stretched out, and that's where you really have this opportunity to take advantage of these technologies that help you get this planning level quicker, so you can make better decisions about the scope and. Like we just in general design build, we talk about how it's making the decisions early when it's cheaper to do so. And progressive design build, I feel like stretches out that planning window and gives you so much more opportunity. And if you utilize the technologies to to get very good alternatives in front of all of the stakeholders, you can tease out ones that just don't work. You might think that they work beautifully, but because you have all the stakeholders in the room and they can visualize it, they can see that. One example I have is on a wastewater treatment plant. It's active wastewater treatment plant. They have to totally redo the pump station, but we have to get that totally built before the other one goes away. And there is a huge utility tunnel that runs. Well, there's multiple utility tunnels that run underground because at a wastewater treatment plant, there's just as much underground, if not more, than above ground, and we were able to go through multiple alternatives visually, where you can see what's not only above ground but what's below ground. This one tunnel that at the beginning of the project actually written in to the question, you know, the ideas on scope was that this utility tunnel would have to be relocated, but because we were able to use virtual design and construction, get some 3d models in there, and show that we could keep the tunnel there and still fit the new pump station, it just opened so many doors. And I think I can't even put a number on how much money that saved because I say utility tunnel, and there's literally hundreds of conduits and different things running through it. Then you have to find a new route for when you're adding even more stuff underground, so those underground things with pipes at all different levels, you just it's very very hard to see what's happening on 2d plans.

Jon Berkoe  16:29

Patty, thanks for bringing up the tunnel as the objective here because yeah, I've been on projects with tunnels and it just moves to the conversation of underground stuff, and underground stuff is so huge in affecting the cost of a project, and in large transport or water wastewater projects, there's a lot of underground stuff, especially utilities that some of which have to be relocated. And without having a 3D understanding of how these interact with the potential design and whether there are tolerance issues or conflict issues, or even potential challenges to existing structure-you are really at risk, and those risks manifest in very expensive ways. So VDC has just been huge for us in the underground space because what you can't see and especially understand in the 2d drawing comes to life in the 3d space. That is a big aspect of these infrastructure projects that exist in building projects, but not nearly to the same degree. The

Erin Looney  17:32

Design Build Delivers podcast is brought to you by Archons, your technology optimization partner, helping design build teams streamline workflows with Autodesk solutions, expert support, and real-world training. Ready to work smarter and faster? Get tools, insights, and schedule your AI readiness check at archons.us/dbia. We're going to get into the owner side of this a little bit because Jeff, you've been intently listening us, have I? Brian mentioned a little bit ago about not thinking of VDC as just a design and construction tool. I'm curious what happens with all that information when the project is delivered. Let's talk about how owners are using the project data and those models even after constructions complete,

Jeff Scarano  18:22

HRSD is evolving. There, you know, we do require models be built for design purposes, but that's like I said, for for operability and maintainability reviews. From a back end standpoint, we require the model delivered to us in Revit. That's that's our standard right now, so that we have a base model that we can work with. Sometimes we require point clouds, depending on you know what was collected in in the infrastructure itself. But really, what we want right now, and this is HRSD specific, is an extraction of the asset information. So you know all all the behind the scenes data behind the pump, the flange, the pipe, that sort of information gets extracted for us to go into our CMMS. So we're probably not the power end user that we want to be. I have a vision that we would retain. Well, one, I would love to retain the model, but I realize that the virtual models sometimes are more subscription based or they're more computer gamey, and that takes maintenance and somebody that knows how to use it. But ideally, ideally, you know, I want to be in a space where we take the final model, and the next time we do a renovation on that facility, we can hand off that model to the next designer. So they're not going out and laser scanning or doing takeoffs or anything. Like they're starting with a good base, and maybe they verify that with a point cloud to see if we've done any, you know, a laser scan to see if we've done any changes. That was a a roundabout way of kind of this is how HRSD is is doing it presently, and this is kind of maybe what I'm hoping we can get to. But that's just our perspective.

Patty Scharf  19:57

I love to hear Jeff saying that they would love to take ownership of the. That's where I think it makes most sense as a designer who puts a lot of effort into the model, and then it evolves as it gets constructed. And a lot of times, we're required to deliver this record model that I'm not sure a lot of our owners are using. And then when we get our next project, they're not handing us back an existing model; they're handing us a whole bunch of 2D record drawings, and and that you have to go field verify, and not that we don't want to get paid to do that, but I think it would help the entire industry if we were able to be handed a model, or better yet, you give us permissions to work in your model, so then you're not kind of tasked with then updating it once we change a design or whatever. And I feel like the progressive design delivery model, even just design build delivery model opens up a little bit more trust for that where you can provide us the common data environment we work in your model to your specifications and then it's not like this 10 models existing for the same thing over and over again but I think that at least in the water wastewater side and the transportation side we're we're kind of a far way from that just getting owners to trust that oh I can like almost let somebody else in my model that that's kind of hard for people to grasp but we're getting there especially in this design build delivery model where the designers and the contractors are sharing models currently so it would only make sense for the owners to start kind of owning that

Jon Berkoe  21:18

this area is the is sort of the biggest opportunity for advancement, and I think the advancement has to come from multiple places. There needs to be better education to owners as to how they will realize the value in a more practical, hands-on way. In my experience on projects, you know, the use of the model is in the requirements in terms of use for operations and maintenance, and the importance of asset data tagging, and all these things are in the requirements, and and the teams work to provide this information. But there isn't really. It almost seems a little bit too hypothetical at this point. At the beginning, it's like yes, we're going to do that, but there's there's still a gap between doing it and actually using it, and the entire community of stakeholders has an opportunity here to create very practical use cases using very practical technology that show very tangible value metrics in those things being exercised. And I think that's where I think we have an opportunity.

Brian Skripac  22:20

I like the way that Jeff described it too. Right, he talked about we have an expectation that that you will use these advanced technologies to better design and construct our projects, and we also have an expectation that there's going to be information turned over in a way that we can utilize it post construction, and I think that's important. And that goes back to you know trying to tie this back into that original survey. One of the other questions that we asked were, "What'll help drive the industry forward? It said owner expectations and model deliverables, and that is a really unique opportunity. So if Jeff or another.or another municipality says, "Hey, we are expecting our projects teams to use these tools to do their work more efficiently, and we would also like you to structure your deliverables back to us in a digital way, so we can take immediate use of them instead of having papers and drawings and rolls of all this other information that, at the end of the day, nobody can find in a file cabin or not know where it's at, or somebody spills coffee on it, or whatever. Right now, you have this digital asset for the life cycle of the built environment that you can continue to maintain and even pass along for the next renovation demolition project that starts to provide a higher quality starting point for the next project team. And there's even the next level of that, where you know the transportation market segment is really advancing this this idea of model as a legal document, models legal deliverable. I live in Pennsylvania and I see what they're doing. They have their 2025 digital delivery initiative where they were evolving their work to the point where they've said by 2025 construction projects will have the ability to bid using 3D technology, and that is a huge leap for where we're at in the industry moving forward. That's a significant jump, and they're continuing to evolve and move that. And I think one of their documents, you know, they're piloting projects right now where they're doing this, but by 2030, all new construction and reconstruction projects will be models, a legal document. Will be our models, legal deliverable. That's how it's going to be utilized. So I think that's pretty exciting to see that really plants a flag in the digital continuum for how we we do work moving forward.

Erin Looney  24:37

So Brian, you mentioned this a little bit earlier. We're going to come back to it. That something that stood out in some of the committee's findings was that transportation seems to be a bit further along in treating digital deliverables as formal project documents. So, what changes when agencies start to treat models as contractual or as legal project documents?

Jon Berkoe  24:58

I think everything changes. I mean. There'll be a tremendous slowdown of efficiency and perceived value because as long as drawings are the currency of delivery for project closure and project execution, in my experience, even really good design engineering teams don't function efficiently as long as that exists, because they're in the back of their mind, they're always thinking about the drawings they need to deliver, and it affects the way they work. And DBC becomes kind of a like a resource rather than an integral part of their own process. Once the models are the currency of the project, which they should be, it will create tremendous cost savings opportunities for value engineering, and ultimately we get to that point of using data for operations and maintenance. There'll be less ambiguity in in how that's done because you know you've got the model, and now we've got to make the model work, and that will drive all these technology companies in terms of creating tools that can enhance how that model can be used, which is currently a process that has advanced fairly slowly. So everything will flow down from that, in my opinion. So I'd love to hear the opinions of others.

Brian Skripac  26:10

I think there's a ton of waste in creating a set of two-dimensional construction documents, too. Right? You talk about efficiency and flow down, John. You know, think about what's the win of having to not go around and put a dimension and put a note on everything? And if somebody's in the model, they can pick on it and know where it's at. They know where it's going to go. It was placed there with intent because there was an expectation of its reliability and the information's in there that helps the next participant in doing their work. I think it's an elimination of waste-that's a huge opportunity as well. I have not worked on a project that has been a model as a legal deliverable. I have worked on a project where we have had advanced reliability on model elements, and it's a cultural change. Like it's-we placed it right in the model. You can trust it. Go ahead and use it. It's in the contract. We told you you can use it. We're not going to waste time dimensioning, putting all these other things on there, putting it on a sheet, printing a stack of paper for you to carry around. All of that-it's a huge opportunity. We need to continue to evolve. Everybody in the project life cycle needs to be able to take advantage of that, including those reviewing the drawings, AHAs. That'll be you know part of it, but we're seeing that evolution. I think I said I think the transportation market segment, the DOTS, are doing an incredible job of advancing that initiative, and the rest of the the rest of the design and construction industry needs to pay attention to that and and learn from that and evolve that for their own market segments.

Erin Looney  27:39

Speaking of the rest of the construction industry on water projects, wastewater projects. How can VDC help teams evaluate whether systems will will be operable, maintainable, and accessible once the facility is in service? Patty, you talked earlier about standing in the model and like wiggling your arms around. Let's come back to that now.

Patty Scharf  28:00

It definitely manages expectations, right? Because especially in progressive design build, where your budget is even set, but you know you come in and you have all these wants and everything, but we have to design something that you can afford to build. And being able to manage those expectations and getting to walk through the model and talk about, well, we wanted this, and and you can physically say, okay, you can do it like this, but it's going to cost you this much more. Then everybody's there seeing that, and they make that decision, saying, "Oh, okay, recognizing that sometimes needs are wants, and that just comes out a little bit easier when there isn't this obstacle of trying to translate plans. Our workforce is aging out. Like I'll age myself by saying this, but my kids have grown up in the 3D world. They are used to building in 3D. I mean, they've been playing with robots and buying car after their whole life. Getting someone in that age group to understand on a set of plans these big decisions, money decisions, is is much more difficult than if you're you're walking through it. And some things are just blatantly clear in 3D that might be very very hard to tease out in 2d plans.

Jeff Scarano  29:04

From an owner's perspective, maybe it's equally important. So we've talked about the operation and maintenance, right? The men and women that will be turning bolts and you know adjusting pumps, that sort of stuff. But there's also the layer of executive board level buy-in. And back in the day, you know, black and white plans, 2d plans were really hard for you know a general manager, a director, a city manager, whomever, right? A board of directors to understand, and not not that we necessarily invite our commissioners at HRSD to walk through models, but our SWIFT program, right, a multi-billion-dollar program, very political, very publicized. Our largest single investment. What the virtual models have allowed us to do is very quickly and at the highest levels of the company. You know, my boss and my boss's boss and the commissioners are able to look at the model and say, "Yes, that's the look I want for the facility. Right? Forget. About O and M, right? Forget about operability, maintainability. It's that's what I want. You can tell stainless steel from CMU block from concrete walkways to asphalts, right? So it's rich enough in a lot of cases, and and we've built a lot of that into what we required in our Swift program. But those models are rich enough that leadership at the company at the highest levels of the company can have confidence that that $2 billion investment is going to look the way it needs to look and function. To Patty's point, the way we need it to function, and I think that's a really important step too for certain projects.

Jon Berkoe  30:35

Jeff, you're bringing up a really key issue around senior leadership understanding of 3d data, and about 15 years ago, when I worked at Bechtel, my collaborator and partner in the sort of the digital transformation space, we'd go to visit projects, and he would go to the project directors and project managers, and open up Novus Works on the computer and say, "Do you know how to use this software? And they would say, "I don't know what you're talking about, but and he would say, "Well, I'm going to spend the day teaching you how to use this software because if you don't know how to use it, you can't expect all your people to be able to understand the value of of this information. And so, leaders need to get in the model, so to speak, and leverage the value that you just described because it's very intuitively obvious once they understand some of the basic ways that it works, and they'll get their mindset out of that 2d space and into the 3d space very quickly. I think this is a huge area because even I've seen many executives that just don't appreciate the value.

Erin Looney  31:37

So our last section here is the DBIA plug, but it's also a broader plug for going into VDC in transportation, aviation, water, and wastewater markets, and making sure everyone is prepared. So even with all these things we've just talked about, all the right requirements in place, the right people, the right culture, the mindset, someone still has to connect the technical work to the larger goals of the project, DBIA happens to have a pretty solid resource for this. Not that you know, not that Brian nor I are biased or anything, but the VDC project leader's role and responsibilities on Design Build Project Primer, which I will link in the show notes, exists as one of those resources to help. So, what role, though, Brian? Let's start with you. What role should the VDC project leader play when connecting digital workflows to cost, risk, delivery objectives of the project?

Brian Skripac  32:29

That document was one of many things that we've put out, along with and and everybody on this call has contributed because this was an effort of the committee and bringing in feedback from each of their roles from these different market segments, having an individual to serve as a leader on the team, bridging the gap between design and construction, and the owner to really see that how do we digitally integrate technology across the life cycle of a project? That is their role, as Jeff talked about, and and John did too. Designers don't know what contractors or builders are doing with the model. Builders don't know what designers are doing with the model, and same with the owner and vice versa, right? And this individual can really bridge all of that and connect the dots and share ideas, right? If Patty's working on a job for Jeff, he's like, man, I really wish there was an opportunity. They're sitting in the kickoff meeting. I wish I could get this information. Patty's probably going to be the key person that say, you know, we do have that information in the model. Is there a certain way that we can deliver that to you to add that value, or you know, what's another opportunity here? That was always something that I saw in projects is really being the connection and the glue of how we deliver technology and how it becomes integrated. And it's not a point in time. It's not a vertical application. Oh, somebody's going to come in and do this. It's really part of the life cycle of the project, and it really integrates a continuum. And producing that document was something that I was really excited about because it positions that individual in a leadership role for the life cycle of the job, not just one aspect of the team. And a design-build team being there from the outset and having that whole team approach is is ideal to deliver this. You know, have this role be integrated and really drive success through the use of technology.

Erin Looney  34:24

So finally, let's look beyond the existing resources to what other kind of practical guidance DBIA is or could be developing that that you know in response to the feedback you got from the survey. So what type of things are taking shape out of what you learned, and how can members help shape these various forms of guidance?

Patty Scharf  34:47

So, on the VDC subcommittee for transportation, water, wastewater, we're looking at making an owner's framework around VDC and digital delivery because a lot of the survey response was around clarity around the deliverables and and what they're intended. Uses are and just having less about the particular tools and more about the hands-on guidance on how to apply these technologies and when and you know who should kind of be in charge of those. So that that's one thing that our subcommittee is starting to tease out and and work on.

Brian Skripac  35:16

You know, thinking back, what else is the VDC committee doing and working on? We're also actively engaged in updating our contract language. DBIA contracts has what was the bid exhibit. It's outdated. It it was in need of update and transition. It was great for the time it was written, and now we're evolving it for today's current market. And trust is great, but contractually defining how that information is going to be used and not used, which is important. How reliable is the model? How reliable is the data? Who's the author of that? Who owns that? Where is it going? That's something we're working on, and I think that's going to give a really good framework for design-build teams to be able to document how they're going to use these tools and really define a framework of trust to deliver it. The

Jon Berkoe  36:03

document is a great start. It provides the framework that we need to define the importance of the role, as Brian described, and what it does. And the committee is the next step to facilitate the process of moving the needle. I think we need to think hard about how we can get project performance, project teams working with a different mindset, given that VDC is is enabling such great opportunities. It gets down to the roots level. VDC, as long as it's viewed as a resource, will not realize full value. It needs to be the integral part of how project teams work. Engineers, VDC is not CAD. VDC is a highly intelligent, sophisticated way of working. Engineers who are highly sophisticated, intelligent people need to grab onto that. And once that happens, with the help of DBIA's guidance, I think you're going to see tremendous benefits from all that.

Brian Skripac  36:56

Just as you were describing that, John, you know, the word trust comes to mind. I think trust is such a a key word that we use in design build and being able to have an environment of trust and working with your partners and it basically the same thing with the model right trust the model you have people building intelligence accuracy and knowledge into these models let's leverage that instead of dumbing it down to 2d and passing it off in a very disconnected way. So I think getting to a point where there's trust in the model-that was just the word that came to mind as you were talking.

Erin Looney  37:28

And because Brian's going to be on the show again next month, for anyone who's just dying to hear more from him, I'm going to give the last word to Jeff.

Jeff Scarano  37:37

Oh my! Okay. Well, you can edit out all of that surprise.

Erin Looney  37:40

No way! It's the best part.

Jeff Scarano  37:42

Well, okay. I think trust is a really key element, and from an owner perspective, I'll invoke PDB progressive design build since since we brought it up earlier. But 10 years ago, we weren't really talking about that. 10 years before that, we were barely talking about Cmar, right? And I bring that up cautiously because I know this is DBIA. But the point is, our industry is an evolution. Construction is an evolution. I think back to pictures from the the 1900s, 1800s, and and people building brick sewers, right? And and now we're using all sorts of composites and spray-on applications. This is just one of those evolutions. To your point, Brian, about trust, it's not just trust between team members, but it's trust in the industry, trust by the owners. Like Patty, I loved your idea, and I'm going to take this back to my folks. Of what if we had a model, and it was one model, and no matter whether it was company A, B, C, or D working on that facility, they were working in that model. It was no longer company A's model that then HRSD got. It's but that takes trust and it takes evolution. And just like we've seen a progression in the industry from fixed price design build to progressive, I think VDC is an evolution and adoption as the tools become more readily available and polished, and then as there's acceptance and understanding of how to use them. Because I'll tell you, as an owner, we don't fully appreciate how to best use the tools yet.

Erin Looney  39:04

Now, I'm not saying anyone should join me in lining up behind the robots and just going wherever they tell us, but I do hope this conversation with Jeff, John, Patty, and Brian made VDC feel a little less like wizardry and a lot more like a practical way to approach projects, because as we've learned, VDC is not just technology. It's not just the takeover of the robots. VDC belongs right in the middle of the project. As you heard, it's there when an operator walks through a model and realizes a simple two-inch move on a valve could save someone's back. It's there when early decisions prevent expensive underground conflicts, and it's there in the information an owner can take onto the next project. And to help your team put these ideas into practice, you can find DBIA's VDC resources, including the VDC project leader's role and responsibilities on design-build. Primer in the DBIA bookstore at store.dbia.org. I've also linked them right in the show notes, and most of our resources are free. And if you want to continue the conversation in person and perhaps learn a little wizardry of your own, registration is open for DBIA's VDC Leadership Exchange in Cleveland in November. The event takes place the day before the Design Build Conference and Expo begins, so you can make one trip and take part in two events focused on strengthening how your teams deliver projects. Thank you for listening, and thank you again to Patty Sharf, John Burko, Jeff Scurrano, and Brian Skripak for giving us this perspective on VDC. And if you still haven't gotten enough of Brian, because rumor has it he's been sleeping in the studio since we recorded this episode, good news-he's back in August alongside Nick Miller and Tobias Sheila from Archons, who are going to talk to us about project data, AI, and digital delivery. So a little more wizardry, a little more uncovering some mystery, and a lot more, Brian, who is becoming our podcast's recurring character. Thank you, as always, to Archons, an Autodesk Platinum Partner, for bringing you the Design Build Delivers podcast. Learn more at archons.us/dbia.