Aurecon's Digital Frontiers in Asia: AI, Automation & Delivery with Jacob Hoare

Host: Andrea Ciaffi

Guest: Jacob Hoare

In a fascinating discussion, Jacob Hoare , Aurecon ’s Digital Lead for Asia, shared his unique perspective on navigating the rapidly evolving digital landscape in construction. From impactful career advice to tangible AI applications and the booming data center market, Jacob highlighted how human-centric technology integration is key to real transformation in the industry.

The Golden Rule for Career Growth: Understand the Entire Business

Jacob shared the best career advice he ever received: quickly understanding the entire industry and business, not just one's core technical job. This comprehensive perspective helps connect the "pieces of the puzzle" and has significantly accelerated his own career trajectory. He emphasizes that this holistic view is crucial for digital leaders who face diverse challenges and ideas daily.

Asia's Accelerated Digital Evolution

Jacob, originally from Perth, now drives Aurecon's digital strategy across eight countries in Asia, including Singapore and Vietnam. He notes that while regions differ in digital maturity, with Singapore being highly advanced, Vietnam stands out as Aurecon's most digitally advanced office in Asia. This rapid adoption in Asia, sometimes outpacing the "Western world," demonstrates these geographies are leveraging the latest technologies efficiently.

From Strategy to Impact: Aurecon's Digital Delivery

Aurecon defines seven digital capabilities that translate strategy into practical delivery, from information management and BIM to cutting-edge AI automation and digital leadership. Jacob explains that his role involves hands-on integration of these technologies into projects to achieve better client outcomes. He firmly believes that every project, regardless of size or complexity, can benefit from digital delivery.

AI in Action: Beyond the Hype, Towards Real Savings

Jacob dispels the misconception that AI will eliminate jobs, stating it will instead free professionals from repetitive, boring tasks, allowing them to focus on problem-solving and strategic thinking, thereby enhancing individual skills. Aurecon has developed in-house AI tools:

• Recall: Accesses company information, significantly reducing search time from 20-30 minutes to just 30 seconds.
• Clarify: Connects to RFI systems, generating responses based on project information and client standards. Critically, a human engineer remains in the loop to verify and approve responses, ensuring accuracy and oversight.

The Data Center Boom

The APAC data center market is experiencing phenomenal growth, projected to rise from $30 billion to $70 billion in less than eight years. This surge is primarily driven by AI demand and the region's large population coupled with lower existing capacity compared to other markets. Jacob highlights that the extremely fast-paced and repetitive nature of data center construction makes it "ripe for automation," showcasing a huge opportunity for digital tools to support rapid delivery.

Fostering True Digital Adoption: Solving Real Problems

Jacob stresses the importance of a human-centered approach to technology. Digital solutions must solve real problems and take the "pain away" from teams, rather than being implemented just for technology's sake. Involving subject matter experts in the development process ensures tools are tried, tested, and genuinely beneficial, leading to crucial user adoption. As Jacob's boss wisely states, "good work always rises to the top" – if a tool is valuable, people will use it.

The Future is Now: AI as Ubiquitous as Electricity

AI remains the most exciting digital trend due to its unprecedented speed of adoption and daily emergence of new use cases. Jacob predicts that AI will soon become so deeply embedded in our work processes that we might not even talk about it as a separate technology, much like electricity today. He encourages everyone in construction to continuously ask: "How can technology and digital enhance the current task I'm doing?". This simple yet powerful mindset is the key to continuous improvement across the industry.

Key Takeaways:

• Broad industry and business understanding accelerates career growth.
• Vietnam is a surprising leader in digital maturity for Aurecon in Asia.
• AI tools like "Recall" and "Clarify" are already delivering significant time savings with human oversight.
• AI's role is to enhance human capability by automating mundane tasks, not replace jobs.
• The APAC data center market is booming and presents a massive opportunity for automation.
• Successful digital adoption hinges on solving real problems and ensuring solutions are user-friendly.
• Always ask how technology can improve your current task for continuous enhancement.