A community delivering digital projects with Graham Kelly

Andrea Ciaffi

Hi Graham, welcome to the Digital Construction podcast. How are you today?

Graham Kelly

Pretty well. How are you?

Andrea Ciaffi

Very good, very good. So today we are joined by Graham Kelly from O'Connor. He is the managing Director to explore how okana is redefining the digital transformation and sustainability in construction. They are building a global community to challenge traditional business models. This is very exciting, but Graham, can you please share us share with us a little bit of the story behind O'Connor and.

Andrea Ciaffi

What's going on with O'Connell?

Graham Kelly

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely so. We O'Connor is a built environment consultancy focusing on place, sustainability, digital and safety, but it's but it's grown into that I guess is kind of the is kind of the key. So the origins of the story are around. We set up a joint venture with Northumbria University in northeast of England in 2010.

Graham Kelly

Which was. Set or the goal was set around being a centre for excellence for digital construction and it was around the time that the UK was starting to think about mandating BIM, which came in May 20, 2011, and then it was starting to talk about.

Graham Kelly

You know how the industry would respond to that. So ultimately, when BIM Academy was formed, it was about. Digitization of the industry. It was about training, it was about research. And I know and all of those great things and it kind of it kind of grew from there, so from 2010.

Graham Kelly

To 20. 23. It was, it was all it. We sort of grew it as as that as that business, as as BIM Academy. I joined in 2013. Initially on a research. Role looking at BIM and FM so how how digital information can impact how we manage our buildings moving forward?

Graham Kelly

And that's really sort of held true within BIM Academy, even and and Oconnor today. So grew the business from 2010. I took over the business in November 2021. From Peter Barker, who was the managing director at the time, and. We then started to look at how we diversify some of those services.

Graham Kelly

So as well as the sort of digital side of things in 2021 we bought in the the safety team that sat within Rider who are one of the the founders of of BIM Academy. And we were starting to look at the Grenfell tragedy in the UK and how you digitise safety and and looking at diversification of services from there.

Graham Kelly

We then bought in a sustainability organisation called Building Research Solutions they joined. BIM Academy effectively. At that point in time, and so we were starting to to really sort of move away from just doing digital and and and training. July 2023. Ryder bought the shares from Northumbria.

Graham Kelly

Northumbria had a really sort of exciting opportunity to sort of spin this out, if you like, with Ryder and. Was a real success story for them around. You know that industry, academic collaboration and how that? How that had spun out into it, you know, a, a flourishing business.

Graham Kelly

So once Rider was was wholly in control of, of, of BIM Academy. And we're doing all these other services. We started to talk about. Rebranding at that point in time, the other origin of all of this story is the community bit so.

Graham Kelly

As well as establishing BIM Academy in 2010, I'm not sure what was in the water that year, but we also established what was at the time Rider alliance. Now the writer of alliance was was set up between as a friendship between writer, architecture and an organisation in Australia called I2 CI 2C Architects.

Graham Kelly

And that was based on the managing partners of both organisations building a friendship over time and then looking at opportunities for how they work together. That grew into the right of alliance that grew into a number of other organisations joining the writer alliance, and we built this community.

Graham Kelly

Of of organisations around the world that share the same values that were digitally driven and enabled, that we're looking to do stuff differently in the industry and looking to collaborate. Post COVID that needed a bit of stimulus that needed new impetus, and so we decided to bring that into O'Connor as well.

Graham Kelly

So as we rebranded BIM Academy, we added in the Rider alliance and we we called the whole thing. O'Connor. So we have the built environment consultancy that would the origins were. From boom Academy. And then we had the Community origins, which were from the rider alliance that are now sitting within within that O'Connor community as we call it today.

Graham Kelly

So yeah, it was the kind of two really initiatives started in 2010 and then they sort of merged together to what you what you see today was this thriving community, thriving, built environment consultancy that's looking to do things a bit differently. In the in the built environment in the consultancy field across the globe.

Andrea Ciaffi

That's very interesting. And can you I I think one of the thing one of the ways to describe the kind and and think about how okana is unique is to think about its business model and and how you actually manage the global community of experts, how you are competing with with big big firms that are also global.

Andrea Ciaffi

But maybe they don't. They don't have the same business model, so can you share with us a little bit about this business model and how is that different from most of the companies we know?

Graham Kelly

Yeah, absolutely. So the the business model itself is split into into three. You have the core services which we deliver on a day-to-day basis with the team that are. Managed by by me and the and the team of of the leadership team within O'Connor.

Graham Kelly

You have a network or community of of organisations that. Pay a relatively small membership fee that is then facilitated through. The O'Connor core team, the business business operations team around collaborating. We then have a third part which is called advisory, which is really about.

Graham Kelly

Working with our partners and our core services to. Advise clients at early stages in, in projects or even when there aren't projects around how they can.

Graham Kelly

Improve the way that they are delivering their services, whether it's opera, whether it's a client that is delivering operations or whether it's. A developer that's looking at master planning or safety, or you know all of those advisory elements we can wrap into into that, that part of it.

Graham Kelly

And so some of the things that make it unique is the network has, like I said before, very similar values around collaboration and wanting to do work together. The other advantage of having a network over trying to. Control entirely everything or trying to build.

Graham Kelly

Another behemoth of a of a consultancy is that everyone is on a day-to-day, running their own business models, running their own practises and and feeding their own machines. If you like. So we can be really selective, really agile and really opportunistic around the opportunities that we go to go together with.

Graham Kelly

But when we go together. For an opportunity we provide. The similar look and feel to a large consultancy because you have the heft. And the weight of all of the capability within the network behind you, you have one project director that delivers the the that coordinates and delivers that project and then you have a series of partners that are delivering examples within that.

Graham Kelly

So where we try and set ourselves apart is. Providing all the stuff that you get from large consultancy around. Anything around control around seamless integration around? Providing you know best in class services but also at the same time. Being more agile and more selective around the types of projects we go out so that we can continue to deliver.

Graham Kelly

Excellent services across the board within that and that's something that we. From the client interviews we did prior to launch, that's something that their clients across the world are crying out for is that sort of agility, lack of bureaucracy.

Graham Kelly

And speed and delivery that we think we can provide by providing the collaboration with with coordination rather than trying to trying to control it all from the centre and feed the same machine.

Andrea Ciaffi

Yeah. And when you describe, when you talk about the community, it's not necessarily a community of individuals. If I understand well, it's more like a community of different teams that are spread in different countries, is that right?

Graham Kelly

Yeah, absolutely. So there are 15 organisations in the community. There are about 1200 people within those and they stretch from Australia all the way to Canada. We've got a number of partners in in Europe. South, South Africa and then some in in Asia as well.

Graham Kelly

And and I think we are always looking to. Build that community with practises that share the same values and. Are very keen to and collaborate and grow. The other thing is there's a really interesting mix of. Smaller, really specialist organisations that that deliver, you know one or two things brilliantly alongside some larger multidisciplinary or design firms in there that you know that are delivering a lot of.

Graham Kelly

Services across across the world, so there's this really interesting mix of. True. Individual or or small organisation expertise with large scale capability and expertise within that as well. So there's there's quite a really interesting mix across those organisations.

Andrea Ciaffi

So basically if if I understand well, like when you or any anyone in this community wins a project, then they can deliver their part. But if they don't have the disciplines within their own team, they can rely on the broader community to still deliver the project.

Graham Kelly

Yeah, absolutely. So we talk about formality on a page. So we try and keep the formality of the network really, really tight and built on trust built on relationships. So organisations on a day-to-day basis are going off and winning their own work, delivering in their own field, doing their own, doing their own business development.

Graham Kelly

What we had on top of that is is the opportunity to collaborate with. Other specialists. Other regions, other other sectors. And add in their capability with others to provide a depth and breadth that they wouldn't be able to provide in their own to collaborate on projects moving forward.

Andrea Ciaffi

That's very interesting. Clearly, now the standard business model and one of the things that it's interesting to explore is how do you guys share knowledge and you keep the community together. So what's your what? Because I understand there are different people, different teams spread across the world all around the world.

Andrea Ciaffi

How do you share knowledge and still maintain high standards within this community?

Graham Kelly

Yeah, it's a. It's a great question and one that we are you know we're a year in now and we're still. Finessing that and tweaking that as we as we go, there's been a few lessons learnt over that first year. So I think the the key is around the governance.

Graham Kelly

So there is a sort of mandatory monthly call where we get all of the partners and the representatives from each partner on a call we. Do. Knowledge share within those cores, so we we focus a lot on you know partners presenting projects or services or sectors or regions or thoughts about markets.

Graham Kelly

We've had some unbelievable presentations within that just from partner to partner sharing knowledge sharing, best practise sharing expertise has been fantastic. So we do it that way. We have a repository of collateral. So we get in C VS case studies proposals from all the different organisations we have them on an online repository that everyone can log into.

Graham Kelly

And and utilise. We're still looking at how we can maximise or or make that as efficient as possible and then we have. WhatsApp groups emails we have and then the final thing is that we have a forum every year, so last year was the first one.

Graham Kelly

It was hugely successful and and it was amazing to get all the partners together. So we went to Austria to campus Alps, which is this amazing venue and recommend it to anyone. With where they've got. 30 tiny homes. And then they've got a big.

Graham Kelly

Coworking space and kitchen so you can get fed there. It's right in the Australia Austrian Alps. So there's plenty of time for sort of connecting with nature and and and that side of things. And then we did 2 1/2 days of of phenomenal work just looking at what we wanted the the community to be.

Graham Kelly

Recommendations out that how we stimulate growth in all organisations, how we hold. The O'Connor. Central Network, responsible and accountable for supporting all of partners.

Graham Kelly

Yeah, there was some phenomenal recommendations and work that came out of that which which was brilliant and we're going to read will we redo that every year in October where we get all the partners together, which is which is I think it's fair to say the highlight of of the year for most most of the partners.

Graham Kelly

That we have.

Andrea Ciaffi

That's very interesting because I can see the challenges of of maintaining the engagement across different zones and cultures. I know that you have a lot of experience in digital. Of course. That's why you are here in this in this podcast and you have experience in the UK and in Australia.

Andrea Ciaffi

And often people have different opinions about what does digital looks like in the UK versus, you know, Australia. But what's your experience? Like? What are the differences you have noticed in this two markets?

Graham Kelly

It's really interesting. So yes, we have done a number of projects in Australia with our partners at I2C. Stretching back to 2013. When we started delivering a project that Sydney Opera House and then we worked with UNSW and University of Melbourne and and another on digital projects specifically.

Graham Kelly

My view has always been that the the UK market has has led in process and standards. Where the the government spent an awful lot of time, money. On. Providing producing. Standardised documentation that sort of set a process in place, so that started with PAS 1192 moved to ISO 19650.

Graham Kelly

And that has been both positive and negative in the industry. So the positive is everyone kind of knows the direction of travel. The negative is there's a tendency to overcomplicate it. Once you have a standard in place, so you've got this, you've got this standard that is relative, should be relatively simple to follow, but then?

Graham Kelly

Through. Misunderstanding through miscommunication through. Lack of true guidance in the industry from the core. You have this this people doing it in different ways. People overcomplicating it, people not delivering it. And then you have lots of stuff in the middle. It's really interesting.

Graham Kelly

That there's this real perceived complexity around it. And that's kind of it's driven an industry that is now fairly mature within the market, but it has driven that perceived complexity and that nervousness about implementing BIM on. On projects where it's maybe not mandated or where you don't have a set process and and clients still grapple with that today.

Graham Kelly

If you align that to the to the Australian market and I know that there are they, you know, starting to roll out is announced to 50 and and then and then Australian annex and that kind of thing. But prior to that the industry was just getting on with using better technology.

Graham Kelly

Using standards where appropriate and where necessary within projects. And effectively trying to strip out that complexity. And do what was of value to a project. Now I'm not saying they got it right on every level because you don't. They didn't necessarily have those standards or guiding principles as as as a starting point.

Graham Kelly

But I think the best practise we've seen in in Australia is is organisation, contractors, developers, designers looking at it from a point of how do I use process and technology. To improve what I am delivering today and and by doing that and by looking at it more holistically, I think.

Graham Kelly

There was a a tendency to deliver less but be more effective with what you are delivering. So it's really interesting I think so the markets and I think now the maturity of those markets are relatively similar and they kind of are finding those sweet spots around what is actually a valued and delivered and the process is probably.

Graham Kelly

Ended up being pretty similar as Iso's been rolled out in in Australia and and as. That, that, that sort of process has been matured within within the market, both markets.

Andrea Ciaffi

It is certainly an evolving landscape landscape. You mentioned this Sydney Opera, Sydney Opera project in 2013, so I know that you and your team have been working on this project, that we could probably call it digital twin today. But at that time in 2013, it wasn't even called digital twin because we probably didn't have that name yet.

Andrea Ciaffi

Can you share with us a little bit about that project and what have you done for? Your browse.

Graham Kelly

Yeah, absolutely. So. Yeah, like I said, I joined BIM Academy in 2013. I was my role at the time was a research role looking at BIM and FM as part of that research role, I found this international tender for the Opera House that was called BIM 2FM.

Graham Kelly

That was the that was the title of the tender. And I remember talking to. Peter is the MD at the time and and other guys within the organisation. I think we should go for this. I think you know it's exactly what we've been looking at for the last nine months.

Graham Kelly

It's exactly, you know what we've been, you know, driving towards. And you know, it was a bit. It was a bit kind of speculative in the way that we did it. So we put a we put a proposal in and our proposal was all about understanding what the organisation does now.

Graham Kelly

So what Sydney Opera House does? Around their digital information around their asset information around their everything that they had in place. And then from there, right, a technical specification for a BIM 2FM system as they called it a time we would now call it a digital twin.

Graham Kelly

We were lucky enough to win that against 250. International tenders, the. Reason we won it looking back and speaking to the guys in in Sydney was. Was exactly what I said before around the fact that we didn't try and sell a solution. We tried.

Graham Kelly

We were trying to get under the skin of the Opera House trying to understand exactly what they'd done over the last 60 years, 50 years in terms of their quality of information and what it was all about. And that's what they loved about ours.

Graham Kelly

And they had very few other tenders that were like that. A lot of them were trying to sell them. The solutions that were available at the time so. I was lucky enough to go over for four months and deliver that first phase. We the the process we went through was a series of interviews.

Graham Kelly

We coded those interviews with into themes. We built the use cases off those themes. We started to understand from there, you know, what was the true essence of what they wanted, which was really this one view of the truth. They had 27 different programmes managing that that relatively small site.

Graham Kelly

But the complexity of the Opera House is they do, you know, 1800 shows a year, which is double anywhere else in the world. They're open 363 days of the year. They because of the way it was built and the and the history of it.

Graham Kelly

They don't have great as built information. You know the tolerances are all over the place on some of those original drawings. They've collated loads more information over the years. They've got a tonne of people in there that are coming to retirement age that.

Graham Kelly

I've got loads of tacit knowledge about the building that they're going to lose, and so it was like, how do they start to retrieve information? Better was key was key to them. And then there was loads of other use cases around marketing and demonstrating views from seats or.

Graham Kelly

Or theatre spaces and demonstrating opportunities to to set design off the back of that. And then there was any new construction. How are you checking and checking out models? And then there was, you know, there were tonnes of different use cases that were.

Graham Kelly

But the essence of it was this one view of the truth pulling loads of different systems together into. Into this one one single pane of glass, if you like. So we wrote the technical specification for that. That was then put out to market.

Graham Kelly

We were asked to tender for it. We put a team together with economists who are now part of Siemens and Acom's local team alongside I2C and our partners over there. Who had a growing sort of BIM delivery team at the time as well?

Graham Kelly

From there, we won that lucky enough to win that. And then we spent the next couple of years delivering that project. The Opera House were delivering all the models. They had an in House team that were doing all of that.

Graham Kelly

Our job was to connect those models into the single pane of glass, connect the systems into it, and make all of that work as well as creating a model management plan around how they were going to model all of the complexity of that building.

Graham Kelly

And so today they have a system that. Is that one view of the truth is also. Does a lot of their condition monitoring, so they use a an app based system that then reflects on to the onto the solution.

Graham Kelly

And they also, outside of economics, have a system in place where any new construction, how, no matter how big or how small they have a check in check out process, which is kind of built off, you know the ISO standards. I suppose the complexity of those where you will let's say they're doing something in the concert hall, you will give the contract to the concert hall model.

Graham Kelly

They will work on that. They will hand you back the ASB built. And it will be call it issued across the piece. So they have this really. Neat and relatively unique methodology for how they maintain great quality drawn information about their building moving forward.

Graham Kelly

So. They they have to be commended for their vision in 2013, when this wasn't even, you know, a thing. This was an early. Theory. Really.

Graham Kelly

Around what they were doing and then and I think they they've took advantage of that over the years now where they have great information about about their build, about their iconic building and they have a bit the ability to be much more agile, flexible and and quick.

Graham Kelly

At at understanding how they implement. New. Asset maintenance regimes, or whatever it might be now that you know that, you know they just have a true. Understanding of that building, which is which is phenomenal.

Andrea Ciaffi

To see how the Sydney Opera House was either the game at that time and probably still is, I it. Sometimes we just say number like 2013, but if for anyone who was working in this space at that time, I clearly remember people. Even in 2014, 1516, still saying the beam was not a thing and they still wanted to do CAD.

Andrea Ciaffi

Of course, CAD still has his his own space for certain aspects of the projects, but.

Graham Kelly

Yeah.

Andrea Ciaffi

Seeing the Albuterols was doing this type of projects at that time, it's pretty impressive really ahead of the game.

Graham Kelly

Yeah, absolutely.

Andrea Ciaffi

One of the aspects I know you guys are very good at is sustainability and how it relates. It relates with digitization. Sometimes you may feel like a little bit of a contradiction, like if you think about things like AI tools that themselves are not very sustainable.

Andrea Ciaffi

So how do you marry? Sustainability and digital together, from your point of view in your everyday work.

Graham Kelly

I think it's a. Yeah. Yeah. I think I think a lot of it is about efficiency and insight, so. Yeah, you're you're right on the AI side, there is a bit of a contradiction there and I think. We as an organisation and and as an industry need to think really carefully about.

Graham Kelly

What we're using AI for now, if it if it's to be much more productive. And therefore being able to spend more time truly understanding a building and therefore and therefore really maximising the efficiency of of. Of the sustainable elements of that as well as as well as the quality of the delivery digital delivery then that's great.

Graham Kelly

If it's spent time, you know doing. Silly images or? These other things that that a lot of people are doing within AII think you know there's a there's a lot of, there's a lot of stuff we have to really think about in terms of, in terms of really maximising our time in, in, in looking sustainably, sustainably at these things.

Graham Kelly

I think from a digital perspective. It's that insight piece, right? So whether it's an existing building where you are, you are sticking sensors into that you are understanding truly what that building, how that building is performing and therefore you can make informed decisions about how you improve that or whether it's about.

Graham Kelly

Delivering early stage energy models in a digital format directly from the Revit model, so there's there's no sort of duplication of effort there and building out those energy models to understand and to dynamically simulate different scenarios based on that and which makes opportunities for for more.

Graham Kelly

Sustainable buildings, or whether it's exploring. Existing buildings and retrofit strategies and doing that through the lens of of surveying those buildings in a in a great way that enables you to, you know, start to to look at it differently. Again, these are all things that you can kind of look at together.

Graham Kelly

And I think that the key with all of it is to is to really reflect on what's most efficient. And what what works works the best within that.

Andrea Ciaffi

That that's certainly true. And we are close to the end of the episode today, but before we go, I really want to know more about the future of of okana and the industry. So where do you see okana heading for the next in the next 5 to 10 years, I'll say?

Andrea Ciaffi

And how are you planning to keep evolving your community based model?

Graham Kelly

I think from a Community perspective, we're always looking for really interesting. Organisations that can support and collaborate with with the other organisations within that I think we will continue to focus on from a delivery perspective, focus on digital sustainability, safety place we may add in other services to that as as and when they are.

Graham Kelly

They form within within the industry. The bit that I think is really exciting from a global perspective is is this place element. There's a lot of emphasis put on place, making place, shaping in the industry now and truly understanding how we make better places for people.

Graham Kelly

And that means more sustainable, more efficient, more productive, you know, all of those other bits that we fill into that. So we're really looking to beef up our. Play shaping capability across the community and drive. A community of best practise. Who can you know?

Graham Kelly

Truly perform visions of. Of how we improve place across the board.

Andrea Ciaffi

10 Scrum those are a great episode, and if people want to reach out to you, where can they find you?

Graham Kelly

Is probably the best place for me. Yeah, absolutely.