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

Andrea Ciaffi

Hey Jago. Welcome to the Digital Construction podcast.

Jacob Hoare

Thank you very much. Happy to be here.

Andrea Ciaffi

So in this episode, we are joined by Jacob Hall is the digital lead for Asia at Aricon and we are going to talk about our digital strategies. AI and automation are transforming buildings and infrastructure across Asia. We'll also talk about the the sentence and the future of digital construction in general.

Andrea Ciaffi

But before we start, Jacob, I have a quick question for you. What's the best piece of advice you have ever received in your career?

Jacob Hoare

Question I've been quite fortunate to have a few different very good line managers that I've all got different styles, but I do remember once a guy Carter, he was my line manager back in in Vietnam and he's now the CEO of Asia. And remember him telling me, talking about, you know, when you first get out of, you're studying.

Jacob Hoare

You know, you're very focused on your core job, your engineering or whatever that might be and getting very technical, technically, very good at it. And that's very important, but also.

Jacob Hoare

The quicker that you put pieces of the puzzle together and the quicker that you understand the industry and the business as a whole, that has many moving parts to be successful and understand that very quickly is very important. Because that's really where I feel.

Jacob Hoare

When I went up, when you know, when the penny dropped it up in the puzzles together, it's when I my own career, the trajectory went a lot faster and steeper. And so I've been very, like I said, we're very fortunate to have a few good line managers.

Jacob Hoare

I sort of see. As mentors, but that that bit of advice there. So really looking at the bigger picture as fast as possible, but while also not compromising on technical excellence.

Andrea Ciaffi

Yeah, that's definitely important for somebody who's working as a digital leader because there are so many different aspects. I remember when I was doing this job, like people will come with different ideas. Different. Yeah. Really different projects. Different idea from. Yeah, it was very difficult to understand the, the, the context of each one of them.

Andrea Ciaffi

So being able to to do what you just mentioned, I understand helps a lot one thing.

Jacob Hoare

Yeah.

Andrea Ciaffi

So I'm very so you are originally from Perth, you mentioned that to me before. So we can share this with the audience, but now you are in Asia, you worked in Vietnam and now you are in Singapore. And but I'm very keen to learn what the what do you think about the digital literal means in practise for you?

Andrea Ciaffi

Because different people have may have different opinion around them.

Jacob Hoare

Yeah. And I think I think depending on the company that you're at, it will, it will change. But obviously I work at ORACON, we're an engineering consulting advisory company. And So what that means here for me is really driving Oracle's overall. Digital strategy into the business, but obviously we operate in about eight countries here in Asia.

Jacob Hoare

So I really have to put that local lens on it and what's appropriate for that particular market. And I feel that oracon we've sort of passed the awareness phase. So my role is very much about.

Jacob Hoare

Driving the technology and the digital pieces such as AI and capability and automation into the projects and that this is very much hands on and driving that digital into our projects and ultimately kind of you know better result for the clients.

Andrea Ciaffi

Yeah, that's very good, because I think I'm sure that people are listening to these episodes. They are keen to understand how do you

Jacob Hoare

Yeah.

Andrea Ciaffi

actually become a digital lead and understanding what digital leads actually do is very important. Another thing that's very interesting to understand is you have an Australian background, but you. Work at the moment in Asia, so I'm very interested to understand from your point of view, what are the difference between these markets, let's say between Australia, Singapore are the places where it works.

Andrea Ciaffi

What's what's the situation in Asia?

Jacob Hoare

It's an interesting question because the maturity of the regions and the practises, they're very differently. I do like to think that we try to keep a very consistent approach to our projects, but ultimately.

Jacob Hoare

Depending on those client requirements, we're going to expect it to deliver more mature expectations and then even at this sort of authority and government level, Singapore is very advanced and Vietnam is starting to bring in certain, I guess, BIM guidelines, Indonesia too. But they're not sophisticated as Singapore so.

Jacob Hoare

But saying that Vietnam, I would argue, is one of our most digitally advanced offices. We've got about 400 people there and they are they support the wider Oracle business and they're very mature they do. So. It's not sort of saying that, you know, this region is necessarily more mature because it's not definitely the case.

Jacob Hoare

And the fact though that Vietnam is our most digital advanced region in in Asia for ORACON and.

Jacob Hoare

It's actually going to set us up well for when Vietnam does catch up to Singapore in terms of the digital requirements and digital expectations on a project that we're going to be positioned very well because they've already sort of done it and you know similar to how in Thailand and in Vietnam, we got the Arsenal 19650.

Jacob Hoare

Well, before we were seeing it in tenders and and kind requirements and again Fast forward two or three years, we are set up well because we after new with it, we're already doing it in House or internally before it was actually needed. For our own benefits.

Jacob Hoare

And so yeah, it's it's it's an interesting. It's an interesting space to you know sort of I guess from my personal perspective is to sort of coordinate and understand these different regions and what's appropriate. But I do think as. A company we do sort of move all in the same direction as we.

Andrea Ciaffi

Yeah, it's. It's great to see how these geographies are evolving over time. Their maturity has evolved fairly quickly. If you think about like the what's called like the so-called Western world maybe took some time to evolve. While this geographies probably they just.

Andrea Ciaffi

Took advantage of the slow progress that we have in the Western world and maybe they are just adopting already the latest technologies which is great to see in

Jacob Hoare

Yeah.

Andrea Ciaffi

terms of like digital. So when you think about the like your job

Jacob Hoare

Yeah.

Andrea Ciaffi

is to think about the digital strategy for the overall business in that. Specific area of the world, but sometimes this needs to be translated into digital delivery, so we actually have to deliver projects.

Jacob Hoare

And.

Andrea Ciaffi

So how do you help translate this digital strategy into actual digital delivery and what this? Digital delivery for project means to you.

Jacob Hoare

Yeah. So we have recognised about 7 digital capabilities and they range from information management and information modelling. So also that's your core engineering digital capabilities and then you're probably moving towards a bit more cutting edge. So you do sort of capabilities around. Buy automation and.

Jacob Hoare

And digital leadership as well. And I feel So what we understand those are the capabilities that we're trying to drive that into the projects and. And so there's a there's a capability and a human piece there. So upskilling our teams to be able to do the projects.

Jacob Hoare

A very digital best practise approach. There's also another layer there of the technology. So I do think digital delivery and technology obviously agnostic and it should be and can be used across. All projects, all of the projects and it will. Genuinely improve the project process.

Jacob Hoare

I believe. I think I feel and also the individuals you know, experience with it. So you know, if we just take an example of project, I would say every single project has got some sort of element of digital delivery. A bit more complex than others, Stoke.

Jacob Hoare

We've got an advisory project for example. The expectations of a delivery is, you know it may be a report, but it's going to be maybe a soft copy and you need infinite good information, manage, practise to manage that. A beat, a very small sort of scope.

Jacob Hoare

But then, if you've got our data centre projects or our big infrastructure projects, that same digital approach and onto the projects should still be there. It's just the amount of information that you're delivering digitally, essentially getting bigger.

Andrea Ciaffi

Hmm. And you know, sometimes we have teams that are passionate about digital. They want to show that they are proactive

Jacob Hoare

Yeah.

Andrea Ciaffi

and they're actually generally keen to do these sort of things. But on sometimes people tend to deliver. Digital solution just for technology sake. Just because they are keen. So how do you help the team understand how to drive real on projects?

Jacob Hoare

Yeah. So I think there's there's two pieces that I think is number one is having humans at the centre of the technology, I think really actually solving a real problem. You know it's it's very like you said, sometimes it might be a bit of a box ticking exercise.

Jacob Hoare

It's a new shiny thing. And we want to use it again. I think that we've done quite well at our economists and we've identified real problems in delivery and we would come up with different solutions to take the pain away from the team.

Jacob Hoare

And I think a big part, you know, very pragmatic approach we take to it is. I understand the problem, but it's not a set and forget sort of problem and that we have to solve the digital team as to solve we very much want the SME that the project delivery team team in that process providing guidance so that.

Jacob Hoare

When the tool does be coming to production and or whatever that tool be, or even work, whatever it could may be comes into production and use on a project and we know that it's been tried and tested by the team throughout that process.

Jacob Hoare

So yeah, so definitely just understanding the problem very specifically. And having the people who are. Encountering that problem involved in the development of whatever that solution may be.

Andrea Ciaffi

Definitely. And another interesting aspect about this digital transformation that we are living now is the AI, of course. And it's to be hardly, maybe it's to be hardly not understand and form a very strong opinion about where this AI wave is going, but from your.

Andrea Ciaffi

Point of view at this point in time, what do you think that AI can make the

Jacob Hoare

Yeah. Yeah.

Andrea Ciaffi

biggest in the big impact, big impact on projects?

Jacob Hoare

So I feel. It's going to close the gap between sort of idea and execution. It's going to make a lot of we're doing oracon a lot. The few things that we're using it for is obviously we're developing our automation tools and.

Jacob Hoare

We've got AI now that can generate very good quality code very quickly, so you sort of lowering the barrier of entry to creating automations and that ultimately will help us deliver. But from our experience, the biggest impact we have had because we've developed.

Jacob Hoare

In house automations, AI tools, and we call it recall and it's accessing all our projects or you know companies information and we're allowed to retrieve, retrieve we can access. These information at the finger our fingertips that might take us, you know, 20-30 minutes to go find it.

Jacob Hoare

They can now find it in 30 seconds. So it's a considerable amount of time saving and I think we're only just going to start I think that example is the most basic. Application of AI and we will also start to develop a tool called clarify and as a consultant for other construction phase we are responsible for responding to firefighters from the contractor.

Jacob Hoare

You know it could get up to hundreds a day. And that's a lot of time to just to respond to that. And what clarify does is basically connects into the RFI system and it generates a response based on the project information and then the client standards and other related RF is.

Jacob Hoare

And it generates an engineer can go in and verify that and then and use it send it back. So what's important to know there is that the human the engineer is still very much part of that loop. And part of that process, which is absolutely critical.

Jacob Hoare

When we are, you know, designing these buildings and these infrastructure.

Andrea Ciaffi

Yeah. Talk about the humans. Sometimes one of the key misconceptions I be we we hear about AI is the fact that we will all lose our jobs and AI will do everything. But what are from your point of view, the biggest limitations or misconceptions that you have heard about AI?

Jacob Hoare

Yeah, I mean, I would agree. I think there is there is a pre conception of of AI and automation taking people's jobs back. I honestly think it's definitely not. I think with AI you need to look into it. I think if you don't and you are constantly.

Jacob Hoare

Going against it, you're gonna really, you're not going to do yourself in favours. I mean. I mean, personally, I use AI daily. It's it's the 1st. It's the 1st place I start with most tasks, you know, as a sound board, some ideas get a different perspective.

Jacob Hoare

And I think it really does it. I don't give mean I believe it gives me an edge and I think people are on, I think they're doing a risk to themselves and their potential, their job for not for not leveraging as much. So yeah, I think it is around the fact that people are going to take people's jobs.

Jacob Hoare

I think it really is going to take away a lot of the, you know, these repetitive, boring jobs essentially so. And is that, you know, the question is that do you actually want to do that? So my answer would be no.

Andrea Ciaffi

Yeah, definitely. One other aspects we have used to like get rid of this is boring task that we don't want to repeat over and over and over is the automation. Have you seen any good automation at outer corner and how can we leverage automation in real projects?

Jacob Hoare

Yeah, I mean, so we've recently set up over the past 12 months something called Automation Centre. So it's got automations from across the business in one place. So we're not reinventing the wheels in one location that people can access and use and that's led by Josh Nelson in Sydney and.

Jacob Hoare

And we were very closely together and we've I also work closely with Thomas de Hughes in Vietnam, who's our automation lead for the DC there. And we've had some really good results and the way that approach has been is really looking at the low hanging fruit, OK, all these little.

Jacob Hoare

Automations that save a bit of time. Maybe you're making a 5 minute task to a one minute task, but they're also the benefit of these tasks of enhancing morale because they're actually it's just making people's lives easier. I feel at the moment we are well now we've.

Jacob Hoare

We've picked off all the apples at the at the low part tree and I think we're at the point now where we're going to climb higher. And so the way that we have done it is really, like I said, is look at the repetitive simple tasks that we can do and let's move on.

Jacob Hoare

Let's let's, let's have a bigger. A bigger challenge in front of us and we are tackling that pretty, pretty well. I feel at the moment, but we just need to take, we're going to take up another gear.

Andrea Ciaffi

Yeah, that's good. And do you think that the automation will change the skills needed in digital engineering team now that that it's available?

Jacob Hoare

And I feel like again, I think everyone's just going to get levelled up. Like if you so give me an example,

Andrea Ciaffi

And.

Jacob Hoare

if you could automate the, you know, routine repetitive calculations, then the junior staff don't need to do them anymore, OK. And that's why maybe the technical stuff. They can learn it, but they don't need to do it all the time.

Jacob Hoare

So then they've now shifted from this sort of level that it can really now focus on to more problem solving, you know, strategic thinking, this sort of thing. And then that means that the senior engineers who were probably doing the problem solving. They can also go into the next level of the next year and and they could be more be client facing.

Jacob Hoare

So I I just think it's going to allow people. To just become. You know they're going to enhance their own sort of ability and much quicker and so that that's how I see it going. Yeah. And. Yeah.

Andrea Ciaffi

And and now we're talking about very, very, very, very large buildings. They're really draining the energy water like it's it's a very big infrastructure

Jacob Hoare

Yeah.

Andrea Ciaffi

we're building and. There is company, there are companies like the Microsoft and Facebook that are talking about building their own nuclear plants to just

Jacob Hoare

I.

Andrea Ciaffi

feed these models. I'm just keen to understand your point of view around other centres and if you've seen the market for those centres growing

Jacob Hoare

Yeah.

Andrea Ciaffi

in Asia. And the market has changed for these for these special buildings.

Jacob Hoare

Yeah. So yeah, so I think probably the last five years I've been involved in data centres 1 by another, probably the past 24 months I've been living and bringing them and it's been really interesting even in that five years. And then the past, you know, 12 or 24 and 12 months has just been.

Jacob Hoare

Phenomenal. I think you know, I think that AIPAC region, you know, market shares about 30 billion at the moment. I think in the next 10 in the last than eight years, it's going to be around the 70 billion mark. So it's massive and.

Jacob Hoare

And the reason behind that is obviously you've got 60% of the world population within this area. So a huge amount, but the actual capacity for data centres is far lower than, say, Europe and the United States. So it's got a huge. Opportunity for growth there.

Jacob Hoare

OK. And then from a delivery point of view, the actual scale of these are massively gone big and that's driven by AI, you know, 100 MW. The data centre would be cut was was classed as very, very big, probably about five years ago.

Jacob Hoare

Now we're seeing ones that are 10 times the size of that. So it's incredibly insane how much these these data centres are growing and I don't think they're going to stop. I think, yeah. Interesting about your comment around the the sustainability piece and all the things they consume.

Jacob Hoare

But like I said, these the big some of the biggest companies in the world in terms of worth these tech companies and they've got the sort of money that they you know they can do a full circle they can. Sort of. Use the energy you know, buy and purchase the energy to supply their data centres and they can do it very clean.

Jacob Hoare

They've got enough capital there to challenge the normal traditional ways to do the energy piece, OK, because they are innovators. That's the bread and butter. So interesting to see that. And obviously they're then using the AI they could actually use the AI to sort of enhance the operation piece.

Jacob Hoare

So it's like AI is driving the demand for the data centres and AI is housing the data centres and then AI is. It's used being used to sort of make operations a lot more efficient.

Andrea Ciaffi

Yeah, it'll be interesting to see when it reaches the plateau. And because it looks like we're very far from that plot at the moment, still growing. One other aspects would be interesting to learn is how digital can help. Deliver this type of projects.

Andrea Ciaffi

Have you seen any innovation in that space?

Jacob Hoare

Yeah, look, I think. The nature of the data centre delivery is extremely quick, so you know some of the fastest paces of delivery environments are very experienced and you know just so speed to market is very important and we talked about AI and automation that I think digital and technology is very much geared towards support.

Jacob Hoare

Supporting this and data centres are also very repetitive and you know if you look at it it's just very consistent racks and layout so. There's a huge opportunity there to automate that piece, so I think, yeah, I I I think the data centre space is you know ripe for automation.

Andrea Ciaffi

Yeah, definitely. And one of the things that digital strategy does or helps solve is the complexity around all the things that we

Jacob Hoare

Yeah. Play song akka.

Andrea Ciaffi

see in the digital space, because sometimes people may feel a little bit overwhelmed by. The large amount of things that they can possibly do on digital product.

Jacob Hoare

Yeah.

Andrea Ciaffi

So how do you balance this idea of pushing for innovation with ensuring that teams don't? Teams don't don't, don't feel overwhelmed by this digital complexity?

Jacob Hoare

It probably goes back to my previous comment around having them. The humans in the centre and really understanding what the challenge is but but also making it very simple. I'll quote my boss Dave McKenzie here and you know, good work always rises to the top.

Jacob Hoare

So what I mean by that is if the tool is good, people will use it. If people don't use it, there's probably something wrong at all. Maybe it's too hard. Maybe it's not enough value. So I think you pick the right tool or the right solution, whatever that may be.

Jacob Hoare

And the teams won't feel overwhelmed because they'll genuinely feel that it's impacting them positively.

Andrea Ciaffi

I want to quote something I've heard from a digital leader once said that there is real transformation only when there is adoption. So it's not just about building stuff, it adoption, it's key.

Jacob Hoare

Yeah. Absolutely. I mean that's a really good point. Like we can build the best tools in the world, but if they're not getting used, it's obviously a waste of time. So again, having that,

Andrea Ciaffi

Yeah.

Jacob Hoare

having the people in the process understand exactly what they need to make their lives better. Or make the project better is absolutely critical because people can just go off and run off and develop something. And like you said, don't get adopted because it doesn't actually.

Jacob Hoare

It's not actually needed.

Andrea Ciaffi

Yeah, sometimes it's a solution looking for a problem sometimes.

Jacob Hoare

Exactly, exactly. That's a that's a good one, yeah.

Andrea Ciaffi

Yeah. Yeah, but close to the end. I also like to explore with you the future trends for the digital construction industry and what are the digital trends that you are more most excited about right now?

Jacob Hoare

Yeah, look, I mean, I know we've talked about and it's not, it's not a new trend, but AI is just is it's just moving so quick and there's constantly new use cases coming out daily and there's never been a technology as fastly. Adopted as AI and we are really just scratching the surface I work with Theo in Melbourne and he is our generative leader and he.

Jacob Hoare

Working with him is exciting because he's just got his finger on the pulse with all the AI stuff going out and it's so he just feeds all this good stuff to us and when you speak to him and you speak to other people with him on certain engineering problems.

Jacob Hoare

The team won't know what they don't know, but then a few minutes with him and explains how potentially AI can, you know, help this this problem that the penny drops and then and then they start coming out of all these other ideas. So yeah, so I guess, you know, digital trends are most exciting.

Jacob Hoare

But now it's definitely AI just where it's heading and continue to heading, and it's going to be such a big part or just so embedded in the way we do things in the future where we may not even be talking about it in the next three years because just it's like electricity, you know, it's just it's just.

Andrea Ciaffi

Yeah, yeah. You just have to see how people feel about the outcome that the output of things like charge, GDP.

Jacob Hoare

Yeah.

Andrea Ciaffi

Like if you try one of the old models and all, that's not a long time ago.

Jacob Hoare

None.

Andrea Ciaffi

It really feels like very obsolete and.

Jacob Hoare

Yeah.

Andrea Ciaffi

And like not a long time ago, it was incredible. Everybody was very surprised about it.

Jacob Hoare

Yeah. Well, it's like it met meta. They're offering these like $100 million

Andrea Ciaffi

Yeah.

Jacob Hoare

contracts, signing bonuses for that. Their like their new AI developers from

Andrea Ciaffi

Yeah.

Jacob Hoare

different places to bring it's, you know, it's almost like you're seeing, you know, when you when you see footballers. Get the purchase for, say Real Madrid or wherever Manchester United and they're paying that sort of money for these AI Wizards. It's it's insane.

Andrea Ciaffi

Yeah, this people can have a real impact. One of the interesting things about the

Jacob Hoare

Mm-hmm.

Andrea Ciaffi

construction industry is that it's been there for a long, long time. Humans have been building stuff for a while now, and in general, sometimes we feel it could be it's a bit slow in adopting digital solutions, but from your point. So if you could change one thing about industry purchase digital, what would that be?

Jacob Hoare

So I think what what I obviously, so obviously we're in the digital sort of space. So we're often when we see problems and challenges, we probably already have that sort of question of like, OK what what can technology or digital?

Jacob Hoare

Do here to enhance that and I wish everyone in whatever sort of role they are in this sort of in this industry is to really ask, OK, how can we how can we flip in, how can and how can technology and digital enhance the current task I'm doing because I'm. Yeah, I'm very biassed, but I honestly truly believe that every task that we do can always be improved and can always be enhanced,

Jacob Hoare

and I think technology and digital is the key to that enhancement. So, so basically people asking the question are every tasked they do. How can technology and digital help me for this task?

Andrea Ciaffi

Yeah, that's that's a very good mindset we have. If you ask yourself, how can I do this digitally,

Jacob Hoare

Yeah. Yes.

Andrea Ciaffi

it will always like work with a great like certain improvement for everybody,

Jacob Hoare

Yeah.

Andrea Ciaffi

just collectively work together towards the same direction, but. Thank you very much, Jacob. We are at the end of the episodes. Thank you for sharing with us your journey at Oregon and what you're doing in Asia. If people want to reach out to you, where can they find you?

Jacob Hoare

Yeah. Thanks very much. They can reach out to me on LinkedIn, Jacob Hall. And it would be digital leader, Asia.

Andrea Ciaffi

Thank you very much Jacob. Have a good day.

Jacob Hoare

Thank you.