How to Become a Leader in Digital Engineering with Devon Middleditch

Andrea Ciaffi

Hi, Devon. Welcome to the Digital Construction Podcast. Today we have Devon Middleditch. He is the head of Digital Engineering and Technology at Veris. I'm very excited for this episode because Devon in the past has also worked for Tier 1 companies like AECOM as a leader in this company.

Andrea Ciaffi

So that's very exciting. He has lots of experience in his career. He has scale team, he has been able to make sure that the culture in these companies was what everybody expects. And but he's also worked for government agencies like Transport for News at 12.

Andrea Ciaffi

So he has really seen lots of different aspects of the digital transformation. So I'm very excited to speak to you, Devon. But before we start, there is a question that I always ask everybody, because I think it's a good opportunity to learn from everybody else's career.

Andrea Ciaffi

What is the best piece of advice you've ever received?

Devon Middleditch

Firstly, thanks for having us on. It's great to be able to have this chat and think, talking about the first piece of advice or a piece of advice that sort of stuck with me through my career was I was working for a multinational early on in my career and I'd moved relocated from New Zealand to Australia.

Devon Middleditch

And when I was being on boarded by Human Resources, they just said, look, there's a lot of opportunity in this place as long as you put your hand up. And if you don't put your hand up, then it will just go by you.

Devon Middleditch

And so. It was really interesting because every time they wanted somebody to go somewhere, a different state or a different country or get involved with different, you know, activities, so to speak, I'd stick my hand up. And with that organisation, you know, I was there for a long time and I basically travelled the world.

Devon Middleditch

for them, and you know it's one of the things that I that I share with people on team today. It's, you know, it's really stuck with me that that you've got to go, you know, put your hand up. You've got to, you know, reach for those opportunities and and that'll and that'll lead you somewhere else, which is great.

Andrea Ciaffi

Yeah, and when we think about your career, I think it's also a good opportunity to see how you got there, because many people could be inspired by your journey. What was the single decision that most shaped the leader you became today?

Devon Middleditch

Look, I think there's lots of small stepping stones and sort of decision points that you make along the way. And whether or not they were sort of highly strategic or not, I guess, is debatable. But it's sort of taking the most of each of those opportunities.

Devon Middleditch

And like I mentioned before, like being able to travel around, you know, firstly your country, but then internationally, definitely opened up doors to things because of the experience that you have.

Devon Middleditch

I think probably the most pivotal thing that happened in my career was, and it's kind of like an awkward story to tell, but You know, we've all seen the movie "Jeremy Glar, " and he writes the memo to say that the system's broken and that athletes need more attention kind of thing, and it kind of felt like I'd done a similar thing where I wrote this paper to the executives saying that,

Devon Middleditch

you know, there's this thing on the horizon called.. . Engineering 2.0, and it was really where there's some, I guess, the enormous scaling of how you use compute and technology to deliver engineering in a way that we that we weren't historically doing, because if you looked at...

Devon Middleditch

traditional engineering at that point in time, that was really just a digitized way that we were doing arcs, lines and circles like we were on a drawing board. It wasn't particularly innovative, even though we may have automated parts of that. And anyway, I published this.

Devon Middleditch

Paper to and share it with the executive, and there was crickets, and I thought, wow, this is a career-limiting move.

Devon Middleditch

And it was sort of a bit disheartened that that that I, you know, there wasn't any feedback on this, but it was it was basically saying that if we didn't do something that we'd be we'd be dinosaurs like those drafting companies that had, you know, fallen over when they didn't move to CAD type thing.

Devon Middleditch

And anyway, A little while later, maybe it was a month or two later, I got a phone call from Vice President of Operations at the time and he had been parachuted into the Doha Expressway Program, which was what it was labeled at the time, which was the world's largest roads program.

Devon Middleditch

And that was building the whole roads network for the World Cup. And so this is sort of like back in 2010, I think. And he said, look, the clients not as happy as they could be. they seem to be talking a lot about the stuff that was in your paper.

Devon Middleditch

Can you be on a plane tonight to get over here and talk about it and talk with them? And so I said, well, I can't be there tonight, but we'll get there. And so eventually got over to Qatar and You know, there was this extremely engaged and motivated client in Ashgale who were kind of the equivalent to Transport for New South Wales in Qatar.

Devon Middleditch

And they really understood the value of, you know, data and data management and digital engineering, or digital engineering wasn't a term at the time, but sort of that type of thing that we now call digital engineering. And so that led to being the technology architect on the for the program.

Devon Middleditch

And that was essentially the precursor to what we call digital engineering framework. And really what it was was a technology framework for the stakeholders and suppliers of how they delivered the design and the data to the program. And I think the interesting thing about that for me was that we bought a whole lot of new technologies in and we did a whole lot of training with people.

Devon Middleditch

We did a whole different piece around how we manage data. that hadn't been done before by those consultants and the constructors. And examples of that are like using drones back in 2010 to see if there had been, you know, digging going on on the ground so we could make progress payments and using iPads with.

Devon Middleditch

early versions of software running that would do sort of augmented reality so that you could be out in the sand dunes and you could hold the iPad up and you could see where these roads were going to be on this roads network and the way that we used the common data environment back then where we had every...

Devon Middleditch

consultant feeding into one data environment and sort of delineation between for security reasons of what they could and couldn't see and the like. And so there was some quite progressive things there and also moving to a different design technology. So away from string-based solution to templated type modelling tools and the like.

Devon Middleditch

So that was probably a really pivotal thing. And so when I came back to Australia, a few years later, it was quite evident that, and particularly in linear infrastructure, we weren't doing that. And, but the appetite was was sort of becoming more apparent that we had, you know, that there needed to be a bin for linear infrastructure type thing.

Devon Middleditch

And then, you know, the rest is kind of history. I moved into a new role into into AECOM, where we where we sort of. Um, took the the the the the crumbs of that idea and guitar and and and took that forward.

Andrea Ciaffi

And as you mentioned, like you were really working very deeply technical roles. And one of the aspects that I think could be scary for many people in this industry, they could be very good technically, but they at some point aspire to become leaders.

Andrea Ciaffi

And maybe they feel attached the sense of like, I really, I really like that. I spent so much time learning the craft and I'm so good at what I do and that's why I've been promoted. But then they get promoted into a new leadership role.

Andrea Ciaffi

And in your career, you've done something similar. You were in very technical space and then eventually you would be moving to leadership roles. And What did you have to unlearn from these technical roles to the leadership roles? And I don't know, was that painful for you to unlearn certain things?

Devon Middleditch

Yeah, it's a great question, because I love technology, and you know, at the time I love being in the weeds of writing lines of code and the like, and became, you know, what I would have probably quite proficient at it. The...

Devon Middleditch

The probably the stereotypical thing happened is that you proved that you had some value, you got given more opportunity, or you know, given team, and that sort of expanded, and sort of during my early years here in Australia, and I think you know you sort of go from..

Devon Middleditch

. from, or for me, I went from developing CAD systems and the sort of back end of that and deploying that. You were only really successful that if you had the, I guess, the people skills and the EQ. And, you know, in those early days, I definitely didn't have either of those.

Devon Middleditch

Sort of tools that you take for granted, and but you know you were in these roles, you were expected to be able to do far more than just write lines of code, but I, but I, but I think in the industry, we're very, yeah, you see it a lot where you get exceptional engineers.

Devon Middleditch

who have really high value and then they get put into a leadership role and it sort of falls over a little bit or it's not as they're not as impactful and whereas you should just leave them in a in a in the technical role and elevated them in that space because that was what they're good at.

Devon Middleditch

And so every once in a while people come along, I guess, that are Able to bridge both sides of like the technical side and the that leadership size side, and you know, I think as the as the time went on, you know, you had to it got to a point where you had to leave.

Devon Middleditch

more something behind so that you could move forward.

Andrea Ciaffi

Mm.

Devon Middleditch

And for me that was you have to get off the tools. And you know, there's an interesting story around there too. Like when I was at, when I'd moved on from the expressway program, I moved into a new company, a new role.

Devon Middleditch

Great team, and there was a person there who was leading a sub-team who was essentially my 2IC, and he was a fabulous guy, really good with people, and personally learnt a lot off him. about how to manage, you know, individuals and some of the challenges around, you know, navigating certain things.

Devon Middleditch

But he he was best placed moving away off the tools, but he wanted to be a civil designer. He'd been a civil designer for a long time. And so he was trying to do both things. He was trying to be full time on the tools.

Devon Middleditch

And

Andrea Ciaffi

Mm.

Devon Middleditch

you know, full time doing, you know, this larger, let's call it operational role. And, you know, I said to him, look, I just wanted, let's get you off the tools and he was sort of resisting. And we worked on this for about a year and I got to the point where I just said, look, I want you to take four weeks.

Devon Middleditch

where you don't turn on, you know, your tool of choice. And we're just going to focus on the operations and the people side and then we'll come back and revisit things. It might have been a bit longer than a month actually. And anyway, we got to that point and we sat down and said, well, how do you feel about it?

Devon Middleditch

And he said, look, I really like it. I think I'm prepared to go a bit further. And so And that was it. And then you look at this particular individual's career now, and he's just moved into stronger and stronger leadership roles. And the key part of that was leaving behind something else rather than trying to do both.

Devon Middleditch

Because organisations,

Andrea Ciaffi

Mm.

Devon Middleditch

when you go into a new role, they do not expect you to do 2 roles. They want you to do one role really well. And that's the role that they've put you into, you know. And so I think we, it's a really good thing to be aware of when you get promoted into another role, that you're not expected to do what you were doing before.

Andrea Ciaffi

Yeah, that's a very good way of framing that. And how did that happen to you? Like, did you feel that for you to transition from a technical role to a more like people leadership role happened like overnight or was more like a transition?

Andrea Ciaffi

Like you just mentioned the story of this colleague and friends that you found this gray area, right? Where you say, okay, you do this for some time and then we see how it goes. How was that for you?

Devon Middleditch

Look, I think for me it was because I was failing. I was failing to, you know, I was trying to do all the technical

Andrea Ciaffi

Mm.

Devon Middleditch

stuff and all the leadership stuff and the operational stuff. And so I was doing everything poorly. And it got to a sort of breaking point where, you know, you're sitting there thinking about, well, how can I be so ineffective?

Devon Middleditch

Doing what I'm doing when I'm actually quite effective doing this other thing, you know, pretty well, and and then you see, so you come to the conclusion that that wasn't the ask, you know, that wasn't the scope, the scope wasn't do CAD management and write code and do people management and do, you know, other operational things.

Devon Middleditch

It was, no, we want you to be a... you know, leading a team and doing that function and there's other people and once you become comfortable, once I became comfortable with that, it was quite empowering because you...

Devon Middleditch

you then have that wonderful opportunity of developing others in that space and seeing them flourish and grow and build their own confidence and build these things, these amazing things, which is extremely satisfying.

Andrea Ciaffi

This industry is a very interesting one because people progress in their career because of their technical skills, but then the job that they need to do when they achieve that point, it's more like a people skill and managerial skill.

Andrea Ciaffi

And is there any advice you will give to somebody early in their careers that want to at some point get to that position, what they should be doing that you think at the moment they are not doing when they are early in their careers.

Devon Middleditch

Look, I think in some ways, if you're a technical person, it's sometimes quite hard to go into that other space and you always sort of drift back towards leaning back into, you know, your safe space.

Devon Middleditch

And You know, I think you know, I was working at KBR at the time, and they had a they had sort of like a training development person who would who would do pretty specific training modules for individuals, and there was these two modules that I was...

Devon Middleditch

Or they suggested that I did at the time, and one was called Understanding Self and Others, another one was called Managing Self and Others, and these two modules were sort of like half-day learning sessions, and it was sort of like an epiphany going through these two modules of, you know, you walk down going, "Wow, I am..."

Devon Middleditch

The way I approach leading teams is never going to be the same again. And then I subsequently, you know, if we've got up and coming leaders, I've always suggested taking modules of those styles, probably different names and stuff now, but.

Devon Middleditch

the idea behind it was that if you can understand that not everybody, you know, responds the same way in a meeting and other some people need to be prepared beforehand, some people need to be prepared, need to talk about it after, you know, a day later after a meeting.

Devon Middleditch

You know, some people are just the people that always want to talk in a meeting kind of thing. And so understanding those sort of concepts and the ways that you approach different conversations and different personas in the life is like an invaluable skill and I think really high value for when you do transition from technical into, you know, pseudo leadership or leadership roles, you know.

Andrea Ciaffi

In your career, you have had the opportunity to work in both government agencies like Transport for New South Wales, but you also worked in large tier one companies. Can you tell us what's the main difference between working for government agencies versus working for a private company?

Devon Middleditch

Yes, look, I think that I've been very fortunate in my career that all the organizations I've worked for, or the divisions within, have had really exceptional culture. I have to say, when I was moving from AECOM to Transport for New South Wales. The question that remained unanswered up until the time I started was, what is the culture like there?

Devon Middleditch

Because, you know, you get a sense that it may not be as mature or the like as what it was in the, you know, with the tier ones. But Yeah, our group within technical services in particular was it was exceptional. Had a wonderful leadership team, leadership team that Eric and myself and the executive were on, but also the leadership team within my team.

Devon Middleditch

you know, you put a lot of effort, you know, you get the right group of people together, the right group of leaders, and you put a lot of effort into sort of shaping and, you know, navigating how you want to perhaps curate culture in the organization.

Devon Middleditch

And, and so, you know, I think culturally, for me at least, in technical services versus, you know, a whatever was very similar. What was what was different? I think there's there's a lot more agility. And the engineer and the engineering side.

Devon Middleditch

Engineering consulting, you know, decisions are made a lot quicker, decisions are made for quite deliberate reasons, whereas you sort of see within government, there's a lot of the agenda is based on, you know, political movements and the like, and whereas I think in the in the consulting engineering particularly, you know, if they're going to invest in something, it's for an absolute reason to get an absolute result.

Devon Middleditch

you know, and so that's very deliberate. And so that is quite empowering. However, I will say that, you know, in transport in my time there, the difference is scale. So, you know, there's things that go on inside a government agency that is Yeah, it's so much larger than what the public see.

Devon Middleditch

And so, and this is in the most positive, positive way, right? So the investigation that goes into emerging technology or, you know, the way that standards work, the way construction methodology is and sustainability and environment, the stuff that's happening in those spaces is Incredible, and you just get this, this.

Devon Middleditch

huge, I don't know, smorgasbord, so to speak, of things that you can explore if you're in the right space.

Devon Middleditch

And so, you know, I think it was a very fortunate time to be, you know, part of things like the autonomous vehicle program and the sustainability program and weaving digital engineering into sustainability, which is an ongoing piece there and the like, and the robotics and drones and, you know, the things that are going on across, you know, co-developed, I guess, with the projects.

Devon Middleditch

It's really incredible and that is something that the engineering consultancies probably only get to do when they're in these big mega projects. You know, a normal day, it would be, you know, slimmer things, so to speak.

Andrea Ciaffi

Yeah, definitely. I think that's a space where government can outperform private companies, I guess, because of the scale.

Devon Middleditch

Absolutely, yeah.

Andrea Ciaffi

And did you have to change your leadership styles between these two worlds?

Devon Middleditch

Yeah, it's um, it is interesting because.. . There's inherently a way of working in government, I think, that is compliance driven. And so A lot of people will work within the sort of guidelines of what all that looks like and, you know, sort of tick boxes, so to speak.

Devon Middleditch

And, you know, I used to, you know, I used to say to the team there that, you know, just because we're in government doesn't mean we're going to, you know, act like government. we can act like a, you know, like a consultancy and be agile and make decisions fast, you know, and in the right way, not cutting corners.

Devon Middleditch

But we don't have to kick cans down the road and really, you know, that was really just to sort of accelerate. the transformation.

Devon Middleditch

Type of activities that was in my remit at the time, you know, taking two years to roll out of, you know, an upgrade on software is not acceptable, and so you've gotta be able to navigate that and drive it, and you know, keep sort of the...

Devon Middleditch

put on the throttle so that there's that continuum all the time. And I think that's one of those things that does lag. And so you have change from a leadership perspective, you know, it's around keeping that pressure on and trying to move through a program of work and being very intentional about where the value sits.

Devon Middleditch

Because ultimately, you know, you're playing with taxpayers' dollars, you need to be delivering something. So if you say, right, for X amount of dollars, it took us, you know, one, two, three years to roll something out, taxpayers are not going to see value in that.

Devon Middleditch

And so you need to, you need to really, in my mind, when we needed to demonstrate everything we did, we did for the right reason. with the taxpayers dollar. Whereas I think on the flip side, when you're in engineering consultancy, it's far more, you're delivering for a client for a purpose, it's very deliberate.

Devon Middleditch

And you've got a program there that you're up against, and you know, those things matter. And so, there's always that pace, which is, you know, which is means you gotta you manage that differently.

Andrea Ciaffi

Yeah, and whether you work in the public sector or in the private sector, there is a big aspect, which is culture. And yeah, I would like to talk about culture because we always hear about it. And sometimes people may, people in teams may perceive that that's used as a buzzword rather than meaning actually something for them.

Andrea Ciaffi

Uh, I would like to know what what you think culture culture is.

Devon Middleditch

So, I'll start by saying... Culture eats strategy for breakfast, right? And so you can have the best strategy in place in an organization, but if the culture's not leading, you know, the leading side, that strategy's not going to play out. And so... Yeah, to me, when I think about culture, I want people to feel valued.

Devon Middleditch

I want people to feel that they've got a voice. and that they really enjoy coming in to do what they're doing and they're in a certain inclusive environment where, you know, it's exciting, it's fun, it's challenging, and they've got autonomy to operate.

Devon Middleditch

And you know, it's easy to sort of throw those words out and you're in the cut and thrust of trying to deliver something and you need like a lot of action or you've got non-performer or something like that, but they're kind of like, that's kind of like the outlier stuff.

Devon Middleditch

You know, holistically, you kind of need all those things to. come together and, you know, and I think in the leadership roles, you know, one of the best things you can do is just be consistent, you know, and whatever your style is, be consistent at that because then your people know what they're getting.

Devon Middleditch

They know they're always going to get that and that's calming, you know, if you really understand that it's not what version of my manager or leader is coming into the office today type thing, you know.

Andrea Ciaffi

Yeah, and I think we all worked in places where there was a great culture and places where there was not so great culture. But how do you measure the culture you think you built versus the culture that the team is actually experiencing?

Devon Middleditch

Yeah, it's just about everywhere that you work, there's sort of like an annual review on that sort of stuff, and I...

Andrea Ciaffi

Mm.

Devon Middleditch

I kind of cringe at it, to be honest, because it's, you know, trying to get a pulse check through a tick box exercise is very a very digitized way of trying to understand something that's so far soft.

Devon Middleditch

Right, and analog, and so I really, I think it's nothing in the in the weeds in the ground with people, you know, water cooler chats, the coffee chats, the you know, team events, you know, you get a sense.

Devon Middleditch

very quickly from those sort of activities and under pressure on projects, project delivery, you know, how people are operating is a real testament to what the culture is like, you know, if you've got if you've got people that are under pressure, but still calm, not losing it.

Devon Middleditch

You know, and people were supporting them within the team, people were there for them, and you know, I think that that's that's indicative of you know, strong culture and people wanting to wanting to be there, you know, enjoying what they're doing, even though it might be hard.

Andrea Ciaffi

And if you had an opportunity to speak with a team, like a team of leaders that are experiencing, like they're struggling with the culture within their teams and within their business, what would you advise? What would you tell them to do?

Devon Middleditch

So. What? I've had I applied different style depending on the the what the group function is, perhaps, and the example I'll use is that when you've when you've got a bunch of people and you that are that are part of your team that are.

Devon Middleditch

let's just say, like inventing in the future. These are the people on the very pointy end of, you know, any innovation or anything that's going on. The way that you lead them is quite different to how you're leading a group of people that are doing, you know, an out and out project, delivering your design.

Devon Middleditch

Because the people that are on the pointy end of the technologies and, you know, this invention and ideation and the like, they need, they operate a certain way. They don't like controls, constraints. It's big picture thinking. You know, was trying to treat them the same, put these boundaries and controls.

Devon Middleditch

In place like, you know, particularly things like program, and you inherently find funny things like those groups of people are the ones that are always late with their time sheets, right? And yeah,

Andrea Ciaffi

Haha.

Devon Middleditch

like something really simple, right? And that might infuriate you as the leader, but you go, these guys are not thinking about time sheets, they're thinking about...

Devon Middleditch

How they, how they're inventing what the next big thing is, and so you've got to have the sensibility, I think, as a leader to, you know, navigate through that and give them the space, and you know, then you get the best out of that type of.

Devon Middleditch

.. those type of roles.

Andrea Ciaffi

How do you motivate these people? Like, yeah, how do you keep them motivated?

Devon Middleditch

I think part of it, particularly in the technology space, I think the part of it is actually just being able to talk their language and

Andrea Ciaffi

Mm.

Devon Middleditch

support what's going on. The hardest piece is when you have restrictions in place, right? So, oh, we don't have the budget or you can't spend the time on it. or we want you to do something that's not your core role, or we're worried about utilization.

Devon Middleditch

But those sort of things are demotivated to those types of personas. And so, you know, it's, I'm not saying to wrap that group in Cosmo, I'm just using it as one example of how you would lead it yourself. has to be malleable to the different characters that you have if you want to get, you know, an optimized outcome.

Andrea Ciaffi

Yeah, and sometimes companies experience an increase in workload that could be that significant that you need to hire a lot of people in a really short period of time. I know that's an experience you've had in the past, and it's quite challenging because you have your core group of people with their culture.

Andrea Ciaffi

everything is going well and smoothly. And now all of a sudden you bring a lot of people in. So I guess the question I want to ask you is, one, how do you actually hire a lot of people in a short period of time?

Andrea Ciaffi

Because even like finding talent is not that easy. And it's kind of like you may feel tempted to compromise and hire people that are not. Ideal, maybe they don't match the quality that you have within your team, but because you still have to deliver products at the end of the day, so how do you hire these people?

Andrea Ciaffi

and you find them. And then once they are in your team, how do you make sure that external people, external factor, don't dilute the culture that you build with so much work?

Devon Middleditch

Yeah, there's probably a few points to that question, but...

Devon Middleditch

The first one is that I've always been a believer that you need to have a core of your team that is FTE, full-time employee, and that ratio is about 70-30, if you will, and then the 30 is the contingent workforce, the contractors that you might bring in on a... an hourly rate contract or a fixed term contract or something like that.

Devon Middleditch

And by having the ratio, so you can be stacked into your full-time employee group, sort of ensures that the culture is maintained. And it's when you get the balance the other way around. When you've got, say, 30% of full-time employees and the rest of it is contingent workforce, that it just erodes the it can erode the culture.

Devon Middleditch

The other piece of it is that if you do have contingent workforce coming in, you need to treat them exactly the same way as you do the full-time employees. They're not, they're not a different species, just because of the commercial agreement of how they're in there, they've been brought in, it's part of the team to do it and do, you know, fulfill a role.

Devon Middleditch

And you can't isolate them, you need to bring them in, you've got to bring them into, you know, exactly the same way as you would any other. employee, full time employee, and I have been in situations where it has been very toxic or it's driven a toxic behaviour where hourly rate contractors are isolated from everybody else and treated quite differently, and the team.

Devon Middleditch

for in totality will perform poorly. And so by, you know, and so the learning from that is why would you do that? You're paying, you know, paying good money, you've got a lot of experience coming in the door and then you treat them a certain way.

Devon Middleditch

That doesn't make sense, right? So, you know, I think the thing is if you've got somebody in your house, You treat everyone's everyone's treat the same.

Andrea Ciaffi

Yeah, definitely. And changing gears a little bit, an interesting story in your career is the story to the Innovation Hub at Transport for New South Wales. That's probably like a unique experience that you had the opportunity to live. Can you share with us what was the original case you made to get the innovation hub of the ground and what is the innovation hub?

Devon Middleditch

So... When I joined Transport for New South Wales, there was a piece of work that was done around what we called digital engineering framework, which many listeners will be familiar with. And there was a good good amount of work done with supply chain or industry is trying to share what the intent of the digital engineering framework was.

Devon Middleditch

And you know, there was some some some consultants and some constructors that were doing quite well with with sort of lifting the bar. with how they were delivering. However, internally in transport, there wasn't the same type of... Uplet, so to speak, and so...

Devon Middleditch

You know, the as part of part of my division at the transport was an innovation group and called and protect wonderful group of people, only only a small, small team, but very agile. You know, these are the people, the types of people that are...

Devon Middleditch

you know, inventing the future, so to speak. And they've got had all this wonderful innovations going on. And you would see, you know, you see these PowerPoints and, you know, and it really was sort of death by PowerPoint. And that's no fault of anybody's. It's just the way, you know, that we're all.

Devon Middleditch

Told that we should do stuff, and anyway, the director of that group, we, you know, we were sort of talking about all this kit that we've got, and you know we've got hardware, we've got software, we've got, you know, different types of machinery.

Devon Middleditch

different instrumentation, you've got all these different things and it was like, right, we can't do this by PowerPoint. We need to be showing people and so the sort of the concept was born that we needed a space.

Devon Middleditch

And anyway, he went away and he did a great job with facilities and got a... A space that was about three times bigger than I thought we were gonna get, and anyway, the space got built out by the team, and you know, then there's been, we've had a lot of people from industry come in and experience there, but it's basically an experience space.

Devon Middleditch

It was like, you can't tell people digital, you've got to show them. And that's what the space really tried to do. So it had things like driving simulators in there, not motion simulator. Yeah, AR, VR, drones, 3D metal printing examples.

Devon Middleditch

robotics, you know, ways of big wraparound screens that sort of show people in more depth what's going on in a space that might have been laser scanned or something like that. And so the idea was that we would bring teams into...

Devon Middleditch

Teams into the space, show them all the stuff, and then it would hopefully, you know, get their mind working about, oh, we've got this problem on a project, and they would come back and say, can we co-develop a solution with you? And so that was really the outcome.

Devon Middleditch

That we wanted, we wanted to be able to have problems that were on projects being delivered and have these projects come in and co-develop a solution, and it's very successful still running today, and I think we're very fortunate to have a space like that where...

Devon Middleditch

You know, you can do proof of concepts, you can test things, you know, it's a safe environment, and you can expose others, you know, people like our finance teams, to why we're spending, you know, a certain budget on something. Right, that might that that doesn't resonate; it's just a line item on a spreadsheet, right?

Devon Middleditch

And so that show and tell and touch and feel is actually really critical as an enabler for that type of, you know, investment.

Andrea Ciaffi

Yeah, I really like this practical approach to show the real stuff. And in your role, you probably think about the future of the industry quite a lot, but you also see in the past, you've seen a couple of cycles. And when we think about the future of this industry and the skills that are needed, I know it's hard to predict the future, right?

Andrea Ciaffi

So, but what skill do you think you will define the next generation of digital engineering leader that probably the current generation didn't need?

Devon Middleditch

So we are in a really interesting time. You know, it's hard to not have a conversation every day pretty much without talking about, you know, machine learning or AI or agents and stuff and what that's going to mean.

Devon Middleditch

But I think, you know, one thing that seems to look like it's for sure is that an engineer using, you know, machine learning or AI agents is going to be far more, far stronger engineer than one that doesn't. Is it going to take the jobs?

Devon Middleditch

You don't know. Might take some, might create others. But the one thing that is going to be really Necessary for the next generation of engineers is the critical thinking piece, because you're going to have a lot more information thrown at you that is that is generated by different agents doing different things, and if you're not a critical thinker.

Devon Middleditch

you're going to let problems through. You've been given a result, you need to be able to go, yeah, it doesn't actually smell right to me. I'm going to look at how this was calculated and because I'm expecting a different result rather than just going, yeah, that's okay, the machine's gone and told me the answer.

Devon Middleditch

I'm just going to go and. continue with that. So I think there's a whole piece there about developing critical thinking in the next generation that perhaps we didn't need as much because we were doing more things from first principles.

Andrea Ciaffi

Very good point. And if you were to rebuild your career today, knowing what you know now, what would you focus on that you didn't focus on the first time?

Devon Middleditch

Ohh. I'd probably focus more on the people leadership and the sort of EQ style of things. I probably wasted too much time and, you know, sort of let certain relationships fracture because of my own inability to... Uh, to operate at that level, yeah, and so it, you know, it took a while to perhaps get there.

Andrea Ciaffi

Never too late. We are at the end of the episode. If people want to reach out to you, where can I find you?

Devon Middleditch

Oh, look, I think they can they can like and subscribe on the on the socials, and yeah, it's I'm happy to chat and yeah, ping us on LinkedIn. Thanks for having us.

Andrea Ciaffi

Person. Thanks for joining us on the Digital Construction Podcast, Devon. Thank you.

Devon Middleditch

Thank you, Andrea.