We spoke to Nick Leach, Head of Digital Construction at Sir Robert McAlpine, about his career experiences and how these have influenced the way he leads his team of Digital Construction professionals.
What advice do you have for choosing a good employer?
That depends on what your drivers are. People want to earn what they’re worth, of course, but people also want to grow, learn and continually develop getting better job satisfaction too. Are you going to join an employer who may pay more for that one project, but not care about improving you long term, so that you end up stagnating by the time that project completes? Or are you going to go to an organisation that cares about developing you, has the right values, great people to work with and learn from, where you can expand your skillset and grow?
Every year when I write my functional roadmap and development plans, I make sure every person has targeted training that is both role specific in the form of an accreditation or equivalent and includes development of other areas needed in their growth. It’s about showing people that work for us that we care about them and want them to develop. And in return we expect them to be loyal and do their best work for us.
What does career development mean to you?
My own career route into construction was quite convoluted – I started out as a professional footballer and moved into the industry when I was 19 through an M&E traineeship with a consultancy, where I first learnt to use CAD, before moving across into a large Construction organisation. The nature of BIM as a discipline being so varied means that there are lots of paths people can take. It’s about finding the right route through good personal development and mentors along that journey.
What sort of skills do you need to be a great Digital/BIM professional?
Skills can be developed. Some experience is great but it’s more about personality. When I’m bringing people into the business, I’m asking myself:
“Are they the type of character that is happy to go and engage with someone and get along with people?”
That’s key for us. We can have the best technical Digital construction manager but if they’re lacking in the ability to interact with people and be proactive, they’re going to be limited in having an impact. The key component of our role is understanding how to adapt to different characters, identifying what their drivers and needs are and how we can support that through Digital/BIM.
What kind of training and development is important?
Well personally I’ve made sure I picked up qualifications along the way: City & Guilds, HNCs and Chartership with the CIOB. So, I always encourage my team to look at a long-term career path in gaining qualifications, to ensure they have a good grounding in the industry. Learning specific skills in software is one thing but learning more about construction is important and provides a good basis for our Digital Construction professionals. For more role specific qualifications that are geared around our day-to-day activities, we endorse, and over the years have rolled out for our individuals, both the BRE and BSI individual accreditation schemes on first PAS1192 and now ISO19650, which I’ve also undertaken along the way with the team myself.
In addition a lot of learning is gained by our team through the experience they gather being based on the projects and their daily interactions with other functional roles.
What’s your biggest BIM frustration?
My pet hate is someone coming up with a solution that someone else might have already come up with. It’s wasteful reinventing the wheel when someone’s already done it. But if you don’t talk to each other, you won’t know that. That’s why communication is so important and something which we constantly advocate across the team.
Although our team is spread out across the UK regionally, we are a close-knit community and utilise channels like our own dedicated Microsoft Teams and Yammer forums. for constant communication. We had our first face-to-face gathering in 18 months recently because of COVID but before then it’s always been twice yearly as a whole team nationwide, where we meet face to face for a full day and programme covering regional updates, new developments, look-ahead planning and interactive workshops. Everyone gets something out of it when we have these get-togethers, even the conversations that are had between the breaks throughout the day provide benefit to the individuals across the team.
How well is digital integrated within the business?
When I joined four years ago, Sir Robert McAlpine was well-established, had a good reputation and had good foundations in place for BIM. We were able then to accelerate the implementation further, building on those foundations, to drive it through by highlighting what we needed to become a leader in Digital/BIM, unlocking approval from the executive board for extra funding and resourcing to achieve that.
Digital technology and data to inspire is a core pillar of the business strategy and our functional roadmap identifies this as a wrapper for all other pillars.
There’s a defined maturity strategy, which is at the fore here. Unlike other organisations, we have a maturity menu setting out that strategy so that new starters are clear on the expectations and guidelines we are working to, which sets us apart. They can see at high-level the buy-in we have through our endorsed company policy that’s reviewed annually and signed off by the board.
Two years ago, we also launched a Data Apprenticeship Scheme in the business, aimed at anyone from any level. Over 18 months, participants learn all the skills needed to manipulate data, deal with coding, and master dashboards. They gain new skills and bring that back to their day-to-day role. The aim is to foster more data literacy across the organisation to improve our business delivery and efficiencies.
Where does BIM sit within your business?
We’re not called “The BIM Function” anymore. This was rebranded last year to get away from connotations of people’s perceptions of BIM. People that are in the world of BIM know it’s more than just 3D models but the acronym doesn’t always serve us well. People around the business get “Digital Construction” because what we do is digitalise our construction process. We needed to get away from the idea that we just look after 3D models because there’s a legacy there with clients thinking: “I don’t want to pay for that”.
We rarely outsource our management around Digital Construction, preferring to have that expertise and personnel in house and integrated within project teams based on site. You see more traction by personnel being there and being seen regularly, rather than infrequent visits.
What’s the role of your team?
Our team is a digital enabler, finding digital solutions to day-to-day tasks. Listening and finding out what the problems are from the project teams, we’ll then look at them individually, as a collective group, or with other functions. That’s the beauty of site-based people in the team. You wouldn’t pick up gems of improvements and efficiencies otherwise.
Digital Construction is more important now as people are adopting it more widely. COVID has reduced the size of teams, so we help them be more efficient by automating admin tasks, allowing them more time to do important tasks and utilise their expertise on the real problems that need addressing.
What do your BIM people do?
Our role is a varied and interesting one that’s constantly evolving. We impact everyone across the project so we aren’t pigeon-holed as a function. Our team comes in as an integrator, helping project teams understand some of the new technology, provide training and find digital solutions to all kinds of challenges. We get the outputs from all the different tools we use and work out how we can utilise the data that we get to automate into reporting mechanisms like Microsoft power Bi, which is then used for better business analytics and decision making.
We also spend a lot of time sitting with our clients translating and providing guidance on Digital/BIM expectations and delivery. In many instances we also take the lead in writing their requirements for them. Education is a big piece – like a hamster wheel, we need to keep training and educating everyone we work with because things are always evolving so quickly.
What sort of culture might we find in your team?
We’re quite a big team – 35 people – and we’re quite diverse in terms of gender and nationalities, and there are lots of different levels of experiences from junior to senior. I’m proud of the sense of community in the team that supports each other. It’s not like what you might find in some businesses with BIM people operating separately with different agendas. We really pride ourselves on alignment, consistency and standardised best practice, making sure we’re using the same digital tools, documents and management systems. Because everyone’s all doing great stuff in the same way, we can look at every project against a benchmark target and really prove our impact.
We’ve our own functional mantra and values for our function within the business. These are framed around: delivering digital leadership; innovation and creativity; and building collaborative relationships. These relationships are both internal within the business and externally with our clients and supply chain.
What involvement do you have with BIM outside Sir Robert McAlpine?
I sit on the BIM Alliance subgroup for affiliates: all the main industry institutes that people get chartered with, such as CIOB, ICE, RICS. I’m part of a group of eight, looking after them to make sure they’re getting the right messaging and keeping them up to date. It’s useful to hear what they’re all working on and where we can connect them with others looking at similar problems. In addition, I encourage my team to get involved with industry subgroups too because they’re based all around the country.
The BIM Alliance feeds into the Construction Innovation Hub and CDBB, who work on innovation and futures strategy with toolkits for the industry. So, I have a view on where the industry is going and use this to inform our functional strategy and Sir Robert McAlpine’s future business planning.
What role does Sir Robert McAlpine play in the industry’s digital progress?
We are leading the Construction Data Trust, which is trying to gather similar data from other Tier 1 contractors into a central platform to share common data. It’s difficult with businesses needing to protect their IP and competitive edge, so it’s looking at data that all parties are willing to share and be comfortable with first. The aim is to take away some of the smoke and mirrors and be a more efficient industry, more open and collaborative with the challenges we all face. If we come together as a collective, it only benefits the built environment, sharing insights into how to improve our ways of working.
Who’s driving Digital/BIM evolution?
Legislation plays the biggest role and is normally the biggest driver for change. Directives like the Buildings Safety Bill, will be a big shake-up in the next 18 months, demanding evidencing of materials. Having information recorded properly is huge and digital can play a massive part in finding that golden thread in automating information. Government publications such as the Construction playbook and Transforming Infrastructure Performance Roadmap 2030 support further adoption of Digital/BIM both for the public and private sectors.
Clients will always be a big factor too in the use and adoption of Digital/BIM. The mature clients all have a strategy document that has digital as a key deliverable but the project layers beneath might not be at the same level, so we are there to support and educate them on their strategy, plus bring the supply chain on the journey with us.
What are the demands for BIM going to be in future?
Looking at trends, data and information management will continue to be key, as well as the ever-evolving moving target of technology: software and hardware. Organisations that can structure their information and data through consistency in the digital technologies that they use will be the companies that can really make competitive gains, harnessing best use of artificial intelligence and machine learning to provide better business decision making, risk management and productivity. Another huge driver will be the increasing need as a society around the net zero carbon agenda where a digital approach will be fundamental to supporting delivery of this.
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