Hello AEC Cloud

 The Inspiration:

Over the last couple years, some key influencers including people from ENR top 50 builders & owners,  technology product & service providers, as well as memorable colleagues, encouraged me to speak & write more publicly on my experiences.

Why Now?

It's the day after McGraw Hill FutureTech 2011.  I'm on my 14th or 15th trip to India in half as many years.  I've got a passport riddled with stamps from Europe, the Middle East and Asia spawned from faded Jet streams trailing to more than 30 of the United States plus regions of Canada and Central America. As I flip through business cards from AEC Industry thought leaders, Technology Vendors, and Consultants of various focus, I've lost track of the number of times I heard the word cloud this year and yesterday.  Whether it's an annoying marketing term, or an industry changing paradigm, I'm taking this proliferation as my cue to discuss the successes, failures and experiences I've gathered over the years, both pre & post "cloud", and put them to use for the AECCloud.

Supplies for the Journey: I have a lengthy list of 1,000's of people, observations, innovations, implementations and inspirations; to pull from diagrams, slide decks, recordings, transcripts, passport stamps, napkins and memories; covering an array of great construction & technology projects that have provided the pathway for my own success.

A list of Froms: From chipping paint to becoming a machinist & welder; From swinging a hammer to toting a plumb bob & orange notebook; From jack hammering the slab I helped place, to babysitting heaters on a tarmac; From the ground breaking of The New York Times headquarters, to managing data through the lifecycle of the Pentagon Renovation; From helping boutique contractors leapfrog the "big guys", to working with the "big guys";  From pioneering SPLA programs with Microsoft, to convincing vendors to have SPLA programs; From inheriting partnering disasters, to setting partnering examples; From attending conferences, to speaking and writing articles; From knowing nothing about IT, to managing more than 75,000 project hours a year; From starting a traditional consulting company, to acquiring & leading the transformation of one to a cloud based company;  From misunderstanding Globalization to becoming Global; From managing 1 tenant to more than 100; From no cloud, to nothing but cloud;

I aspire to share useful insights, and learn.