Engineering Inc - July/August 2018 - 30

FOLLOW THE MONEY

With no clear commitment on long-term federal funds for
public sector projects, Chair-elect Mitchel Simpler sees firms
migrating more and more from public sector work into the
private sector. "The private sector is where the money is," says
Simpler.
"In New York, $2 out of every $3 spent in construction is in
the private sector," says Simpler, a managing partner at Jaros,
Baum & Bolles, New York City. The private sector offers not
only new opportunities for firms that traditionally rely on public
sector projects, but it also drives them to become more innovative and creative. "Overall, diversification is going to help the
industry tremendously," he says.
Kothari says that "we are also going into international markets
for infrastructure work."
He adds that the government sector does have bright spots.
"An increase in military spending will offer opportunities in the
defense sector," he says.
TECHNOLOGY TRENDS

Executive Committee members say innovation is critical to
advancing the industry.
"As we are providing services, we are not just blindly doing
the same thing over and over again," says W. Arthur Barrett,
ACEC vice chair and senior vice president at Gannett Fleming,
Baltimore. "Putting innovation into our projects makes sure we
are keeping up with technology, and that we are embracing technology such as artificial intelligence (AI)."
Vice Chair Jerry (Jay) Wolverton, Jr. points to the
increased speed of engineering projects. "It is so much faster, and
the expectation from clients is there for it to be fast," says Wolverton, president and CEO of Wolverton & Associates, Duluth,
Georgia. "I have colleagues who are fearful the profession of
engineering may go away because of technology. But firms that
embrace technology are going to thrive."
"What would have previously taken 10 hours now takes an
hour to generate that same work product," says Michael "Sully"
Sullivan, executive director of ACEC/Georgia and NAECE
president on ExCom.
It's not just client expectations that are being upended.
The convergence of
Mitchel Simpler
groundbreaking industry technology will
change both the way
engineering work is
done and the products
generated.
"We are going from
2D drawings to 3D
BIM models that
someone can put on a
virtual reality headset
and walk through
their building or piece
of infrastructure that
is being designed,"
Sullivan says. "That is
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ENGINEERING INC.

JULY / AUGUST 2018

going to radically
change the way
engineering work
is done and what
clients are going to
expect."
Technology also
brings opportunities for firms to
transition from
billing time into
selling value, says
Vice Chair Gayle
Roberts, former
chair at Stanley
Consultants, CenW. Arthur Barrett
tennial, Colorado.
"We need to work
toward selling our value and getting away from selling hours.
Consider developing technologies and software suites, leveraging analytics using
sensors and project
data together with our
engineering know-how
to offer new services,"
she says. "Partnering
with companies beyond
our traditional thinking such as Google and
others could lead us
to new areas. We are
moving toward technology solution providers
rather than engineering design companies."
Jerry (Jay) Wolverton, Jr.
In the meantime,
firms have to be careful
about who is building the design software they incorporate on
projects. "The people developing design software are not usually traditional design
Michael "Sully" Sullivan
engineers, but software
programmers," says
Vice Chair Stephanie
Hachem, senior vice
president at KimleyHorn and Associates,
Raleigh, North Carolina. "Design decision
making is shifting
more to the programmer and away from the
design. But if we are
not proactive, we are
going to find ourselves
reacting to someone
else's programming.
We need to step in and
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