Behind the Build: Interview with Andy Leek, VP – Technology & Innovation

Dec 15, 2020

Andy Leek, PARIC’s VP of Technology and Innovation, recently co-hosted Autodesk’s webinar, Introduction to the Unified Platform: Customer Insights on Autodesk Build. Before the webinar, Autodesk’s team sat down with Andy to discuss PARIC’s approach to project unification and the various tools deployed to ensure collaboration among teams and workflows.

Tell us more about your role at PARIC.

I’m the VP of technology and innovation at PARIC. My role is strategy, implementation planning, partnerships, integrations, and building out workflows and workstreams across the entire enterprise. In a nutshell, I’m responsible for technology across the entire enterprise. This means I get to work with many different stakeholders to understand what they need, and then find compelling ways to solve those challenges/opportunities.

In your experience, what are the typical disconnects that occur between field and office teams, and why is this an issue?

I think the biggest challenge today is continuity in the workflow. We have a lot of people who are using similar data sets to do different parts of the process, but we don’t have a completely unified workflow yet. This is where I think Autodesk Build will help us solve the rest of that challenge. Having a single source of truth for all of the content, including plans, models, quantification surveys, and schedule, is key. All of that information is going to flow through operations. Now we have the opportunity to do better data analytics on the backend. This helps us to refine and optimize our scheduling and estimating approach by round tripping that data.

Why do you think connected technology, unified platforms that connect teams, data, and workflows, are essential to the future of construction?

I think it’s a highly competitive landscape, and we have got to find ways to be more efficient and effective. We’re not going to be able to do the kind of legacy workflows we’re sunsetting now, five or 10 years from now and be competitive. I think the industry is evolving quickly, and we have to adapt. Being an early adopter, and partnering, enables us to have some control of our destiny.

To read the entire article on Autodesk’s Digital Builder blog, click here.