Engineering Influence from ACEC

On June 18, 2020, the ACEC Research Institute held the first of a series of panel discussions on the future of engineering.  The topic covered by the panelists was the "Impact of Technology on Engineering."  Panelists included:

• Jose Luis Blanco, Partner, McKinsey & Company

A full video of the roundtable can be viewed here. 

Transcript:

Daphne Bryant :

Behalf of the ACEC Research Institute's, board of directors. Welcome to our first round table and the series, the future of engineering, a big thank you to our donors who have made this session possible. We have a great group of thought leaders, as you can see here today that will share their insights and expertise with us on the impact of technology on engineering without further ado. It's my pleasure to introduce two of my colleagues from the ACEC research Institute, Joe Bates, who will serve as our moderator today and Kevin McMahon, who will be monitoring the chat box and fielding your questions during the session, Joe, it's all yours.

Joseph Bates:

Thanks very much Daphne, and thank you everybody for joining today's round table. Before we get started with our questions, I'd like to introduce each of our panelists for the webinar. Today. First we have Jose Luis Blanco. He's a partner at McKinsey & Company Jose leads, McKinsey's engineering, construction, building materials and construction technology work in North America. And as a leader of its retail real estate practice, he brings deep expertise in optimizing performance and unlocking value through embedding digital capabilities and deploying and scaling up new technologies. We also have Mike Haley, vice president of research at Autodesk. Mike leads a team of researchers, engineers, and specialists to explore the future of how people design and make things. A primary focus of his team, is automation and leveraging technologies and disciplines that include machine learning, robotics, human, computer interaction, geometry, and visible visualization. Next, we have Chris Luebkeman. He's the director of strategic foresight at office of the president with ETH Zurich.

Joseph Bates:

Chris has a multidisciplinary education, including geology, civil engineering, structural engineering, entrepreneurship, and a doctorate in architecture. And he is deeply passionate about curating, constructive dialogue, insatiably curious. He relishes the opportunity to discover the opportunities which will be created by change, and perhaps most importantly, to evolve position solutions to the profound positive solutions to the profound challenges we face today. And last but not least, we have Heather Wishart-Smith. She's SVP of technology and innovation at Jacobs. Heather is a registered professional engineer and certified project management professional with proven, experience managing large design programs and developing, managing, and turning around troubled offices and the architectural engineering professional services market. And also Heather is a fellow of S A M E and she is currently the president elect for the 2020, 2021 Centennial year. Thank you all of our panelists for joining us today. I'd first like to start out with a question fairly broad one for each of you to start out with, and I'm going to ask Mike to start us with this based on your individual perspectives, as you look at the engineering industry, what are the one or two biggest impacts that technology will have on the industry in the future, say in the next five to seven years, for instance, will, will things be going faster? We'll be doing things in a different place,uwhat what's going to happen, Mike?

Mike Haley:

Thanks, Joe. Yeah, it's a, it's a, it is a broad question. There's two things, main things that come to mind for me. So the first one relates to systems and, you know, I think as we all know engineering anything in the world today and especially buildings is all about resolving the various forces that are acting between the systems and systems might be the relationship between the architecture of the building, the structure of the building NDP systems. It could be the relationship between the materials and the methods of production of the building and the sustainability of the environment. It could be the relationship between the people that are ultimately going to be in the building. And today in most practices, we don't have a way of resolving all of those tensions all the time because systems are inherently very complex and they're always changing. So the industries rely on rules of thumb, established practices, standards, these kinds of things.

Mike Haley:

And I can see that changing in the future. We're beginning to have the ability to automate the understanding of systems and be able to bring those insights and that guidance to engineers and designers in that process. So that's my one aspect that then leads to the second one, Joe, which is that with all of this automation and your question about, you know, you know, do, do we, are we going to need more engineers or are we going to need less engineers? What's the nature of the job market? I actually believe we're going to need more. And the reason I believe you're going to need more is I actually think we're opening up the world to greater possibilities right now with these tools. And that is going to lead to the next, my second point, which relates to knowledge and education. And I think as we build automation systems that understand and learn the patterns, we don't just use that knowledge to automate and make the machine do things, but we can use that knowledge to upskill people. We can train people more easily in using tools and using techniques. We can raise the sea level for lots of people at the same time with technology. So I see that as a sort of a commencement great trend that we're going to see in the coming years.

Joseph Bates:

Great. let's, let's go over to Chris. Chris, what do you think?

Chris Luebkeman:

So I, I totally agree with everything Mike just said, and I want to amplify a couple of points. I think there's three things. We're going to see expansion, acceleration and consolidation. As Mike said, an expansion of what we can do and expansion of toolsets and expansion of knowhow and expansion of what we're going to be asked to do. I think there's the acceleration, there's going to be, we're, we're suffering from this already when we like to complain about not enough time to even think anymore, we just have to do do do, and frankly, that's not going to stop. And so therefore these tools are going to help us. I hope and these techniques and our, and our teaming will help us deal with that acceleration. And the last is consolidation. I think we've seen over the past 10, 20 years, an industry wide consolidation, especially in the built environment.

Chris Luebkeman:

And I believe frankly, that will continue, but I also believe we come back to the first one, it's going to lead to an expansion because as we have the consolidation and either, so this core, core, core core, all of a sudden, there's going to be the realization. We need these new typepology, these specialists who can really focus on, for example, getting our, our third world infrastructure back up to what it needs to be in order to to regain our, our, you know, a position of pride and the other parts of this sort of this other is a consolidation of knowledge. I really think that we're going to be able to acquire and that it's not consolidation by what's there, but how we get it. Right. So we're going to be able to in a much easier way, consolidate know how consolidate knowledge in a much more rapid way. So those are my three words. Great. Jose, what about you?

Jose Luis Blanco:

Like how Chris frame it in three specific like you know, sentences or, or, or, or things? Let me try to do the same. I think that for me, the three things that I believe what I would love to see going forward, given what we see in technology is more transparency first. Second, being more output outcome driven. And the third one is actually much more collaborative environment. Let me try to just give you 15 seconds for me to one the transparency of think it's clear, but I think it's, I think right now we're capturing data. Not only we capturing data, we're storing data in a much more way that is going to be, we're going to be able to actually analyze that data and provide like, you know, transparencies and some traditional issues we always have a, in the construction industry and Jane construction English, okay.

Jose Luis Blanco:

Who made that change? What happened? What was the implication? So I think that that's going to be a huge unlock for us, and we wouldn't have a lot of noise that is always around our industry and to move forward. The second one is outcome driven. It's also tied to the first one. I think if we have more data, we have more transparency and then we're going to be able to actually you know, our designs are going to be much more outcome driven is going to be able to provide better service to our owners. I mean, I'm sure Mike and his team are working on Gera design, like crazy these days. And that for me is critical because it's going to be able to fully actually capture what the client needs and actually tell them, like, here are the choices for you, depending on the outcomes you're trying to achieve.

Jose Luis Blanco:

And the third one, which is the collaborative point, I think is much more than just breaking silos because we're going to have much more transparency. It's like for me, going back to Chris' point about knowledge, is really unleashing like the potential talent of fully the potential of like a group of engineers working together, right. Removing all the constraints that we need to do right now being tying like the King of silos and many other things. So these three things : transparency, outcome driven and collaborations is the things I expect and hope to see in the future there.

Joseph Bates:

Heather why don't you round us out here with your thoughts on this subject.

Heather Wishart-Smith:

Sure, so I think that my thoughts on this are really quite frankly, complimentary to what the gentlemen have mentioned. The first really that I would focus on is the interconnectivity of systems. So I've mentioned since, but that interconnectivity and disciplines, and then also the technical workforce. With regard to the interconnectivity of systems, you look at the interconnectivity of society we're coming out of the pandemic, the future of cities the urbanization, everything is going to need to rely on techno technology to really meet that exponential growth and the exponential growth of mega cities. So as was mentioned earlier, this will provide more opportunities for engineers to get involved, to leverage that kind of technology. And, you know, Jose mentioned silos. With that, I mean, I really think that those who are most successful in the technology enabled world will be those who are able to break down those silos and cut across disciplines.

Heather Wishart-Smith:

So much of what we do in innovation is rather than just say creating something in one discipline and then kind of throwing it over the transom for the next discipline and the next discipline; cutting across, and co-creating across disciplines in order to increase that speed to market. But then the workforce is that second aspect. You know, of course there's so many statistics out there about the U.S. In particular, not graduating enough STEM graduates, and of course it's about more than just graduating them. We need to retain them once they come into the workforce in order to remain competitive. But we also need to recognize the value of the trades, particularly as the trades become increasingly complex, as we bring IOT into operations and maintenance and all of that. So I think sometimes it's tempting to view technology as kind of a way out of not graduating enough STEM graduates, but it's, it's, it's really going to cause the need for even more of those graduates.

Heather Wishart-Smith:

They need to, you know, they need to have the skillset to design a program that operates and maintain all the technologies that we think will help, you know, get us out of, out of the, the brain drain if you will. But that, that workforce, it needs to be nimble, adaptable needs to be committed to lifelong learning. And finally, I think it's critically important that that workforce be inclusive and diverse. It's not just the right thing to do. It's been proven by study after study that inclusive and diverse companies and organizations perform better. It allows us as an industry to just really cast the widest net to draw the widest possible pool of candidates, to get as many STEM professionals as we can. And it's really once you that critical mass of diversity, that's when you can get the most benefit from diversity of thought.

Joseph Bates:

So, Heather, I think you've provided a great segue into the next section of questions here that I wanted to ask about. And that's about the increasing speed of design and how that impacts projects and delivery. And in particular, are there generational issues that we need to consider here are our younger people that are graduating more adept with the technology that is out there, or, you know, what, what are your thoughts on this?

Heather Wishart-Smith:

So because the people who are graduating today are digital natives. I think it's, you know, very often tempting to fall into that unconscious bias that people who are have more time in their career might not be as willing or able to change. But I have found and worked with so many people who were at the latter end of their career, who really do fully embrace that technology and innovation. So I mentioned earlier being nimble, being adaptable, having that commitment to lifelong learning, it's really about that mindset. And I think it's also important to be open, to taking on say a reverse mentor. Yes, we absolutely need to be learning from, from younger people. We need to provide better pathways to promotion and success. We, we shouldn't in any way be writing off due to our unconscious bias, any kind of you know, whole groups of people, right.

Heather Wishart-Smith:

I, I'd also add that, you know, not all technologies innovation, not all innovation involves technology. Some of the best innovations we have are those that have nothing to do with technology. It's really innovation in my mind is about how you approach problem solving, constantly asking what is the problem that we're trying to solve. So automation, of course, you know, we all know it should be harnessed to reduce repetitive tasks. And oftentimes also more higher risk operations to get people out of harm's way we should be using it for rapid auctioneering. We all know about, you know, generating just infinite possibilities, filtering them down to make sure that we're presenting to our clients what's best for them. Gone are the days where we show up at the [inaudible] with just, you know, possibilities. So we have a lot more to offer it's design attitude approach rather than the decision attitude approach, because you know, of course, decision attitude is assuming that all the, you know, the good options are out there. It's just a matter of deciding which one is best, but as we move into more automation, I really think it's important to take the design attitude approach to come up with the best alternatives. And then after that, the decision will be much easier.

Mike Haley:

Yeah. I'll answer that a little bit. What had I say that, you know, what, what we've found with the, with the newer generations, the digital natives, as you put it, Heather, is that there's a different expectation about the time to productivity you know, the traditional tools, certainly that we've been building were things that required a long time to become proficient. You had to study them, you had to learn them, you to learn the features you had to, there was a period of learning that was required. And there's, there's a level of expectation now about digital natives that they can pick up a tool and be productive immediately. So there's this relationship between learning and being productive, I think, is going to change. It is we're not ever going to have a world where you learn first and after I think, period, the time you become productive, the two are going to be much more intertwined.

Kevin McMahon:

I've got a question from the audience, one of the audience members wants to know in the future because of the varied nature and multidisciplinary skills that are going to be needed, that all the panels have mentioned, will, graduates be coming out of school with a more varied skillset - majors in civil, but perhaps minors in mechanical and electrical, for instance.

Heather Wishart-Smith:

Yeah. So I'll address that. I would even great question and I would even take it one step further, not just minors in mechanical and electrical, but in programming, in robotics, in all kinds of different disciplines that might not have been considered as related say to civil engineering as in the past. But the challenge for us in the industry is to make use of them. I think the risk is really there where you get the bright eyed, bushy tail, new graduates, and they come in and you're really attracted to them because they have the programming skills, they have the robotics background, they've done all kinds of three D printing. And then we sit them behind a computer and tell them to design things the same way that we've been doing it for decades. And we run the risk of burning them out of just really disenfranchising them. So we can't just be attracted to them. We need to recognize that we need to continue to foster that and cycle them through different opportunities and then listen to them when they come up with a way to challenge the status quo.

Jose Luis Blanco:

I think what Heather just said is super important. And I think that there's, if I may add one, another point is I think there's a very thin balance between and technology needs to help us with that between actually ensuring the that we maintain the knowhow that has been billed by the, I will call the older generation so to speak. I mean, we know that 30 or 40% of the workforce is going to retire over the next 10 to 15 years. So I think technology needs to allows us to capture that kind of knowhow making institutional and at the same time, without the same time, you know, and now we're allowing or empowering the new generation to do new things and doing them right. Right. So for me, that's a little bit of like [inaudible] out the new generation to do things differently, not the same way I've been down before that, for me, it's like what you actually make magic happen.

Chris Luebkeman:

So excuse me, I'd like to build on that as well. Yes. And first to the graduates, and then to what Jose was just saying, I think the question Kevin was a little bit in my mind too limited. Saying gonna major in civil and mechanical, I would much rather say, well, how about civil and philosophy or civil and biomedical or bio or, or, or some earth sciences or something that's actually, I think what we're hoping to see is actually a mix of the hard - the decision sciences with the natural sciences, because the challenges which we require, I think as a society are not just those who are trained how to make a decision, but as Heather was saying, the profound impact of a systems understanding and the need for us to understand more and more about how the elements within their systems sometimes need to be sub-optimized so that the system is optimized. And I think this is one thing. And the second point to build on what Jose was saying is I, totally agree with that. And we have to figure out how to make real lifelong learning, not just continuing education credits, which you go to some lunchtime lecture, which we all do and get a stamp and say, Oh boy, that was good. Thank you very much. But actually to real meaningful, lifelong learning and how I, and I, frankly, I don't know exactly what that means at this point, but I do know we're all recognizing that due to the, due to the rate of change, both professional, informational knowledge, that we need to find better ways to foster, to empower and encourage real lifelong learning and lifelong curiosity to learn. And I think that those are the two aspects there, which are not hand in hand, but in North self evident, but very, very critical for us.

Kevin McMahon:

Joe, we have one very interesting question then I'll let you ask the next question to the panelists. The question is with the super evolvement of technology to the panel is see that where most of the work is still procured locally and performed locally. Do they see a future where the local office, where the client is maybe just a small nub or collaboration, and then the bulk overwhelming bulk of the work is done around the globe or, or outside that core local office. Do they see that future happening in the next five to seven years?

Mike Haley:

I will. I'll say we're, we're beginning to see that happening already. I don't think it's a, I think it's, it's a growing trend. You know, technology is enabled and enabler of it. So as the economy, so it's society, right? All at the same time, we're seeing the shift of cloud adoption. People storing the data in centralized locations that can access it from everywhere. The days of having it on the server, inside your company, and only being able to use it. They're pretty long gone for a lot of companies. I think the gig economy, the notion of being able to hold down multiple contract jobs at the same time, switch between things, manage your workload, manage your life is a reality for a larger, larger number of people year over year. And then I, I just think that the borders are breaking down in terms of how we think about the world. And I think just because you live in another side of the world, you can think about problems elsewhere in the world, quite easily. You have access to that information.

Heather Wishart-Smith:

And I'll add to that. We've actually been doing this for years. It started out, I looked back in my career when I was, you know, managing programs. It started to become of course necessary when you needed to bring in a specialist who you wouldn't expect to have in the local office, but it really has evolved to the point where it's just a normal part of how we do things these days. And I think it will just continue to evolve. And that's a little bit different. I come from a very large firm,uand the smaller firms probably it's not as necessary, but it it's absolutely being done. And in addition to the technology and adoption of cloud, as Mike said, also,uvirtual and augmented reality has helped to facilitate that as well. And it also means,uless travel for some of our staff. So that's better from a work life balance perspective.

Chris Luebkeman:

To me, I agree with both, both of those, again, strange, but to me it's all about access. Now, at the end of the day, you used to not have access to first-class knowledge unless you were in a center. Now we right now are in two different continents at seven different time zones, and yet we're all accessing each other at this moment and the other, almost 300 people. And so it's it's access. And so it's access to knowledge, but it's also access to the marketplace. So I've been for the past five, 10 years, really, really encouraging the integration of small local offices, because at the end of the day, we know with the global move towards segregation. So national segregation and regional segregation, this is, this is going to continue. And so the local offices are going to become key to be networked and to create a new kind of network, which is trans-regional as, as the, you know, globalization screeches to a halt. I think this is, this is going to be a new reality, which we have to really look at. How can we make sure that the small local office can really provide the most excellent world-class delivery. And I, and I think that at the same time, we will still be, the big firms will still work globally and the Jacobs, the ARUPS, and all these they'll be able to flip work around the, around the world and continue doing that.

Joseph Bates:

Great. So I want to move on to the next section and I'm going to have Jose - I'd like to direct you then to start out with you on this one. There's a lot of buzzwords today in technology such as digital twins, data analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. I'd like to talk about, first of all, what are the terms actually mean? And secondly, how will they actually affect the industry in the future? So maybe Jose, if you want to start out with one of these areas and kick us off.

Jose Luis Blanco:

Yeah. So a couple of reactions here. I think there's definitely a lot of buzzwords going on. And I think that I would like to separate the reason for that is because I think people sometimes actually confuse you know, technologies that aren't available or venture capitalists sounding, right, or that money is flowing to actually develop reinvestigate versus technologies that are really being adopted, whereas having mass adoption. So we'll make that distinction in the beginning of it. Right. So it's just been, you know, two or three or four, what you say is like, really, if I think about technologists, for instance, that are already impacting the way we work, obviously there's analytics that actually are being applied or advanced analytics are being applied on the field for early flags for projects. How do you explain, or the main factors that explain what a project can turn profitable non-profitable so you can, you can do a reduction analysis to actually do that, and even just forecast that you can definitely do it, you know, analysis of bidding and bidding factors, or even you can apply it to other electronic design for instance, right.

Jose Luis Blanco:

Which is starting to be widely used. Right. So there's things that are already happened, right. When you think about some of the things that may happen in the future, or maybe starting to happen, but not fully implemented, that's when you start entering like a world of lack of potential digital twinning, construction, or potential, like, you know, artificial intelligence where we actually fully explain, I don't think we're doing artificial intelligence in construction, per se right now, I think we're starting to do machine learning. And actually my, my actually disagree with that. I'm not, but actually that is a little bit like how we see. So I think the big, important thing for me is like all these technologies we're exploring and what should we be talking about all of that. Right. And, you know, venture capital is funding as soon as you get amount of them. And we're seeing a lot of them, the ones that actually read being adopted, I wouldn't say that at scale, they started to be adopted as a sizable pattern actually are much limited. I mean, they made it to analytics and we made it too, obviously maybe generated the design, some machine learning applications from project planning in advance.

Jose Luis Blanco:

[Inaudible] ....some Of that is implemented. I just want to hold on. When you say digital twin, the sec for various specific kind of use cases or a specific like areas who still are like ha a little bit like far away from a fully functioning digital twin, we understand in aeronautics to where we understand, you know, their industrial processes. Anyway, that's my perspective.

Mike Haley:

Yeah. I, I think Jose I makes a great point about, you know, I think of it as the hype cycle, right? And the reality is all technology goes through a hype cycle and terms like artificial intelligence, machine learning are, are hype terms. Now we deeply believe in artificial intelligence and machine learning and digital twins, but they have to be ready to Joe's point. One of the things I would add is I, you know, I think the things that are real today, like you said, are our analytics computational methods. You mentioned that Heather as well, the ability to explore alternatives, I think that's becoming a fairly robust capability today. When we start coming back to that systems aspect of things that we were talking about earlier, that's where it starts becoming complicated. And I think this is a big role where machine learning can actually play.

Mike Haley:

If we are to build - digital twins, I've also been around for actually quite a long time. And as you said in other industries too, but the difference is the future to have to understand the system. If they don't understand the systems, they're not correctly reflecting the situation and you're not going to be able to optimize your solutions correctly. The only way I believe you're going to be able to make correctly representative digital twins in the future is through sampling. The world is through measuring the data, learning from that data, generalizing those patterns, and then placing them within that digital twin. And then you, then you leverage that digital twin to optimize your designs and look for alternatives. But that's a pot. That's a path we're on. We're not there yet today.

Chris Luebkeman:

I think one of the interesting things with all of those is, as you said, Joe there's, there are buzzwords and there are many different interpretations. We can look at them with starry eyes and say, you know, I can't wait to do a digital twin and others get terrified of the thinking of the matrix coming down upon us. But as you've asked, I think it's, as we're talking. It's really critical that every firm, it makes the effort to learn about them. Both the potential as is implied by the technology tool makers, but also from those like Jose or Heather, or my other colleagues about what we're seeing is little small implementations that are showing success. So some of the data analytics for mobility and how that's able to really begin through the digital twinning of mobile networks and, and train systems of our airline systems actually to say, ah, okay, well maybe that works there.

Chris Luebkeman:

Maybe I could work on our proposals for this project, if we could try something. You know, I think so for me, the key with the buzzword is that our firms are prototyping a little bit and they're having a person or two who they give a freedom. What say one degree of one degree of freedom to try this. So that when the, when the client, the project, the tools are all right, that we're ready and it doesn't take yet another three years of ramping up to figure out what the heck it is. And I think that's, that's my 2 cents on that.

Heather Wishart-Smith:

Yeah. Joe, I can give a couple of very specific applications if you're interested. Yeah, yeah, sure. So starting with digital twins on water treatment and industrial water plants. So we've got a tool called replica that allows us to optimize those systems to prevent overflows in the event of emergency response, do a lot of scenario and what if training? And it also allows us to optimize the design and optimist and operations and maintenance. Another example for data analytics is for NASA at their Langley site in Virginia, we have about 120,000 sensors that are all around that campus. That measure things like vibration temperature, humidity, and we use predictive analytics and machine learning to be able to anticipate when something might break, which then leads to benefits like improved safety. You don't have to send somebody out to just regularly change a fan belt or whatnot improve reliability.

Heather Wishart-Smith:

That is a huge aspect of it. A site like NASA, they really do need to keep their site going and not have these unexpected outages also financial benefits, money money that saved and energy efficiency. And that we've had - we didn't start with 120. We started with, you know, you know, I think it was a few thousand or something like that, but it's been going on for about four years. And it just goes to show that there are a lot of opportunities in the built environment to be able to harness these technologies. I think we probably, you know, as far as specific discussion about artificial intelligence, but when, you know, when you marry that with automated design, we've been able to automate the design of you know, replicate some some very re repetitive sorts of components, say of rail or other things that, that are used quite frequently. But then bringing that and taking the learning again, starting small. So I mentioned starting smaller with Langley, starting smaller with some other things, learn from that and then be able to use it to scale even larger.

Kevin McMahon:

Joe, we have a pretty interesting question following up with what the panel just talked about from the audience. And it's with the ongoing industry evolution of technology is all for the panels of describe and the new graduate backgrounds that are not necessarily all engineering, traditionally related vertical integration of team, perhaps some of those team members being around the world. What impact does the panel see relative to professional engineering licensor requirements? Also coupled with the political issue today of making sure that America stays strong in engineering and doesn't outsource all the talent, like the manufacturing issue that we're well aware of.

Joseph Bates:

Good question. Anybody want to bite that one?

Chris Luebkeman:

So I I'm perhaps not the right person to answer this one. And I put that up front because I'm no longer licensed. So I really probably don't have the right to answer that question. I think what is critical is there, look at what the responsibilities are and who carries the responsibility because to me, a professional engineer in Switzerland, you don't need to have us go through a special, another licensing exam because the education is supposed to prepare you for that. But at the end of the day, it's who carries the responsibility. And what do you want to trust? Do you want to just, you want to trust a degree or do you want to trust actually that someone has proven their capability to make the right decisions. So I think it's that trust and I hope I've given Heather enough time.

Heather Wishart-Smith:

True friend, Chris, thank you. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a, that is a great point. I am still licensed. But I think it's, yes, it is trust. I think it's important to recognize despite the fact that there are many forces out there in various States trying to diminish the value of the license and great organizations like ACEC, like NSPE had been working hard to show that value. So despite those forces of trying to diminish the value of it at the end of the day, I think we need to remember that technology is a tool. So the tools have evolved. It used to be that professional engineers just worked at the drafting table. Then we shifted to computer aided design, you know, and then we've, we've evolved. We've got, you know, all kinds of different tools, but the technology is just a tool we still need to, as Chris said, trust the people who are applying the tool and that's for the professional engineering, licensure comes in.

Chris Luebkeman:

Good job Heather, thank you.

Joseph Bates:

So in the interest of time, I'm going to go ahead and move on to the next question that we have here. Okay. We could, we could probably have a round table on each one of these questions. This next one. I'd like to direct it at Heather and, and Chris as well, actually. How is, and you all have talked a little bit about this already, so maybe dive a bit more into this, but how will the technology affect the culture and the collaboration environment of engineering firms? You know, we talked a little bit about will, and there was a question about, will it work different places around the world, but in terms of the culture, how is that going to be impacted by technology?

Heather Wishart-Smith:

Yes. Would you like to start, or should I start and give you some time to think...

Chris Luebkeman:

You're on the edge of your seat and ready? So go for it.

Heather Wishart-Smith:

Okay. so we've already talked about that. I think there's going to be - several of us have said that we think that there will be a greater focus on cross disciplinary work. Innovation, pretty much demands it. And we, we can't just complete our work in silos. We need to have these multi-disciplined teams and these multi-disciplined teams, can't just be the disciplines they need to include the business model. So the HR piece, the finance and all the rest, that should be part of the development of new solutions. I think a key way of doing this is, you know, at least in my role is by embracing innovation within the workforce that we have and that's by promoting collaboration.

Heather Wishart-Smith:

So we need to teach people across the business to be able to collaborate, to be able to network so that when that real work does happen, they have that muscle memory of the collaboration of the innovation. And I mean, you know, in our industry, it's so difficult because we're built on a billable hours culture, it's been this way, you know, for eternity. And there's also a performance unit kind of mentality to the engineering industry where you know, it's, whether it doesn't matter how your company is structured, whether you're structured in it by geography or by discipline or by market, there's still silos. And so we need to find ways to promote and, and sustain the breaking down of the silos. Many firms are, are, are structured to promote and sustain them, but we need to find ways to break them down. They're hard to break down. But I really do think that the firms that endure and those that will be successful are the ones that are successful in doing that on breaking down those silos.

Chris Luebkeman:

So I agree with fully Heather and I want to bring up two more aspects. One is cooperation, we are going to be in an increasingly cooperative and competitive environment. And I think many firms already, and many of us already understand how you can compete and still be friends. And this is one of the things I always enjoyed. When I was got to travel, go down to Australia and watch a sort of Australian rugby game or rugby, you know, and people would literally like without pads, try to beat the blank out of each other, but nobody really did anything where they couldn't go have a beer afterwards and they would respect each other from, you know, the grit and their cleverness and how they played the game. But you never played dirty. Cause if you played dirty, you know, you couldn't have that had that beer.

Chris Luebkeman:

And this is something which I would like to hope that we can also aspires - not necessarily Australian rules, rugby. It's a crazy game, all due respect, Mike, it's crazy. But this idea that just because we're competitors does not mean we can't always be good friends and I truly believe we need to work more on the second part. I think we're very good at the first part. So I think so culture is actually a manifestation of both the written and unwritten rules and how one treats each other. And it's the written and the unwritten rules. And part of your question there, Joe is about culture change. So part of the question that has to be, as we look at ourselves and our firms, what is our culture? And do we actually understand what the written and unwritten rules are of our firm? And if you haven't asked yourself that, and not just what you think as a principal, what the culture is and you say, well, our culture is openness and you walk into the office.

Chris Luebkeman:

And as soon as you walk in, everybody puts their head down and they're afraid of you, but you can say it's open, but the reality might be a very different thing. So to actually have a real conversation about the culture that we need in order to be successful in the new economy, in the digital transformation and one and one more thing, Jose, and it's all you said. So for me, the most important thing that we could say with this is, and I support Heather is it's not just a technology, but it's actually having a real conversation about our firm's culture and what we wanted to be slash needed to be.

Jose Luis Blanco:

Yes, just 10 seconds of this. I think that there's clear, there's a very clear link between performance and health, right? Health critical part of that is culture. And I think that over the past three months with COVID, I think we shift towards a working remote environment and we all will be surprised how fast we've been able to adapt to that. Right. but I think that some of the challenges of the issues will culture are going to start to appear in the coming months. And it's my belief that you can sustain. You can potentially sustain our existing, strong cultural, remotely. I don't think you can build the cultural remotely, or you can rebuild a culture remotely. So that's something that firms will need to, you know, when we're talking about what we're hearing about are they working from home, you know, half of my staff working from home and things like that. I think the implications of cultural implications of that I get to be seen, and we just need to pay attention to that.

Kevin McMahon:

With lifelong learning, that a lot of the parents have mentioned, and the ability for more experienced engineers to learn new tools and skills, maybe it's more from Mike's first answer, or are the tools keeping pace with the expectation of learning curve of designers to shorten or eliminate the learning curve to use these tools?

Mike Haley:

No, I wouldn't say they are. I think there's a it's, it's, it's a very, it's a, it's a difficult problem because I don't think it's well understood today. I mean, we, we still live in a world with traditional educational cycles, traditional university college, whatever it may be, get your, get your certification, do that. But those are the cycles we live in. So those are the models we have today. There isn't many models that, that, that, that have this sort of rapid learning world that I referred to for. I mean, some of the only models today are actually newer technology applications. Things you might get on an iPad that people are learning supervised there's there's ideas. There's these hints. I think all over the place as to what these are, I would hesitate to think of a single really, really good example that exists in the world of technology today.

Mike Haley:

I can tell you, in our research group, this is a very large part of our research objective. And it's precisely for this reason is that we don't actually know the right ways to do this. We are doing experiments in our software. We were introducing features that help people understand how they're learning the software, how they compare to others who are learning it, what are their patterns of progression through the software? And as we do this, we are gradually introducing more tools, but we're also learning at the same time. So I'm not quite sure what that looks like yet, but we don't have an option. That's the point though, we have to do this. We have to make this, the nature - tools cannot just be about taking what you do today and automating it away. Tools have to be about making you more effective and making the combination of human and machine better at the end of the day.

Chris Luebkeman:

No, I think that's great. The other thing I think so fascinating, it was Kevin with that question is the micro-learning. And I have two 20 something year olds one's graduated. One's just about to, and you know, they, they do micro-learning if they need to learn how to do something, they take and look on YouTube and they find a little burst on how to do it. And then all of a sudden they know how to do it. And I just, it's hard for me of a different generation to think that way. I'd rather call up Mike and have Mike explain it to me and say, hey, you know, and talk to him. And my son, George would just rather just look at YouTube, look it up. And he actually doesn't care what language it's in, because if it's a tool, he can just watch the strokes. And sometimes he'll look at something in different languages, because it's just interesting to see how someone's designed something slightly differently. It just kind of blows my mind, you know?

Joseph Bates:

So I, again, I just want to keep us moving here. I apologize for cutting off these great conversations. I want to this one's just for Mike, and then we're going to, we're gonna move to the last questions here, but Mike, how, how are people going to pay for this? You know, are certain firms going to have an advantage, the big firms, because they can afford to pay for the technology and the education and the taking the non billable hours to learn it, what's going to happen there and how will the small firms catch up?

Mike Haley:

Right. So, I mean, you know we're seeing a lot of new business models around how people pay for software, right? So, I mean, we've, we've moved to subscription models which make billing more consistent. And over time, we're also seeing the emergence of capacity based models. And, you know, there was a time not too long in the past where there were, there were products and tools that we make at Autodesk that very few firms, unless you are a massive firm could actually afford, you know, you would, you would only use those tools if you're a certain size that doesn't actually make sense in a capacity based world. So if you're paying for capacity, if I'm a small, if I'm a small firm and I need to run say three structural simulations a week, if I pay per structural simulation and don't have to pay an enormous amount of money for the software upfront, then it doesn't matter that I'm a small firm versus a big firms.

Mike Haley:

So I think we were seeing these more flexible models that, of course they relate to the cloud, they relate to those sorts of things. And I think, I think there's an interesting difference between large firms and small firms. I think large firms have an inertia that, that, that they have to overcome, but they also have, they have the capital, they have the assets, they have the money, they have the ability to do some of these things only. So the firms lack what Heather were saying. Firms that have been doing this for awhile, actually have a massive advantage because they are there. They are able to act on it. On the flip side, the small firms are nimble, right? They are flexible. They starting up. In fact, their secret sauce will be adopting these very kinds of technologies that we're talking about right now, data in the cloud work from anywhere, flexible learning, bring the data together. Use, use generative design, use, use digital twins, use insights, use these things. And those will be the folks that will win better. But I do believe in the sort of flexible business models that allow everybody to leverage all of the technology.

Joseph Bates:

Okay, great. So I'm going to ask the final question for each of you, and then we may have time for a couple of questions. Kevin Jose, I want to start out with you. I know you have to log off just a couple of minutes before the rest of us. So the big final question is what is, what is the firm of 2040 look like? You know, put you put on your thinking, cap, your wizardry, whatever you want to call it, your crystal ball. What is the firm of 2040 look like Jose? He might be gone. Oh. Did we already lose them? Okay, well sorry about that. I thought we were going to have him for another five minutes, but so let's just go ahead and throw that one over to Heather.

Heather Wishart-Smith:

Sure. So I think that we're going to see very few of the traditional A & E's in place. I think that line between technology and design it's, it's already been blurred. I think it will become increasingly blurred. Some examples. We all know about Sidewalk Labs and their smart city project in Toronto. And, you know, yes, I know it's, you know, that project has been terminated, but it they're going to come back in a different city with a different model, with more privacy controls and all the we've seen it with Elon Musk, the Boring Company, and Hyperloop pretty much with no past performance, they've won large scale tunneling projects. You see it with tech companies with autonomous vehicles. Just what was it two weeks ago with space spaceX just launched America's first private company to do so here in America. So that line is really becoming increasingly blurred.

Heather Wishart-Smith:

So it's really going to result in the increase in the skill set of firms. So tech companies, I think, are going to start acquiring more traditional skill sets, maybe by buying some of these more traditional A & E companies, especially as the owners age out and traditional companies are going to be acquiring the tech skills. That's maybe not as much through acquisition, but through training, by hiring different people. It's funny at Chris, I love your term of coopertition in, I have a colleague at Jacobs who refers to it as competitive-ates. These are where sometimes you compete and sometimes you collaborate together. Taking what Chris said earlier a little bit further. I always try to remember that today's competitor could be tomorrow's client because this is such a small industry. We all have competitors who have since become a clients but, you know, with these competitive-ates, cooper-ates competition, it's really about collaborating together to address these new market opportunities because alone, we're probably not going to be able to get there. So it comes back to your behavior, your home, we talked about earlier, your mindset, not being risk averse, being open to new ideas. And if you want to endure, do not get too comfortable in your silo.

Joseph Bates:

Great. It looks like we have Jose back Jose. I wanted to ask you before you have to jump off, what does the firm of 2040 look like?

Jose Luis Blanco:

Well just kinda like very, very interesting question. I mean, I wish I had a crystal ball to actually explain all that, but I think that, I think in my mind, if I just summarize what I see the firm of 2044 as like having a very different demographics in terms of like the roles that we have and have been there for 34 years I'm very doubtful that we're going to be there. Right? [inaudible] The projects that we have right now, many different type type of led professions in there and professions that don't even exist as of today. Right. I expect us probably hopefully it'd be again, probably much more remote, but also with some sort of physical presence because in the end physical presence, local presence, because in the end, I think that the work that we do is not only even the built environment is an enabler for many of the things and we need to listen locally to be able to deliver globally.

Jose Luis Blanco:

Right. So that's something that also, I think the firm needs to have. And I hopefully I hopefully like you by 2040 as is like in a few years time, which is time you know, infrastructure and the brother engineering space is being seen as a critical part of how people, you know, how will you enable how people live, work and play. So hopefully we will see engineering to be playing even a more integral part in people's lives than it even paying today. So maybe I'm being too optimistic, but those are the things that I would personally see. I see all these revolutions that are happening is also like almost like an opportunity to put the engineers back at the center of so many different things that we can do to improve our society going forward. So again, maybe I'm a little bit of like an optimistic, maybe I'm just like a little bit optimistic, but those are some of the things that I would expect to see in digging the farmer to 40, like diversity from backgrounds, diversity in terms of likely for him elements being much more at the core of how we work, play and live. And and those are some of the traits that I expect.

Joseph Bates:

Great. Thanks Jose. Mike, what about you? And then we're going to add, go to Chris.

Mike Haley:

So I, since we're a group of optimists here, so I'm, I'm I'm an optimist as well. When for me, a lot of it comes back to the competition thing that Heather and Chris have both talked about, but looking at it at a knowledge level I think there's an enormous amount of knowledge that exists across the engineering architect of the entire building industry that is mostly common, but it's not always shared or is really shared. And I think by 2040, I see there being a strata of, of knowledge be a digitally represented, hopefully that is then is available to everyone. It, again, I used the term, you know, raising the sea, raising all boats, right? All boats are naturally floating at a higher level, which allows the competition then to actually happen at a higher level. The difference between firms is no longer at this lower level that everybody is benefiting from the shared observations, perhaps it's the performance of certain buildings or performance of certain decisions or materials or processes or whatever it is. So I really do see a more collaborative world centered around knowledge sharing.

Chris Luebkeman:

So for me, well, the first thing that I do whenever I asked a question like that, Joe, is I think of, I go 20 years back. So if we go back to two year, 2000 and think, where are we as a practice, as a world, they're all freaking out because we thought our computers were going to blow up, right? And the world was a, I would argue a very, very different place 20 years ago. So I'll then go forward and think 20 years, what's the context going to be of the firm 20 years from now. And so we will have massive water stress globally. We're already seeing that in the United States, North America. So we will see mass migration. We're going to have a political stress due to migration, which we have not in our lifetimes yet even begun to experience.

Chris Luebkeman:

And so therefore we're going to be called upon to solve problems, which are not just technical, but have a social dimension in a way which is quite profound. And I'm not quite sure if we're going to be up for the, up for that yet right now, the firms aren't. But I think by then we will be, I think there by 2040, we are always going to be designing and full artificial reality. And we'll be using virtual reality in construction sites as an absolute norm. It's gonna be like, duh, can you believe that we actually did this once without it just in the same way. Now we can hardly imagine using a slide rule, which I think I was the last class at Cornell to actually use, you know, and I think, and so this is going to be a new, so let's means then if you're doing in VR/AR or that means you don't have to be co located in any way, shape or form.

Chris Luebkeman:

So all of us can be in a design meeting right now and actually really interacting with haptics so we can push and pull and really feel that I think by 2040, we will have climate legislation, which has been a long time coming, which will then have a different paradigm shift on how we, and what we designed to. So the makeup of our firms will also be very different and what's going to be needed in order to, for us to design for things which will be fit for purpose because the purpose will be not just engineering specification. And I think that's so, and then if I think about economically, we will have gone through two recessions. We're about to hit one and we will at least go through another two within 20 years. And I think we'll go through to identity crises as a profession. We're kind of in one right now, we're doing, what's our role.

Chris Luebkeman:

I think we'll go through a couple more as these new tools and these new challenges come. And so, and the last one, I'll say, no, politically there will be a new ballgame. There'll be a new empire, not quite sure which one will rise stronger, but you know, our rocket is kind of kicking over. We've seen peak Americas. And so, and then the question becomes, what will it look like in this new environment for consultants that we already have a lack of sand. We have a lack of, you know, so it's gonna be very interesting in how we design in a constrained physically constrained world. So these are gonna be new challenges, which I think is super exciting for us. And we have to be walk into this with our head up, right? Not looking backwards, but to walk with that with our head up and shoulders back saying, okay, it's, it's a new, it's a new game. It's a new quarter. Let's get the team out there and let's play ball.

Joseph Bates:

Great. Great, Chris, thanks for closing this out there. Daphne, I'm going to throw it back to you for a few final comments.

Daphne Bryant :

Thank you everyone for joining us. Thank you to our panelists for all your wonderful insights to our donors for making this session possible. We do have a short evaluation that we will send you this afternoon. So please share your experience with us and be sure to join us next week for our second session, the buildings we live and work in, that'll be on June 25th at 3:00 PM. Eastern. Thank you. Have a great afternoon and please stay safe.

Geordie Aitken and Rod Hoffman, the faculty of ACEC's Pathways to Executive Leadership program, stopped by the show to discuss the importance of giving mid-level engineering executives the tools necessary to succeed in the C-Suite.  More information about the Pathways program can be found here.

Back by popular demand, Engineering Influence welcomes the Chief Economist with Dodge Data and Analytics, Richard Branch, to discuss the economic outlook for the nation and the engineering industry.  

Transcript:

Host:

Welcome to another edition of Engineering Influence, a podcast from the American Council of Engineering Companies. Today. We're very pleased to welcome back to the program Richard Branch, Chief Economist with Dodge Data and Analytics to talk about the economy. Richard was on last month, and it was a very popular show talking about the macroeconomic situation in America, and given the fact that we're into June, and it seems like every month seems to be a different year in 2020, we wanted to have him back on. Richard, thank you again for coming back on the show.

Richard Branch :

A pleasure to be here. Thanks again. It was great to hear that people found hearing from an economist and in this day and age a positive thing. So, so that's certainly a good news.

Host:

Yeah, it's not exactly the dismal science anymore this time. More people want to know what's happening and I really want to start out the conversation because, you know, we're recording this on Friday, the 5th of June and today, the Labor Department came out with some surprising numbers. They found that the unemployment rate actually decreased a slight bit. We actually had job creation of 2.5 million jobs in May, which outperformed a recent survey by economists at Dow Jones who actually anticipated a drop in employment by 8.3 million jobs. So we have a 13.3% not wonderful unemployment rate, but it's better than we expected. Then we have other news, the airlines are starting to expand capacity. The theme parks in Florida, for example, Universal is opening. Disney's going to be opening. It seems like we're turning a corner. Is that, is that too much wishful thinking or what are you seeing right now?

Richard Branch :

Okay. I think when we look back on this crisis, May will have turned out to be the low point. And I think today's numbers are just an indication that we're now in the recovery phase. It happened a little bit earlier than we had anticipated. We had figured that job creation would start again in June. But as you mentioned, the main numbers coming in at plus 2.5 million, a huge upside surprise, and as state and local areas continue to reopen and loosen those rules on, on business activity and whatnot hiring we'll certainly keep moving forward. But not to be a wet blanket on today's number. But you know, between March and April, we lost well over 21 million jobs. So today's addition, certainly a positive step, particularly in the construction industry, the construction industry added back 464,000 jobs this morning following a million job loss in April. So you know, that that recovery though is going to be a very long and slow process and it just fraught with pitfalls. You know, the easy lifting will come first with, with those huge negative numbers in April that the big changes will come early. But once we get we continue to think that once we get into the back half of this year, that that growth will continue to move forward, but at a pretty slow pace.

Host:

Yeah. And it's interesting because we just recently launched a research Institute, which was a separate arm of ACEC, and they've been doing some business impact surveys since really the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic....tracking different indicators. And our most recent survey came back end of last week. And it showed that one fourth of our firms that were surveyed roughly 22% of respondents reported having business areas that are outperforming now, which is a significant increase from April. And they've seen some growth in the COVID-19 area of business, healthcare and the like, it seems like it's turning that corner. But as you mentioned, you know, at large recovering from this is not going to be an overnight kind of thing. It's gonna be a building process. Do you think that it's extending know a little bit further into 2021? Or do you think that we might be able to see a little bit of a, you know, recouping some of our losses before the end of the calendar year?

Richard Branch :

I think overall for the economy I think obviously the economy will contract this year. You know, we're still looking at a potentially 20 plus percent decline in GDP in the second quarter. That will be difficult to make up in the second half of the year. In terms of employment, you know, it's probably not going to be until mid to late 21 or possibly into early 20, 22, when we start seeing all the jobs that we've lost in March and April added back. In terms of construction, I think it's, it's, it's a mixed bag. I think there will be some sectors that will absolutely outperform and surprise on the upside and, and potentially getting back to by the end of the year, getting back to levels that we've seen prior to the crisis. But, you know, I continue to think that this will be, you know, one of the big questions is, is what's the shape of recovery, you know, and it's what letter of the alphabet are you going to choose to define that shape? The L the w the V a I think a V shape recovery here, even with today's job numbers is still asking a lot. I think that's, that's a big uptick,

Host:

Maybe a W....

Richard Branch :

Could be potentially a w - the one that I've heard recently that I enjoyed was the Nike swoosh.

Richard Branch :

That, you know, the slope would be fairly sharp on the upside, you know, where we are now adding those jobs back quickly, but, but then as time goes on, that curve starts to flat now, and all of this is of course pending any future fiscal stimulus. So in our forecast, we we've included no future fiscal stimulus programs, even though they're likely to come. It, it just, you know, we need to see something that has a pretty good chance of passing through the House, the Senate and, and receiving presidential approval. So should there be fiscal stimulus, you know, a phase four phase five of five, six, that could certainly alter that trajectory in that shape of recovery, but barring fiscal stimulus, further fiscal stimulus that, that recovery in the second half of the year will be slow.

Host:

And I think that what you just said kind of reflects the thinking of our membership, because one of the questions that we asked in that survey was essentially, you know, what sector do you think is going to recover first? And it was really a, it was a split decision. I mean, there there's, there's no agreement on whether the private sector, the public sector, when it, when it comes to engineering, design, construction is going to recover. You know, we had essentially... yeah, roughly, you know, it was kind of 50 50. Is there anything in, in, in your research that would indicate one sector recovering earlier than the other? Does it, is it still too early to tell? I know that, you know, Congress has something to say about this, about exactly what's going to be in that next if we do have one phase four stimulus you know, what are your thoughts on, on who's going to get there first?

Richard Branch :

I think it's, that's a very nuanced conversation because I don't think it's broad based that public will do better than private or private will do better than public over the next several months. I do think that certain areas of private construction have the ability to bounce back quicker than others. You know, single fam is certainly outperforming expectations warehouse construction especially those big eCommerce fulfillment sites, I think have a potential significant upside data centers, but other sides of public or private construction, or are going to suffer. Retail. Hotels. And then even the office sector, the speculative side of the office sector, it seems the trend now that we're a month or two into this crisis the trend towards working from home seems to be continuing in terms of, you know, I just within the past couple weeks, Facebook and Twitter have essentially announced plans that they're going to incentivize workers to stay at home..

Host:

And Facebook is going to index salary to the areas where the people live. Exactly. Which is even more interesting because, you know, then that way that'll keep some people in those higher - those more expensive areas. Yeah. I guess this is the kind of thing that's going to be fueling academic papers for a while.

Richard Branch :

Yes.

Host:

I, I doubt that there was a handle and, and, and, and on exactly how much of an impact and how lasting an impact the shift to remote work and just the way that people are going to be interacting with the built environment. It's really hard to write policy now for something that we just don't know what the impacts are going to be. And I would imagine from the, financial analytical side, and then also from just the economic side, it's hard to get a handle on exactly what that impact's going to be long term.

Richard Branch :

Absolutely. You know, that the office market has gone through such undulations over time. You know, from, from everybody back in the old days, you know, everybody having their own office too, be more open space environments and, and the beginning of the gig economy and people working from home more and telecommuting and whatnot to now this, I think, well, that is a potential downside. I do think there's, there's some upside there as well in terms of design elements and improving office design and air circulation and air handling and whatnot. So you know, I think even in that downturn, or even in that systemic shift in an office market, I still think there is incredible potential there for construction.

Host:

For the industry right now, you know, Congress is in the midst of handling a number of issues, but one of the things that continues to move at least in the Senate and now in the house, cause this week Chairman DeFazio released his concept - his surface transportation bill and any set a date, he said, July is when he wants to have a floor vote, which would be very wishful. You know, fast-tracked kind of wishful thinking because you're just given schedule, but how important would getting a surface bill, a longterm surface bill be to the industry you know, what kind of impact do you think that would, would have either speculative just kind of injecting some confidence back into the economy and then just the real dollars and cents project work.

Richard Branch :

It's critical. It provides not only the clarity to state and local areas in terms of future funding, but of course there's just a huge positive force in terms of injecting dollars into the system. I was just this morning reading a report that ARTBA but put out the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, and their research found that in fiscal year 2018, they estimate that States were able to take 30 point $8 billion in federal highway funding and translate that into $66 billion in actual highway improvements.

Richard Branch :

So taking some federal money, lumping it with the States. And so there's a huge multiplier there. So that might be limited in the cycle, just with the pressure that state and local areas are feeling in terms of revenues and whatnot in this crisis. But it just goes to show that that getting that low hanging fruit of the reauthorization of the FAST Act through as quickly as possible is a necessity yeah. In terms of the construction industry.

Host:

Yeah. And as we mentioned yet, I think last time we kind of talked about the whole concept of shovel ready and, and how that, you know, the approach - It appears the Congress is taking now what you know is more thoughtful and longterm than looking at the immediate payoff of saying, okay, well, we're going to put X amount of money of stimulus and we're going to create, you know, these immediate jobs. The longterm infrastructure investment would create that sustained job growth and kind of extend that multiplier. And, you know, I guess for any of the policy people out there who listen to our podcast, we try to get them to listen by sending it to them as much as possible, what message would you give to them as they put together kind of a proposal for a longterm infrastructure bill?

Richard Branch :

Think big. This is not a time in our opinion to quibble over dollars and cents even with today's job numbers, even with the positive trend in initial claims you know, this is, this is a time to, to dig in with the construction industry and get projects moving. And you know, there, there will be issues of course, over the longer terms in terms of debt and whatnot with the U S economy, but people are out of work. The construction industry is, is a great litmus to get that economy moving again, especially as state and local areas that are suffering and, and so think big and get it done sooner rather than later.

Host:

Absolutely. Well, is there anything else going on from your world, from your perspective that, that are listeners should know about now? Or is it, is it just kind of pay attention to the news and keep abreast on what's what's going on?

Richard Branch :

Sure. Well, I think when we spoke last and I can't recall if we had released our April construction starts data yeah. At that point. But our April data for construction activity was as suspected. It was pretty weak in total construction starts, fell close to 25% from March to April, it does look like as we look at the May data and we're still cycling through that, the quality control aspect of it. But it does look like the May data we'll show a slight increase in nonresidential building construction activity from April to May. So again, another sign that the potential that the bottom of this cycle was probably in May, and just this morning, we released our leading indicator of construction, the Dodge Momentum Index, which was essentially flat compared to April. So these are projects when they first enter the very earliest stages of planning for nonresidential building. It was essentially flat in mid April. So I'll take that as a good sign. You know, back in the recession, the Great Recession, I guess we have to call it just to differentiate it. Back in the Great Recession, the DMI fell sharply and over a long period of time. Yeah. So far over the last couple of months, the DMI is only down by about 10 or 12%.

Richard Branch :

So it shows us that there are still a lot of projects early in the pipeline for a nonresidential building. So again, a positive note that as the economy starts to reopen and as rules on construction are relaxed that there are a lot of projects in the pipeline ready to move forward.

Host:

Yeah. And that's good. And that, again, for any of our members listening for anyone listening, you can access those indices and the reports at construction.com and the really good detailed information to have if you're a business leader or you're someone interested in the sector the data that you have up on that site and that Dodge produces is extremely useful. So I encourage people to go and check that out.

Host:

Well, I do appreciate you coming back on the show, Richard, because it's always good to do a, do a check in, especially when you see all these, you know, these numbers flying around and you get an unexpected jobs figures in the midst of a pandemic and everything else going on to kind of get an update and see where things are. And I do hope to have you on again, in a couple of in a couple of weeks to see if anything's changed.

Richard Branch :

You're right. This, this was after so many months of, of talking to our clients and the press and, and about bad news. It's good to finally see a little bit of a light at the end of the tunnel. So always happy to be here and a pleasure talking to you. And I hope you stay safe and healthy.

Host:

You as well, stay safe, stay healthy. And again, thank you. That's Richard Branch, he's the Chief Economist for Dodge Data and Analytics - www.construction.com is where to find him. And this has been Engineering Influence from ACEC.

John Carrato and Michael Carragher, the Chair and Vice Chair of the ACEC Research Institute joined Engineering Influence to talk about the organization's mission, vision and future. 

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Steve Hall, Matt Reiffer and Katharine Mottley from ACEC's Advocacy team joined Engineering Influence for our very first video podcast to give a government relations update on their Rescue, Recover, Rebuild grassroots advocacy campaign and the current status of the PPP program.

Transcript:

Host:

Welcome to another edition of Engineering Influence, a podcast by American Council of Engineering Companies. Today we are bringing a new kind of twist to our podcast. We're in the world of Zoom and COVID-19. We're going to try to do something visual this time and have a government affairs update with our own Steve Hall who has been practically on Zoom since the day started to um bring us up to date on what's going on with the Paycheck Protection Program. I want to give you guys a little bit of an idea of where things stand here as far as the association goes and with our industry on the PPP program. In our latest member survey on May 8th, we found that 88% of respondents reported applying for the program. And 94% of those said that they'd been approved for the PPP program and another 4% are awaiting approval.

Host:

So it was very popular with the industry and 94% let's see here. And just under two thirds, 64% of those firms plan to use all of the loan funding while 22% plan to use some of it and return to rest only 2% right now or are considering returning all of the funds. So it's a program is being accessed by our industry, many other industries. It is a monumental effort by the SBA. This is not an agency that's actually designed to do something like this to take this amount of volume of applications and this kind of money and try to get it out to the economy. It's been going well but there've been issues with guidance. Treasury and SBA have been slow to get some certainty out there with certain aspects of their FAQ. And things have changed over the past couple of days. And Steve, if you want to kind of bring us up to date on, on where the program stands and, and what Treasury and SBA have done and what really, you know, it was going on with the program right now.

Steve Hall:

Yeah, thanks Jeff. Now we're seeing some encouraging developments really over the past week and a lot of anxiety up until now, and it's lingering a bit, but over two issues really. The issue of, of certifying good faith in terms of economic uncertainty, in other words, is, is the firm worthy to, to receive this loan. And I think what we saw released last week was encouraging basically loan holders at $2 million and below are essentially defacto certified by virtue of the size of the loan. And then the guidance goes on to say that for borrowers above that $2 million SBA is going to work with them through a process to help them to to figure out if they can meet that certification threshold, but a much more encouraging tone, a much more deferential tone than perhaps we had seen in, in previous weeks.

Steve Hall:

Where there was a great deal of concern generated about you know, what SBA and the federal government take a very punitive approach to borrowers really outside of what we thought was within the intent of Congress. I think Congress really wanted to be very deferential to to borrowers and try to structure the program as such. So that was a good step on that question of certification and and I expect that we hope we'll be seeing some additional information come out on that. The next issue was loan forgiveness. You know, the core of the program and we did see some information come out earlier this week. You know, the, the application for forgiveness and the kind of data and criteria that SBA is looking for, which gives us a sense of what it was, what it's going to take to get some, most, all of your loan forgiven and some guidance with that.

Steve Hall:

I think we are expecting to see additional guidance, more comprehensive guidance forthcoming. But again, this has been helpful to our firms, to our CPAs, to, to get at least an initial sense of what the agency is looking for to satisfy that question. So, you know, good news over the last week, not a complete catalog of information that we need and where you're hoping to see that relatively soon. And as if history is any judge, you know, it may be that con or SBA and treasury continue to put out guidance in small traunches and then refine that guidance responding to questions from organizations like ACEC. And then at some point we may actually have to go back to Congress if there are structural problems or challenges that are really beyond SBAs per view to to fix where we have to amend the law. We'll do that. But we'll work hand in glove with our members before we do that and work with our CPAs. We've got a lot of very smart people working with us to you know, go through this information and to come up with recommendations that we need to deliver both to the agency and to Congress.

Host:

Because it is a popular program. And I think that the universal call or answer from, from the private sector is that they want it to be a success. So that there's a lot of, you know, it's not a adversarial relationship with, with, but the SBA and Treasury, it's more just informing them of what we need, what we need to actually make this program work as it's intended. So it's good to see that that guidance come out. And again, you know, as we get this information, of course we're putting it out anywhere we can. So we have our Coronavirus Resource page of course, which is on acec.org. It's right on the homepage when you see that. And, and we're making sure to put all this information into our normal communications to members. There's going to be a weekly message coming out from our CEO, Linda Darr. It's going to be focusing on a lot of what Steve just mentioned here and everything's been linked and it's all available for you.

Steve Hall:

And Jeff, just to add to that you know, the education side of ACEC is teed up and ready. We've got a panel of CPAs that will take part in a free webinar. Once that additional guidance comes out, we expect that we'll be well attended and we will redo it as often as we need to and as often as new guidance comes out but you know, but the organization really geared itself around getting that information in the hands of our members as soon as possible so they can make good business decisions. And and we're certainly going to continue with that.

Steve Hall:

And I know that you've been, like I said earlier, you know, you've been busy all day on Zoom meeting after Zoom meeting. We are right in the midst of a larger advocacy push under the Rescue, Rebuild and Recover kind of theme and it's been a virtual grassroots effort. Letters, emails, meetings, Zoom meetings with members of Congress. How many meetings do you think you've been on right now with, with members of the House and Senate with ACEC members across the country?

Steve Hall:

Gosh, I think we're North of total North of 70 meetings so far. And and these are happening. I've been on a few today and I know my colleagues Matt Reiffer, Katharine Mottley have been participating in these as well. And really the message has been coming back has been very encouraging, you know, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. They get it. I mean, they want, they very much want to support a recovery agenda built around infrastructure and you know, there's lingering questions as there always is about how to pay for it. But a great deal of interest in doing this. I think you know, as you've heard me say before, I think Congress is still in emergency response mode and still thinking near term needs. I think what, what may be emerging as the next package of assistance may actually be built around assisting state and local government agencies, DOD, transit agencies things of that nature.

Steve Hall:

Obviously that's something we're very supportive of, you know, anything that will prevent, you know, current projects from being interrupted or shutting down. We want to be supportive of and there does seem to be an inkling of bipartisan support emerging from this approach. So that may be the catalyst for the next package. You know, as, as Katharine indicated, there's sort of hopeful expectation. We might see something in June on that package and and then hopefully, you know, Congress then switches gears and thanks a bit longer term, you know, in a multiyear recovery agenda, you know, built around what Congress has to do this year. They've got to do a surface transportation bill to replace the fast fact by September 30, and they've got to do a big water package. And the Senate stepping out, they, they have reported all of those bills out of committee unanimously. Which is great to see. And and that gives you know, the congressional leaders in the Senate the option to package all of them together into one big package or to move them separately if they wish, but actually to get something done this year, but they got us, they got to move quickly because the clock is ticking.

Host:

Yeah, it's not in their favor. And you mentioned, you mentioned Matt and Katharine and I think they have joined us, so I'm going to switch over to a view and bring them in. And thank you both for joining in. So we have really the the, the feet on the, the, the boots on the ground here for the PPP and surface transportation effort. So Matt and Katherine, thanks for joining the interview here. Steve was going over, a lot of the PPP work has been done. A lot of the guidance coming out and of course the webinars and the meetings with members of Congress, part of our advocacy program. I mean, I know you've been on some of the meetings as well. How do you think they've gone, this is new, it's virtual instead of going actually into somebody's office and talking to somebody, you have a screen like this where you know, you have maybe 10 people or less and a member of Congress. How, how has it compared to what, you know, the traditional shoe leather lobbying that you guys do?

Katharine Mottely:

You know, Jeff, I think that's a really interesting question. I mean it is a different kind of connection. On the one hand you don't get that face to face. You, you can't really read the body language and get and get sort of that better sense of the story behind what they're telling you. On the other hand, I think it has sort of opened up these meetings to a larger swath of our members. The meetings that I've been on have had, you know, 25 members from the state with their senators and for some of them some of those folks may not have been able travel to DC on a normal basis anyway. So, you know, I think that sort of greater access for both, for our members and for the legislators can be a good thing.

Matt Reiffer:

I would agree with that. In the, in the few that I've been on what's nice is you get the Congressmen or the Senator's undivided attention for a block of time. When you're meeting in DC, almost inevitably you get interrupted by votes or committee meetings or markups or important briefings or something. But particularly for the house members who have largely been back in their districts you know, they're not, they're not getting pulled away into those sorts of things. So you get, you know, 20 to 30 minutes of their undivided attention, which is really tremendous. And there, you know, they are so eager to hear about what's going on with their constituents, where their local businesses. So it was valuable for them to hear not just here's our advocacy priorities, but you know, here's what we're working on. Here's what we're experiencing, here's what we're concerned about, you know here are plans for, you know, reopening our offices or keeping our employees safe. Here's the, you know, here's what we're doing, worksite protocols and safety, you know, just a range of things that they care about. And then, yeah, how are the aid packages that we've already approved working for you? Are they helpful? What do we need to change? Cause they want to know. So this has been really valuable input for them.

Steve Hall:

You know, Jeff, Matt made a really good point there with respect to, you know, how certainly our members reviewed on these calls. You know, because there are great conversations with lawmakers and the lawmakers and seeing each one of those faces on the screen and they're often zoom calls like this. Each one of those faces represents a firm that employs many people. So that, that, that ACC member talking is not really talking just for himself or herself. But for all of the folks that work in the firm and and that reality is not lost on lawmakers and the staff that participates on these calls these, these, these contacts resonate and really do have meaning.

Host:

And it's just not, the meetings are fantastic. So I think it provides a, it's a new way of reaching out and talking to your member of Congress in person, virtually in person. Like I said, Katharine, if you have 25 people on a call, it's hard, you're hard pressed to find, you know, 25 people don't get them into an office. Even, even a, even a ranking where a senior Member, you know, their offices aren't big enough to fit 25 people in normally. So being able to get people on a screen, you know, you get more, more bang for your buck there. But then we're also doing the traditional, you know, letter writing. We're doing, you know, emails to Members of Congress and of course, social media activity. Matt, I mean we, we've, we've topped a significant number of compared to, I think the last major push was on tax reform and I think we've kind of eclipsed the number of, of emails and messages sent. What's the last you have the last tally available? I know, I don't, don't want to spring it on you, but I know that

Matt Reiffer:

I don't, but I can click over and check and get them.

Host:

Yeah, no, that would be great 'cause I know that the number is significant.

Matt Reiffer:

Get you real time information. Hang on just a sec.

Host:

Yeah. that would be awesome because again, you know, on the, on the acc.org website you know, you'll see it right there. When you land on the page, you'll see advocacy and that takes you to the R3 - Rescue, Recover, Rebuild advocacy site where you can click to tweet. It has issue sheets. It has social media resources for, for grassroots activism. And it's really a one stop shop for everything that you need to take part in this.

Steve Hall:

You know, Jeff during tax reform. And Katharine knows this. I mean, we generated something on the order of 6,000 contacts with lawmakers and which was far and away bigger than we've ever done. And I think when, when Matt last checked this, we were rapidly closing in on that amount. So this campaign is going to go into the summer and I have no doubt that we're going to Go well beyond what we did previously.

Katharine Mottely:

And you know, Steve, just to add to that, I've heard comments from a couple of our members who remember that advocacy effort during tax reform and part of what they've communicated back is that we didn't realize that we could have such an effect. We didn't realize that our engagement through ACC and contacting our members of Congress could result in such a good outcome. And so a lot of them would have remembered that and taken it forward to this time. And they see that what they do and say and the emails they send can make a difference.

Matt Reiffer:

I just checked - we've got 2,060 member firm advocates who have taken action and delivered just about 6,400 messages to the Hill.

Steve Hall:

That may be a new record right there.

Matt Reiffer:

Tremendous outcome.

Host:

And again, yeah, this is, this is, this is in its early stages. It's going to evolve as the situation evolves. You know, we're calling for of course a focus on an infrastructure based recovery agenda. Of course that's going to be focused again and Steve, like you mentioned, FAST Act reauthorization and WRDA - two pieces of legislation that are must do's must pass bills and they're already teed up. Each chamber is working on its own respect of tracks and as you noted in the Senate, they've been marked out unanimously. There's no real bipartisan schism when it comes to WRDA and surface - they are a lot closer than people think. So the, the continued push by our grassroots to get this through is going to be significant.

Steve Hall:

It's going to be critical. Jeff, not to interrupt cause we've, we're, we're hoping to see how spills emerge in the month of June. And so you know, it'd be great if we could double those numbers in the month of June and and give some additional push behind house lawmakers to, to at least get this out of committee in the month of June and get them ready for floor consideration.

Host:

Absolutely. Well we covered PPP, we covered kind of the advocacy campaign and the, and the work you guys are doing on, on, on the individual member meetings, but then also the webinars and everything else that's going on. I mean it's, it seems like every day there's, there's, there's another webinar or three webinars that we're running to, to make sure we're covered. Anything else to think of as we enter kind of an odd Memorial day weekend?

Steve Hall:

Ah, you know, just, just the, the issues we've talked about and then side issues, you know, we're working to make sure that issues relative to from overhead are addressed and protected. You know, there is a, you know, regulatory action on the part of the department of defense that would require firms that receive forgiven loans to provide their federal clients with a credit to offset those loans. We don't think that really was the intent of Congress. We've pushed back and we actually have developed a letter that a number of organizations are signing on to, to help us push back. So that's an ongoing priority and something that Matt has been working with the rest of the team on. And as well as similar efforts in issues and potential concerns on the transportation side with respect to state DOTs and the Federal Highway Administration. You know, in addition to the big issues in Congress, there's a lot of granular issues that we're working on with respect to those issues and you know, tax issues and the tax deductability questions that are outstanding relative to firms that receive PPP loans and something that Katharine has been working on.

Matt Reiffer:

Yeah, I was going to say Katharine and I were a little late coming onto this call because we were just coming off a small firm roundtable with about 40, 45 participants, a really great forum for information sharing and helpful for us to listen to and hear what firms are experiencing. And yeah, there are a lot of interest in both of those issues. A lot of those firms took PPP loans, are interested in forgiveness, interested in the tax component of that as well as the potential impact on their overhead rates in terms of loan forgiveness and how that may be treated for federal state contractors. So yeah, very timely and yeah, very interesting.

Host:

Yeah, it's nonstop with government affairs right now. So I know it's we're coming on to about half an hour. I know you guys have a busy packed schedule, so I really appreciate you all taking the time to to appear on a kind of an oddly I guess just figure we live on Zoom now. Might as well tried to do a video interview instead of just the the, the good old audio podcast that we do. So thank you for being on. And again, this is Engineering Influence brought to you by the American Council of Engineering Companies. Katharine, Matt, Steve have a great Memorial Day weekend. Stay safe, stay healthy and and stay engaged with us 'cause we are off to the races. Just go to acec.org click on advocacy. It's right there on the homepage. It'll take you right there to the R3 advocacy page, all the resources that you need to take advantage of the grassroots campaign we're running. It's all there for you and just take advantage of it. So thank you all for being on.

Engineering Influence welcomes Pat Feyen, the President of the ACEC Life Health Trust, to discuss the new loyalty credit that will be sent to participating firms in August.  

Transcript:

Host:

Welcome to another edition of the Engineering Influence podcast by the American Council of Engineering Companies. Today we're very pleased to be joined by Pat Feyen. He is the President of the ACEC Life Health Trust and we wanted to bring him on to talk about a couple of things, especially now in our current COVID-19 environment. And also we haven't really had the Trust on since our last in-person meeting in Chicago. This is a great opportunity to kind of reintroduce the Trust for those who weren't at the conference or, or didn't hear that episode. So Pat, welcome to the show first and tell us a little bit about the Life Health Trust.

Pat Feyen:

Well, thank you Jeff and thank you for having me. I want to start with recognizing that on May 1st the Life Health Trust celebrated 55 years of supporting ACEC member firms and honored, privileged to continue that role. We have a clearly stated mission to provide healthcare benefits, solutions and services to support the business objectives of ACEC member firms and the health and wellbeing of the firm's employees and their families. We are really excited about the opportunity to recognize the loyalty that's been demonstrated over the years from our member firms and customers. And I guess the combination of the fact that we've got a singular purpose and that's to bring value to ACEC member firms. Mission statement. I shared the little do that to support their business objectives. And then finally, in light of the coven, 19 challenges to our industry and the country. The life health trust board of trustees have approved a loyalty credit totaling $11 million that we will give back in the form of a reduction of August premium invoice.

Host:

That's a big number, 11 million. And that's, that's big news. Especially for firms today who are undergoing a cash crunch and are doing their best to minimize expenses and to recoup as many costs as possible to keep their businesses afloat. That, that's really good news. What kind of an impact is that going to have on firms, especially the firms that really make up the majority of, of the trust membership?

Pat Feyen:

Yeah, that's a great question. The average credit will be right around $8,000, but and there is a range, fairly wide range depending - based on how long the firm has been with the Life Health Trust. So by way of example, a firm with 25 employees would receive up to a $10,000 credit. A firm with 75 employees, you know, up to $35,000 credit. And then our larger firms around 150 employees could receive a credit of as much as $70,000.

Host:

Yeah. So not insignificant by any means. This credit. So I mean, that's significant. As of August 1st, 2020, all active firms will receive the loyalty credit. Of course, now we're coming into the later part of May do you have a timeline that kind of you know, the firms can take advantage of this and plan for when this credit's going to come into effect?

Pat Feyen:

Yes, we do. It's a little fluid, but the week of the 18th of May, we will announce the loyalty credit. On or about June 1st, we will provide the firms and their brokers and consultants the exact amount of their credit that will show up in the August invoice.

Host:

And I also understand that there's going to be potentially some webinars and some information in a website that'll be tied to that for active life health trust members to be able to get the information they need on that and to access information online.

Pat Feyen:

Host:

Absolutely. And we'll do our part to get the information out there. Really that's great news. That this is happening. I think that it shows, again, the benefit of the trust and why it's so popular with our members. And of course you know, it's, it's always one of those, you know, things that's a secret weapon within ACEC. Are our three trusts and the Life Health Trust is definitely one of the most popular that, that I hear about from our membership. And it really just is, is extraordinary that you're able to do this credit is, have you, have you ever done it? Oh no. I was just going to ask if you had, have you ever done anything like this to your knowledge in the trust's history?We've reduced premiums in August of 2007 after converting all of our membership from a previous carrier to United Healthcare. We enjoyed some significant savings because of moving to United Healthcare and passed that along to our member firms. But that would have been I think the only time in other time in history where something like this has happened and I think this is a partnership. It's important. The loyalty to the Life Health Trust from our member firms really creates the opportunity to invest in the health and wellbeing of the firm's employees and families. As you might imagine, the longer members remain on the trust and trust insurance plan, the greater the opportunity, our value added services can have an impact on health and thus healthcare costs, which of course, we pass back those savings over time to our member firms. So that was the thought and the basis for a a loyalty credit. And we've got many, many firms that have been with us a long time and they're the ones that will be at the higher end of the range of credit.

Host:

Yeah. And you do have firms that have been with you for a very long time. I mean, what's the average term that you know, a smaller mid range engineering firm has been with the trust.

Pat Feyen:

Oh, we lost track of when many of the smaller, most loyal firms started when we converted to United Healthcare. And that was 13 years ago. So our records go back 13 and, but those firms have been with us 30 and 40 years.

Host:

Yeah. So there, there are firms that, that match that a 55 year anniversary that you're...

Pat Feyen:

yeah, exactly.

Host:

So let's take a look, a broader view of this because you know, healthcare costs, of course, you know, we are in a medical healthcare pandemic right now. What are the other national, the large national healthcare insurers doing what are, what are some examples of, of what you've been seeing in the marketplace in response to a COVID-19?

Pat Feyen:

Well United Healthcare announced earlier this week that they are providing one point $5 billion in support to all of their customers nationwide. It takes on many forms like waving of copays not increasing premiums. The component of their plan that's most similar to ours is a 5 to 20% reduction in employer premiums to be reflected in the, their July invoice. But they've got a lot of programs and services and resources that they're extending and waiving costs. You know, that they have incurred fewer costs as of late because of the deferral of services knowing that there's a significant reduction in elective procedures. We have not seen that yet. If in fact that's the case and when we get another couple of months down the road, you know, then we'll consider you know, an additional return or reduction of premium to our member firms. Again, we're here to provide value to the member firm, not to make a lot of money. And if we're overcharging, then sure, the trustees will once again honor our mission statement and support our firm's business objects.

Host:

Yeah, absolutely. Because again, the loyalty credit that you announced today is not tied to the lower costs is just kind of based on the, on like you said, the the commitment to serving the members, especially in this very troubled time. So that's, that's really good to know and I know that you will be taking part. I know the Life Health Trust will be taking part in sponsoring some upcoming education on the ACEC education page. We have of course, part of our larger Rescue, Recover, Rebuild effort which is ongoing right now. We have been we've gotten the great and and, and very helpful support of the Life Health Trust to a sponsor, some webinars, some informational webinars, which will be free to members. And that has now up on our website at www.acec.org.

Host:

You'll find a link to our webinar series with the R3 initiative. And of course that first webinar coming up is going to be on May 21st. It's Controlling Healthcare Costs Through Work Site Wellness with Lindsey Simone. And that's going to be at three 3:30PM to 4:30PM on May 21st. And the information to register for that webinar's going to be up on our website. Just go on acec.org. You'll see it right at the top of the page, Pat. Is there anything else going on with the life health trust that you want to update our members on? At this point, the loyalty credit is of course the biggest news item to report. But anything else new happening that you'd like to to share?

Pat Feyen:

Yeah, that would be one thing. And that's the cause we know telemedicine utilization has, well, it's more than doubled during the pandemic. We have telemedicine services and of course provide access to physicians for general medicine needs you know, from the chest up. But we've added recently telemedicine services for behavioral health. Again, perfect timing, given the anxious times that, that we're, we're living in an addition dermatology and back here. So when I continue to encourage the utilization of that during, during this time when we're isolated,

Host:

Pat Feyen:

Yes sir.

Host:

It is it is some really good news coming out of the life health trust and really appreciate Patty taking time out of your day to update on this. And again really just, just keep tuned to Life Health Trust www.aceclifehealthtrust.com for more information and follow out on, for their you know, follow them for updates and announcements for the loyalty credit. And hopefully we will have you on after the loyalty to credit takes effect, you can kind of give a status report on how it's going a couple months down the line. We'd love to have you back on the show.

Pat Feyen:

I would welcome that opportunity. Thank you, Jeff.

Host:

Well, thank you and Pat, stay safe. Stay healthy and and look forward to speaking to you again. Thank you for thank you for coming on.

Pat Feyen:

Okay. Thank you Jeff.

Richard Branch, the Chief Economist for Dodge Data & Analytics stopped by the program to talk about the current state of the U.S. economy during the COVID-19 pandemic and what lies ahead for the A/E/C sector.

ACEC Vice Chair and President of HED Design, Michael Cooper, stopped by the program to discuss how engineering firm executives can lead their firms through the COVID-19 crisis.  

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Dave Gockel, CEO of Langan, stopped by the show to discuss his firm's work to prepare New York harbor for the arrival of the USNS Comfort, and his firm's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.  Read more about Langan's work in New York City here.  

Engineering Influence welcomed Steve Hall and Katharine Motley back on the program to get an update on COVID-19 response legislation and new guidance from the SBA and the Treasury.

References:

• Treasury and the Federal Reserve announced a new lending program for small and mid-sized businesses, with additional details here.

The Treasury Department released Q&A guidance yesterday on the Paycheck Protection Act, and made further updates which were just released this evening:Paycheck Protection Loans: Frequently Asked Questions.