009 – BIM Beyond the Model: How Data, Time & Cost Come Together on Mega-Projects with Omar Habib

Host: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Major Project podcast, your inside. Look at the high stakes world of billion dollar projects.

Orion Matthews: Welcome to the Major Project podcast. I’m your host, Orion Matthews. In this pod, we’re learning from people that work on projects over a billion dollars, trying to tease out the lessons and learnings from these big endeavors. And today we’re here to talk about BIM with Omar Habib. And my guest today, I’m really excited about.

We we’ve speak together at some conferences. He’s a prolific writer, author, teacher, lecturer, he’s co-founder and CTO at the WE Group, which delivers BIM Solutions Digital project controls in the global industry. His team is consistently providing innovative, high quality solutions, which you can actually see if you follow Omar on LinkedIn.

Primarily working in Ireland, Europe, the Middle East, north Africa. Also, Omar is a [00:01:00] lecturer for three years at the Global BIM Management Master’s Program at Ziot Institute of Technology. He is specialist in integrating cost data with BIM systems that enable real-time budget control, transparency. He’s an expert at tools such as Power bi, and he improves financial planning, reduces project overruns.

He’s basically the guy that you wanna talk to when it comes to BIM and major projects. Omar, you are an industry leader in digital transformation. You’ve shared a lot of your stories. I’ve had the pleasure of seeing your speeches. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Welcome. 

Omar Habib: Thanks, Emily Orian for the nice introduction.

I hope that, uh, it’ll be a nice, fun and nice conversation together today, together. 

Orion Matthews: Well, before we get started talking about bim, maybe you can tell us a little bit about your history and how you got started in the space. 

Omar Habib: It’s really, it’s really nice story. I think that, uh, I’ll share with you today that, uh, I started actually [00:02:00] from second year of when I was in the university, I was in, um, in, in just, just in the second class of civil engineering in my university, Canadian International College in Egypt.

And when I was there, we have a really I think it’s just a unique kind of, uh, professor that he’s, he want to connect students to, to work early. And he have that idea that he was working in an international company, uh, at the time called the Triple C. And he was he have some kind, some, some program called, um, talent program.

And this talent program means that he want some talent to build from universities. And to join some program. And then after a couple of years, they could be hired by that company. Uh, by luck I entered that program, so in 2013 and, uh, I got four years kind of actual training. I traveled with them, uh, everywhere in the Middle East, I think at the time, like Saudi Emirates, gutter quake Tunisia.

I’ve traveled Morocco. Oh man I, [00:03:00] I traveled everywhere with them and I got a lot of experience before I, I became a graduate and af after this four years. The program was, went very successful. And the only hiring two people outta that, I, I was one of them and it’s, I think it was out 500 kind of student have been selected at the time.

So I start really ready to work in terms of skill sets, in terms of how, uh, I know uh, how to deliver projects. And it was really strange because it was really, uh, really young and responsible about making projects. What I mean is one, the first project I was trained on was 3 billion. The second project was 12 billion.

And this kind of project in Saudi is really normal in terms of the numbers. And it was huge experience that I started through going through planning. Go through cost go. Procurement contract. I understood the project the project, uh, lifecycle really early. Uh, I have connected the dots, and in the middle the have requested some certificate to be obtained, like Revit, [00:04:00] like, uh, to be certified in.

And for the, I, I have discovered a lot of things in the middle. So once I, I just became a graduate and I start fully employing with them, I start feeling that, uh, I’m, I’m up to scale. Like I know what I’m doing and I start, uh, investigate my career at that time, in early in, in every early career.

You don’t know what you’re gonna do, but because of the, that nice journey I have before, when I get graduate, I know exactly what I’m doing and I start selecting my career early to be specialized in let’s say more things related to information management more than engineering work. So it’s just got that kind of good luck that you know early what you want to do and how your career can progress in this path.

Orion Matthews: You’re one of those rare unicorns in the, our industry that understands all of the pieces that go into a major project, cost schedule, risk procurement, but then you also are a tech [00:05:00] whiz. Were you always sort of technically inclined, or did you pick up that skill a as you went and, and started getting involved in these projects?

How, when did you sort of make the. The connection to those two really rare skills. 

Omar Habib: Actually what happened is when you are engaged in really giga projects or mega projects, as we say, uh, you, you, you know that the traditional way doesn’t work anymore. You try and you try again, and you try again. So it end up with I need to, to meet some stuff.

I need to know how I could maximize my productivity somehow. So. Once you start doing this, you’ll start seeing that, okay, there’s some other tools that if I master them I will find a way that it’ll be more kind of productive for my clients. For example, in bim, if you are very good in, in Dynamo, you’re gonna, you’re gonna automate a lot of stuff.

But what if you could create some low-code applications that could help you to, uh, increase or post your productivity? So you I start my way with knowing some stuff about bars. Shell then I know some, some, uh, bar automate. I find what is [00:06:00] really nice, it’s really cool that you could do more than 1, 3, 4 orders in row that you before AI agent.

I feel at that time, back to 10 years ago, uh, you find out that your technical ability is really good. You might, you know, some Excel tricks that you could maximize that and you could get, go through it, but still you need some. Kind of another, another way that to just boost your ability or your productivity.

So you figure out that there is an existing tool in the market by that time, and you start using it and by start using it you find the flows that, okay, if some files, if some kind of files stored here and some action triggers happen, it start, send an images version it start. Uh, you know, have the workload in from your shoulder that, uh, you don’t have to follow up at this time.

What for, for the static, static kind of workflows or for the things that you don’t need to review much. It’s just you need, when that happen, do this. [00:07:00] And one, once you, you schedule, sorry, you to meet one or 2, 3, 4 scenes, you start reading, dealing with the tech. So I know this look kind of application, I need to advance this.

So by time it just, uh, was, was really interesting that it in the beginning was a little, I feel a little bit lucky that I start like career in mega projects, which is, which is allows you to find that the more you know about tech, the more you, more you discover about tech, it can help you more to be in control and to be in charge of how you’re gonna post your productivity and help your team to be performing better.

Orion Matthews: So, I think that’s really inspirational for a lot of our listeners that aren’t sort of techie programmers from the age of 10 that you were able to kind of pick up these skills and just not have any fear of the data side. And now you’re, you have thou, uh, tens of thousands of people that are following you, uh, looking at the dashboards you created.

It’s a great story. So, well, let’s, let’s turn [00:08:00] our, but actually 

Omar Habib: I tell you something here that, uh, I, I was really kind of, uh, that because the way I have started my career, I was kind of this person that whenever he knows something, he tried to teach his colleagues. So what I mean is so when I, I I just start really, really young in, in the market, in, in, in my career, and it was before even my graduation.

So, how I, everything developed for me whenever I knew something in, in bar PI just sit and teach my colleagues and by time start, ask you question you can’t answer. So you go to search for it and you come back to them, to them again. Most, I think in one, when my early age, whenever, uh, I tried, uh, to learn something new, I’m very keen to share with my friends.

Then I start doing kind of a small training between me and them, some classes. And from there I end up with doing a real professional training. When I was, became more, kind of mature enough to explain to different people, but I started with my close friends, then I went to public, to other people, which helps me to have more exposure to the [00:09:00] market and different people in this area.

Orion Matthews: That’s awesome. So let’s turn our attention to BIM for a minute. BIM is probably one of the biggest leverage points you can have on a major project right now, and I know that it is your passion in a really big way. Can you. Define that term for our audience. What are the B and the I and the M mean?

What, can you sort of unpack it for us a little bit and just give us the 1 0 1 so we can get started and digging in on it. 

Omar Habib: So basically what we, what we speak in this current age that we speak data, so we could say building information, modeling. So you’re trying to have, uh, the data structure in the way that different people could understood and uh, and share data with them, or we call it building information management.

I prefer the other one in terms of we really try to manage information in 3D model phase. So basically what happened before that, you have your 2D schedules. Two, 2D drawing. So whenever someone want to build a house, he ask for the [00:10:00] drawing. So the drawing was in 2D. When you look at it, not everyone could understand the 2D drawing that much.

It has to be really related to engineering work. By time the 2D work for house, you’re gonna work well and for three houses we’re gonna really work well. Then if you are talking about 3000 house. How, who gonna manage this? Who gonna coordinate this? And who will gonna, what kind of effort needed to get this aligned?

So what happened? If you look at, uh, let’s say high rebuilding a tower of, let’s say 30 floor, and you have an issue in the, the floor, number 12. So the engineer he’s working in, in, in floor number one, he need to know to coordinate, if you change the location of a column, he need to know so he could coordinate accordingly for any reason.

Having that in that floor. So the, this term itself is try to manage information in a structure way in the 3D format. So if you are, uh, building. Tower, if you’re building, combined whatever you’re working on [00:11:00] in a, in a giga scale level, so you’ll know what happened. And if something clashes with other items, you need to coordinate it before it happens on site to save money, save cost, and you’re gonna, it’s easy to communicate, uh, in 3D view in 3D more than just 2D.

So, uh, you, you bring, you maximize the ability of your technical skills to, uh, to solve issues and coordinate with the other problem. 

Orion Matthews: Okay. And then I’ve heard the term three, you know, bim, we’ve got 2D, 3D, and then we’ve got 40 and five D. 

Omar Habib: Yeah. 

Orion Matthews: I’m trying to imagine like a five dimensional shape here.

Maybe you can explain. What happens when you go from 3D to four D, bim, and then 

Omar Habib: five? Yeah, I have a little story here. So just think about it. You’re trying to build a legal house, okay? So this legal house has 3D and the 3D model. So you would, like, if I ask you how many days it takes you to build this, or how many hours, this is the fourth dimension I’m asking about the time dimension.

Mm-hmm. So how much cost you to build it? [00:12:00] So I’m asking you about the cost. So co cost and time. When you simulate them, you got the four D dimension and five D dimension. So what happened in the actual, in the actual projects that the client ask, send something called EIR, uh, employer information request.

So he send you the data that what he want from this project, you understand it. Then you have the 2D drawing. You start work with the 2D drawing to, to convert it to a 3D model. So this 3D model X, Y, and z. So whatever you are building bridge, you are building tunnel or building Ira building. At the end of the day, it’s X and y and z.

From day one, the client want to see how much it gonna cost him. How mu how are you gonna simulate, how are you gonna, what is the kind of the sequence that you’re gonna follow? To achieve that in the right, in the right time, in the right cost, that you know the time cost, quality triangle. So this what the client need to know before you start the project.

So you sit down the planner to create the time schedule for this project and start link the time schedule with [00:13:00] the 3D model. So start, give a simulation of type of the work that this client want to see. So he sees the simulation of his project, how gonna how it’s gonna happen in the upcoming two years.

And this would be also, uh, linked to the cost for phase, how much it’s gonna cost him for the, the, let’s say the structure works. This structure we talking about facades, cladding. So everything connected there for the time, for with the time schedule. So we’re gonna see the, the direct cost, the entire cost, even if we like to see if the commercial guy is looking at it, you’re gonna see the revenue, we’re gonna see even the, uh, the bottlenecks, the entire cost.

So you could simulate the cost during the timeline. It just determines that we use for four D simulation and five D cost management also. 

Orion Matthews: Got it. So just to play it back, we’ve got X, Y, and Z for, and then you’re at 3D and then you add in for the fourth dimension. You’re adding in time. And then the fifth dimension is really cost.

Or you could almost call that [00:14:00] energy if you wanted to abstract it out. 

Omar Habib: Cost, we call it five D for cost and 60 for, uh, sustainability will be energy, be carbon will be. So anything to manage the sustainability level 60. 

Orion Matthews: Okay. Let me ask you a question. Is it linear progression for the dimensions or do you find sometimes people don’t have a 3D model, but they’ve got a spreadsheet that has, uh, schedule, they’ve got schedule in P six, they’ve got cost in Excel, they’ve got a billion dollar project on their hands and they don’t have a 3D model.

Are they doing it backwards or can you work your way up and down the stack? Any way you want. What’s the best practice and do you ever run into that situation? 

Omar Habib: Yeah, so usually I tell you in, in the, so, so far the, the BIM is not fully implemented everywhere in the world. So it is there and I think it’s very advanced in most of the countries.

But sometime you see the situation that there is no model and the client want to start from the other way around. But here, here’s the things like [00:15:00] you have the time schedule in, in B six X or Excel. You have your cost in, in, in the c in Excel sheet, and you have no 3D model, you could start building 3D model and start doing kind of integration between them in the ideal scenario.

But sometimes if they don’t have a 3D model at all, what we do is even the 2D, we, we link it with the, the, the, the level number in the Excel. We try to simulate it in Excel, but this not ideal. In, in, in the, we call it again, bim, uh, BIM Building Information Management. We try to maximize the benefits of how we gonna manage our information to, to help the, uh, the right, right kind of, um, decision maker to take action.

But I, I have a small sense here to share with you. Sometime people think that five D, because we have four D let’s think about this together. If I have 3D, four D, five D, could I jump to the five D before I build the 3D? Let’s think about this together. So I have 3D, four D, five D. Mm-hmm. [00:16:00] Could I do the five D before the 3D?

Orion Matthews: Okay. So five D is cost, 

Omar Habib: correct? 

Orion Matthews: You can’t you can, but you’re gonna, your accuracy is gonna be very low, right? Yeah. So maybe for like a P 10 or something like that. Maybe you can like, 

Omar Habib: actually you got this, right? So what you mean is you can, but your level of accuracy will be different if you start with the 3D model.

But actually in all our projects, just think with me. In any project, people start with sit with sitting the budget first. Then you go to drawing, then you go to BQs on, then you go to other things. So they set the budget first based on the questionnaire they’re doing, based on, uh, the amount of, like, they know they have a benchmark of watch it, how gonna cost them.

So they set the watch first and they set the timeline. So this starts sometime with five D, four D and 3D. So what I mean, uh, here, that most of the cases that you start with what you said here, that the budget is there or the costs ation is there, [00:17:00] and the time schedule might be not very detailed. Then they build the 3D model after.

So sometimes this not really a bad scenario. Sometimes you start, uh, building the 3D model after and you start linking them together. And here’s the thing that you will be in better situation if you start with the 3D, then you link the four D on five D. So you’re gonna see everything is progressing there.

And again, you could start the, the cost before the time. So when I set the budget, I could set myself, study the cost elements, start assigning uh, the cost factors and the direct cost. And direct cost. The say the, the, the salaries for the engineers. They have as an direct cost for the staff for the electricity, for, I could, I could say this without even having the three wanted.

That’s fine. Once we have that, we could set. Maintain the budget, we could then do the, uh, the time schedule so we could simulate them. And here’s another kind of trick here that four D is let’s say four D is, we said that four D is link the time schedule with the 3D model. But linking them, [00:18:00] it’s a process.

So four D itself is not just linking bot together. So by the way, if you link this put together and you can’t tell the project owner about resources, about uh, what if scenarios is not really four D, it just simulation, it’s just cartoon kind of simulation for it. You need to give engineering kind of dimension to the, the stakeholders.

So I tell you, one of my early, early four dissemination, there’s no much softwares was there. And I was working in, uh, this was a, when I was, uh, in my early training as in the internet program, I was working in the project 12 billion budget. And the size of the project is four kilometer by three. And I was too young.

I don’t know how I’m gonna get the update for it. So I tried all the time to give them, it was e early, even the, the rivet wasn’t really, I think this was 2013 or 2014, it was too early in terms of having that advanced technology there. So I need to inform my managers and I need to tell them what’s update in every area.

So they look at they need a weekly update. I how I [00:19:00] gonna update four kilomet meter by three Kilomet meter projects really big in terms of, uh, what I just summarize, what’s gonna happen, what, what’s happening there. So what I did I think that I did the first four d kind of idea from my head that I start bought in in, in, in PowerPoint.

Uh, colors for every area every week. So this if this week we are doing excavation, so this area excavation, just give him a yellow color. If we are doing the foundation, other project, I give it another area. I give it just a green color. So if you keep flipping the, the slide, you’re gonna see the color is moving by slide.

So I start giving a simulation of what happened on site. So sometime the four D report, it’s all about organizing the information that your client gonna understand it or your manager in, uh, was related to the 3D model itself or with the remote to the, the rear 3D object on site. So sometimes this is a case that you don’t have the 3D model and you try to do some work around to get it done.

Uh, but it’s always be [00:20:00] ideal if you have the 3D model and you link it together and to maximize the value and to give a more accurate value for it. 

Orion Matthews: Okay, I, so I’m imagining and just ’cause I, you know, I’m a complete noob to many things, but let’s say that you have this arc GIS model of a refinery that you’re gonna build.

Yeah. And do you, when you go from the three dimensional, spatial data, you’re like, okay, I’m gonna I’m gonna have this like plane of this area, and then does it animate? Are you, you, you literally see it sort of chunking together when you, when you go to that next dimension of time.

So it’s essentially an animation that you can share with executives and also like, do you bring in like, one thing is like cranes, right? Those are always like messing up your schedule ’cause your crane comes in and it’s like, Hey, we can’t get a truck through. Like, how detailed do you do your modeling?

Do you actually have crews, do you model out the other assets? Like, is there like. Levels of [00:21:00] expertise or levels of sophistication to how much you manage your 3D model with time. 

Omar Habib: So I will tell you a story here. So what we have u usually whenever we jump with a four D kind of exercise we jump just in the whiteboard what you want to see because you have a right word here.

You see four D has different level of details for which level you want to see. You would like to see the crane moving in the right time in the right. You would like to see the truck in and out in the right place because sometime people will want to see site management. So you need to see something called the base of site.

You need to know if it’s okay to add more equipment. There’s a lot of details. So you ask, there is something called bem, which is the building information modeling. But there is another dimension of bem called Bem use. So what you’re gonna use the be model for, for example, if you are creating a 3D model just for presentation, there is no nothing.

You don’t need to do clashes. You don’t need to make sure that every item is a hundred percent modeled properly because it’s just for presentation. But if you are doing for Qs, no, you have to be accurate [00:22:00] because the Qs, we’re gonna reflect your procurement cycle and the people will start having some losses or some kind of issues with if you are overstimulating the numbers.

So three things if you, when you create a four D model, you need to ask yourself what you want this for, what this model for. So we jump for whiteboard and we ask, so we have kind of list of questions to ask who gonna use this for what and how frequent will be updated? Who, what is the input, what is the output?

Sometime the input for me, all the time, 3D on time schedule sometime that the input for me is a piece of paper. ’cause this kind of data is not in the time schedule and the only one he know or understand it is the construction manager. And he explained to me on site, depend on the use of the four D.

We start agree on the level of details we have there. So I’ll give you a very detailed one just to get to co to cover all of them. So I, I’m gonna talk about now a project that exceed 3 billion US dollar that we just develop developed recently in the, in the last three years. So this project, the first thing we have set down was the construction team [00:23:00] understanding what were used source.

So the first use the logistics, they need to know the, the location of every office that will be ideal during the project. Project has three phases. So during the project phases. You need to tell me where exactly what this office is because once we finish area, we have to go in other areas. So the office has been reallocated.

What is the best place to bought them? So when, whenever I allocate it, I don’t spend much mon time and money to allocate them and so on. And the other one, the logistic team also want to know the best location for the crane. So they get the maximum value of it in the construction industry. Cranes location is really, really critical in terms of key progress of work and also save a lot of money because the daily rate for crane is really expensive.

And then one of the, uh, the need to see something called, uh, method of construction. It’s called the methods. So how the construction team will gonna implement or how to install a specific item, especially in every project you have some unique items [00:24:00] or unique kind of engineering work that it might be first time to see or sometime is very complex.

And your team is not trained enough. So they ask, could we simulate the methods and this one of the questions and then they ask for the project itself. I need to see the high level progress. I need to tee to see the discipline wise. Progress. I need to filter only the EB work. I need to see it by floor and start giving us this as requirements.

Then he go to see, I need to see the earn value. Earn value is is a man, is a kind of, uh, measurement way that people use for, for especi project management guys to measure the progress. How much I earn, how what’s the plan, what’s the actual, how much should I earn, what actual I got? And you do the, uh, estimate to complete and you do a lot of, of calculation to get, uh, what we’re gonna, how, how is this project gonna look like in a year time?

So do you need to see it also in the simulation from this Q Qs? And also sometimes they use it for what if scenarios. So what if scenarios? Okay, what if I started Zoom [00:25:00] one and two together, excavation, then I start the do number three, or should I start three together? And what if scenarios determines of resource availability and terms of the budget allow allowances.

So this all what we hear in the whiteboard session. So we keep asking, and sometime we, we use like kind of mirror as a tool to, to facilitate our, uh, whiteboard session. We start from these kind of questions to build the main objective that you need to address. So for the methods, we have a really nice examples.

If you, uh, if you are doing kind of, uh, how to, how you gonna install, let’s say the files. And not everyone in your team is very experienced in that. And if you are doing, uh, that project we’re speaking about, the bias was in the middle of a sea. So it was not middle of sea like it, you are trying to, to secure part of the of the water to be, to have that, but kind of building inside it to have a nice view or something like that.

So part of it was in the sea, so you have to have a speci, a specialist, people that you work on it, [00:26:00] uh, trying to get to suck the, the water outside it and try to have the bile in the right location. So all these things was really. It was really new to them, so they need to simulate it before they go there.

So they, they call it RFT, right? First time you need to get it right. First time. When they go there, then we help them to succeed in this story. We help them very clearly in the reconstruction stage to train everyone. He’s not there. How we gonna when he’s there, how we gonna get it done? How he understand the complexity of it, and how we gonna apply the knowledge onsite for the cranes.

We set with the MRS team also, and we try to logistic team, we try to get the 80% value, which is the, uh, they call be 80, the probability of 80% that the, this location of the crane will be used 80% of the time. So the other, the other 20% this is, should be acceptable for in their calculation. That can, might be based on daily use or something like.

So if you could keep the crane, 80%. [00:27:00] Of the project. This is success. This was the, their KBI. So we keep doing the what if scenarios until, because what if scenario is based on our four D ’cause you have the full simulation for the project all over the project lifecycle. So while you are doing the simulation, you will see the crane will have a lot of work here based on the, the, the work, the availability of work in this area or this zone.

And or you gonna advise that you could use, uh, a mobile screen. In this area because that fix crane won’t, won’t be based that much. And you come up with the analysis based on the simulation. You bring everyone to the room, explain to them, and everyone. Now what’s really nice in the, in the four D explanation here, that you bring everyone to a movie to watch.

So if you are watching, uh, F1 movie recently published it. And so when you look at it you don’t need to be, uh, an actor expert to judge. How nice is this movie? Or you just look and you, you express your feeling. How about you have a construction experience? So when you look at something, you not only express your feeling, you express your experience.

So when you look at it, [00:28:00] ah, by the way, is this not right? Just think in a normal world that you have the message written in a hundred pe in a hundred wages and, uh, the 3D model, you can’t really understand it because you don’t have engineering experience and the time schedule you don’t really understand because you don’t have time planning experience.

So now in the, uh, we, we have mixed it all this kind of different discipline together to just make it same animation that we all gonna now speak the same language. This language of construction, you bring your experience to give a comment on that. So it really help our team to find the right place to put that crane and so on.

Then when you go for simulation. We have done now we, we are identifying the, the colors. So e every color represent a, uh, uh, an activity. So if I’m, if I’m assimilating again, we’re talking about, let’s say this project, we have, uh, diff different pavilions. So let’s say if we are doing the concrete work, we’re it have like gray color, if we’re doing the, uh, let’s say the maybe [00:29:00] work, it’ll be, but orange color.

So whenever it’s, or the orange color is active, means that we are in, in progressing it. Once it has the rear color, it means installed. So you are gonna easily, at any single time of the state or of the project, just stop today. And this is the date and it check. What’s the plan and what’s the actual, this is two, this one report that saves hundred of hours to come up with the recovery plan.

’cause what you see is, this is a baseline simulation. This is where I should be, I should be in the second floor by this November. Now I’m in just doing the basement, uh, as actual, and it shows you what you should. You should be in in the upcoming two months, B, based on the current uh, based on the current productivity.

So the team sitting together and they do we call it the war room, that you look at each other what the right action. And you’re already aware it is not some, it’s not fully surprised, but it’s vis visualized, it’s communicated in a visual way. And while we’re sitting with them, we do what if scenarios.

Okay, what if we added two crews to this zone? What can happen? And we do it on the spot. [00:30:00] And let’s see how, what if we started to package together, how we could man mitigate this? And is all these sorts we need visualize. People feel less stressed to to see the, the consequences of what they are seeing or and what you are recommending.

And this always part of the progress meeting. Uh, we have an issue how we mitigated. Let’s see it, let’s go through the iteration and really, really cool idea to go through it. And the last things when we do, uh, the project dashboard or like the, the final kind of report about the project itself in 40 D space, people really look at, uh, the simulation at very like, uh, one pictures equal a thousand fours.

So I don’t need to send you a hundred of, of pages to tell you project is late. You need to like look at the four, this simulation and you need to, you’re gonna see this is late and you’re gonna see this information is not installed and so on. The are things. We always in in, in the high level, uh, report, we include every truck, every crane, [00:31:00] every single equipment as it should be, because there is something is really new with, because this kind of technology is not, it’s not new, but it’s like, it’s, there tastes there, but sometimes there’s another dimension in science.

Like, people know clashes as two, two items have intersected together. This a clash in project management. There is kind a soft clash, whereas you can’t add more kind of equipment. You can’t add more kind of labors if you have a specific area is busy. Because of that, you can’t add more people. So from the four D, you look at the simulation and you try to add more.

You add a truck or you add excavator. You add with him in the simulation a circle for safety. So whenever this moves, and the two is, uh, the two, uh, segregator intersected, you know, there’s a problem there because in the reality, they won’t have the same exact space. But now in the simulation, they have this kind of intersection together, this kind of clash together.

That means that you can’t add more to increase the [00:32:00] productivity. So it’s proven by calculation and proven even the simulation, it’s not, it’s not gonna be possible to have this. So we include every single details for, I’m talking about now for a major project, sometime in a small project. No, we don’t have to do this based on the current requirements.

Or he want only to see a specific, uh, equipment to be there. One of the, uh, on the project we was working on recently was engineering What if scenarios. So he would like to see, uh, uh, that, that equipment that have been used, how we gonna be used on site, it fits for the size of the road. It could go through in and out because it was very con congested area in terms of the busy of the city itself.

Could they could be, bring it from other city. So a lot of what if scenarios when you see it in simulation, the decision is made in the room. 

Orion Matthews: Wow. There’s so much to unpack there. And I, I wanna touch on one thing, which is I’m imagining your project and I’m seeing having this incredible tool that you can do some of these modelings with.

And I’m [00:33:00] wondering, you know, make a, make a projects often have, I’m probably wrong about this, but I kind of divide it up into a few camps you might have, like the owner side. Owner’s team. And maybe above that you have JV partners, things like that. And then you have you know, sort of like the, the back office which sits in the office at the owner’s side or in the control room.

And then you have the field personnel that are getting it done. And then you also have contractors, major contractors for major pieces of scope. And so you have this amazing 3D modeling time variance, you know, project controls, sort of data system. Who owns that, of those groups?

Like where does it sit and how important is it if you’re, say it’s in the owner’s side, how important is it to share it with the your contractors and, and how do you share it? Or, or do you share it? Maybe you can talk a little bit about how that plays out. 

Omar Habib: Yeah, it’s always, I think that this is the core of what we’re doing.

Okay. So [00:34:00] again, it’s information management. At the end of the day, you try to build the right strategy to have the unfold, the for to fold the from down to top, un unfold it from top to down. So what happened that from day one, you do the strategy and your strategy. We’re gonna have, uh, have that for, if, if I’m representing the client, I’ll have to I could enforce it, but if I’m, I’m talking, I might talk now as a main contractor, as it’ll be more kind of making sense for most of the people.

So if you’re main contractor, you start set up your a, c, c desk, a c kind of, uh, folders, and you have your weekly meeting structured. We have a meeting for weekly, uh, every, we have a daily huddle. Like we have daily meeting touch base about specific item done. We have weekly, uh, meeting. We have a meeting every two weeks for planning only.

And we have a monthly progress. So what happened? We start with the planning meeting that we gonna look six week ahead and we start agree with them in the strategy that this is your, I now have a project that I manage [00:35:00] 66 consultant. 66, sorry, sub sub subcontractors. So this 66. We have the planning meeting from day one, and I’m explaining to them how the folder restructure in the a, CC and when they’re exactly required to upload.

Is it? And I explain to them the 3D model, what’s the required code to be in this 3D model, and what is the shared parameter name? So we, in every model we have something called shared bumper where we could add some text or some kind of I identify could to be involved and attach it there. So we sit from day one, reading the time schedule, who’s responsibility, who’s responsible about every package, what’s your time schedule look like?

What’s your activity Id look like and how you gonna start in the time schedule? So in the first planning meeting, we agree on the calendar. And I agree on the strategy, how we gonna review this, how we gonna look at it? So in the first three, four, uh, sessions, it’ll not gonna be biweekly, it’ll be weekly for the first kick of the project.

So the first month you set up, set up this, then you start follow up with what you have agreed. So you follow you, you review the model, [00:36:00] you find, you check the ideas. Is there or not? You check in, in the daily huddle. So you, you start in, in your planning session, you look six week ahead. So you give them a plan for what they’re expecting in the upcoming six weeks.

And you are touch base with them weekly as a, as a main contractor. And you have another sub. The, the consultant bought touch base daily or, or maybe every second day. So whatever suits in their calendar, but the minimum, it’s a touch base once every week. So once it, we check that if you are following the strategy for one of the, what would be the strategy look like?

So you have a time schedule. We try to have, uh, the activity id code inside the model. Sometime we sit even in that naming convention is the project is, is the too early stage. We agree how the naming convention of, uh, the models and the activity ID will gonna be interacted somehow. So the guys will know how to structure it from day one.

And we have some kind of template that it’s really automated in the way that we, when we agree abbreviation, it’ll be followed in [00:37:00] remaining. We use the abbreviation from the TIDB, the, uh, the MIDB for the project and then we start using it to. Start our kind of, let’s say, agreed code to be involved with in the three model.

So the client the sub-consultant, the subcontract, we start fulls adding it. We follow up with them. We find it, we find the model is done. So now we have our master four D and everyone responsible what his area. So what we do is just import his uh, four D project to, or four d simulation to our master.

Uh, one, we just call it the federated for model or the federated four D model. Then we start reviewing the master baseline so you, it’ll be really clear for you uh, if someone is not following the strategy, because everything is not simulated. You’ll find it static, it’s not moving. And if you find you have the master schedule and you’ll expect.

This package will be finished area. For example, it doesn’t make sense. The structural doesn’t finish and the, it’s not finished yet and the architecture has [00:38:00] been completed and even the mechanical is done. So it’ll be really strange in terms, you’re gonna find out this kind of issues related to the time schedule.

So you, in the first three, four months, you, sorry, three weeks. You are refining all these issues until all understand you. They are using the same template, the same exact view for the simulation, the same exact position of camera, uh, the movement from point to point, uh, com to comparable. Every months we, we agree in a specific capture area to just be submitted from and then.

We look it from the hybrid view or from the high level blend. So what happened that if in the monthly progress meeting, we look at it and we see how this re realistic and we reviewed with the construction team also. So the construction team sitting down and finding this four simulation guys saying that this facades has been installed last months and it’s not even on site.

You have pictures from site, you have cameras on site. So you find that it’s not there. And this happens by the way, because the four D guys is, is not on site all the time, might be offsite. And the time schedule says [00:39:00] that they have finish half of the SubD for his understanding.

It’s one activity to describe all, uh, let’s say the elevation. So he understand, done as finished while done is mean, means, uh, let’s say finished installation. But it needs a lot, another kind of uh, final activities to be finished. So the guys. Don’t consider it finished, for example. So we look at that and we finalize it and we find the gaps and refine it and provide a feedback, feedback loop.

We have this ongoing, and then every six weeks we have retrospective kind of view. So we sit down, look back, look back what happened and what we, uh, it is more agile framework in, in this space, especially when you have a lot of feedback, especially the four D, you bring everyone experience into it. So you just look a movie and or, or some assembly simulation and you start giving your feedback on it.

Sometimes the feedback is technical. That you can do this kind of simulation. Sometimes the feedback is regards to you have not, uh, linked every activity and sometimes the feedback is really [00:40:00] related to point of enhancement. I would like to add more since on top of it. So this has exactly, we manage it and at the end of the day there is, uh, a reports to be extracted, regards to manpower available on site.

Something planned is actual, something in regards to every kind of section, uh, sorry, of the discipline performance. So based on that, everyone providing his reports, we consolidated review it and come back with them again with the feedback. 

Orion Matthews: Okay. So I’m gonna press you on this ’cause I, everything you said sounds amazing.

Omar Habib: Yeah. 

Orion Matthews: I’m gonna, I’m gonna take the role. Let’s say I’m halfway, like, let’s say I’m a project controls manager or project director. Yeah. I just inherited a mess. Which happens from time to time. I think 95% of mega projects are off budget and off schedule. We’re halfway through. We don’t have the 3D model.

Our data is a mess. And uh, I pick up the phone, I call you and I [00:41:00] say, Omar, I’m in trouble. Like, we’re off schedule, we’re off budget. All this 3D stuff. I listened to the podcast. You, you talked about this amazing world. We’re not there. We’re not even close. 

Yeah. 

Uh, is it too late? Do I even try, like, how, how do help me sort my project out?

What would you do? Or would you say, Hey, we, we gotta start in predefined for this. This is not like, how, how do you intersect and help people like me? 

Omar Habib: It’s really, it’s really common situation, by the way. It’s not something strange because 

Orion Matthews: too common 

Omar Habib: when you speak. Yeah, it’s very common because what happen, people don’t really realize the value of it in the beginning.

And you find it’s really the kind of, it’s an add-on. It’s not something essential. So what happen is you keep going until you stuck and you find, okay, I want this to be implemented, to have more visibility. Sometimes I say to them, what you think, what’s the cyber solution sometimes cost you more. If you don’t really, uh, uh, aware of the dimens, like no, what happened for this situation?

That actually in the la late [00:42:00] last August, we have the same exact situation was a project was running for two years and it’s really Giga project, giga project by all means, in the complexity and the size in the budget and what have we, I got a call from a, a project control director that he has an issue with decision making in regards to how we consolidate all this information and it’s not, the set wasn’t there honestly.

The, if you are saying there is no 3D model at all, I’m gonna go for the traditional, not the, like the innovative, the innovation way of integrating this in kind of bar bi or to try to select, to connect the information together and kind of reporting structure. But the approach I’m taking now, if the 3D model is there but it’s not utilized, what I’m gonna do is I will find a way to report about the most important things.

And this is what we did in this project. There is hot topics where the project is losing and there is a huge issue. Uh, and when I talk about issue here is communication is coordination. And that’s what happened in the project I’m speaking about. We did recently, uh, in Europe. So we, we pick one of this project, uh, one of these [00:43:00] issues, and from eight 18th of August to the 1st of September, we tried to address in two weeks.

The critical issue to be simulated, and it was, there is no 40 kind of structure there or kind of basement, nothing. It was nothing. We just bring our team to standardize and try to start putting the foundation for it, addressing the critical issue, trying to communicate it in, in, uh, in weekly basis, in more frequent basis with the client and to address and to address it and try to get the stakeholder to give action it.

And we, we try to help them all over the way. Up to date, now we are back on track. Regards to visibility and communication and coordination. Not kind of like now whatever happened in the project, at least he has seen it and he understood it, and now they could take action. It’s not fully solve it, but the communication structure or the infrastructure for to scale the issue, it is there.

So the other way around that we have a different kind of, uh, uh, it’s not a, it’s not a barrier, but if you don’t have a 40 DA series model, so you can’t start, you can’t develop more, you need to find [00:44:00] a more, a more innovative, innovative way. So sometime we do. We should do, sit together and we’ll find, uh, uh, what is right setup for your information to be, to reach out to your client or to the stakeholder level and whatever the, the C level, whatever the, uh, the who is managing this job.

So we set together and we start integrate the information from the 3D, the, not the three, the, let’s say the engineering side with the project control side, and try to come up with a report that informative for everyone in, even in 2D for in, in the drawing itself. So we link, uh, the layout west, the information from, uh, the project controller west, the information from the engineerings and the technical office.

And then we come up with integrated data. To speak to each other in terms of issues, in terms of ma major concern in terms of performance. So this is another way to to address your data in away from the 3D world. And this actually happened recently also here in, in Ireland, that we have a client that is really big in construction, but in terms of the data management, we are not, [00:45:00] uh, up to living in this area.

So the 3D model, they don’t like it, they said for doing one, we look at them as something gonna be kind of at the obstacle or something prevent us from progression. So I need some, another solution. We start an Excel solution. They like it, they, we move it to Power BI and some to mission way in the background to send an email for the people that responsible about every area.

So yeah, we have the both kind of scenarios. And I think sometimes people don’t know this is a solution. Sometimes people don’t know this is, this exists. Sometimes he says, uh, if I bring more this into the game, I’m gonna spend more, more money without any kind of visibility on the ROI of it also. 

Orion Matthews: You know what I heard from that, that was really striking is that in the example you were talking about starting with one piece of scope and getting a small win, which is great ’cause we started saying like, here’s the unicorn, this is how it gets done.

If you bring us in super early or you have your BIM strategy set, uh, it all flows and it’s great. But that’s not [00:46:00] the reality for a lot of people. And if you find yourself and you’re saying, okay, I need to do something with my data, that’s better than where I’m at now. You know, pick a small scope and a small timeline and execute on that, and then you can sort of grow it from there.

Yes. Rather than try to say, ah, we need to bring in a massive. Project to connect all of our things and rebuild our models. It’s like, it’s too overwhelming if your project is midway through and it you know, it’d be great if you can do that, but that initiative might be not the right way to start all the time.

Might be you can start with a small win and then grow from there. Is that, does that sound about right? 

Omar Habib: I, I totally agree with you. Always look at the value. ’cause another negative side of that, that people just look at the fancy four D simulation things. If you’re not providing a value, if not helping your project manager and project director tell the, to solve your, their day-to-day issue, you’re not gonna use it as, it’s the same exact situation with any kind of report.

If you have a nice B BI report that [00:47:00] look fancy, a lot of animation, a lot of kind of, uh, tool there, if it’s not helping you either director or the manager or the job to get to, to solve issues or address issues, it’s not gonna use this. So it’ll end up with being used this like. 

Orion Matthews: So now you ha like turning to Power BI a little bit because, uh, yeah, I follow you on LinkedIn, a as do 40,000 plus other people, and you’ve produced some really amazing dashboards there as curves, risk matrixes.

Um, your, your work is awesome and your visuals are great. Like how, how can you advise us to get our Power bi projects in good shape? Maybe just kind of what’s your secret sauce If as much as you can share about how you’re, how you’re delivering these and, and, and what you’re putting together. 

Omar Habib: The first and last advice is to go to people like you some, some such an expert, uh, to talk to and to get advice from.

I know you, you, you, your [00:48:00] advice would be different level fraud and doing, uh, I’m just intersecting with the Power BI area and construction, but I know that, that your company is much huge in, in terms of project controls and bigger than I, I think the first and last advice to go to you and speak to you.

Orion Matthews: I didn’t set this one up. 

Omar Habib: No, but yeah, that’s very kind. We don’t agree on this, but I just being honest here, I I have followed you since you was in Project Control Summit online, and I see a lot of info informative things they are doing for us as a, we are a specialist in digital delivery, so we are used such a tool as for a purpose of delivering it.

But you are much expert in the wider, uh, image or, or the bigger image of it. For me, when I, when I think about it when we, we, when we start with, you know, we need to try to have a single source of truth. So we have our daily reports in sites, which I don’t be surprised. And even in a, I was dealing with a very, very big organization.

I found that the daily [00:49:00] board in bi. Because it’s not something regards to the, the company itself. It’s related to the behavior of the labors on site that you have to educate everyone. You have to do a lot of things for them to, it is not something you could manage, honestly, but it is, you could do a lot of things to start to.

Strategy, strategy or framework in it. But it’s not easy to be managing every job. But I found that, so I look at it, I look at the daily reports we have, I look at the monthly reports we have, and I look a lot of nice single information we have, uh, or like pilot or stand on reports we have. So I said in my early days I said, is there a way that we could standardize it or that we could allow the stakeholder?

’cause I’m attending a lot of C-level meetings or executive meetings that he ask for a specific question. And this question end up with another question. And if your answer is not ready, you hear a lot of frustration, like disappointing of being, you’re not aware of everything and you are not at the top of things or things like that.

So at least you are doing 70% of the job. You are, you are [00:50:00] integrating the data you are working with together. So if some, if something coming up, you could answer it. So it starts from here in terms of being a manager of team. Uh, before I, I was dealing a team of 57. Now we are, I think, and in our current, we were talking about 70.

So we are growing more. I think by the end of the year we’re gonna be 100. So you need to educate your team about how the mentality of digital delivery or data-driven decision, how we gonna standardize our, uh, reports or our database to start be, uh, uh, reporting in, in such a let’s say high quality level.

So let’s think in a project. Another project. What you have, you’ll have a project control information that’s really nice. You have a month report, but don’t speak to the engineering work. 

So the engineering have a lot of KBIs that don’t speak to the BIM guys. Uh, sorry. Don’t speak to the project control.

The project control doesn’t speak to the procurement. The procurement don’t speak to the tender. So we end up with, I tell you, I have really, I I I, I have a really nice kind of, uh, picture. Could you describe that? [00:51:00] This start from the beginning? From the, the project, from the beginning when we talk about reporting.

So what happened? The estimation team or the tender team starts study the project and then we have the estimation hour and show it to the project team. Enjoy, guys, enjoy. They don’t, it’s not connected together. Then you start your project lifecycle and you start doing the planning and the do the controls in the operational, and you start closing the project itself.

You can’t benchmark the project against what you have planned in the beginning because what happened, literally the estimation that you have was outdated and the guys don’t have base. Sometimes you have base of estimate, but let’s say it’s not very realistic as if you compare to the end of the project.

Big s doing this, comparing both together. And Gamma was recently learning, but let’s see. Let’s the comment I that I ha I most I the current recently I’m doing most of work with them. They don’t have that. So this where I bring someone like me, so to standardize this, so literally it’s about that everyone doing his exercise and it’s true to the other one with no kind of base [00:52:00] of like, or look into future or like try to integrate together.

So we, we see the problem and we say, we are in our projects, we are in our, uh, kind of work, we are trying to be, uh, digital delivery or let’s say we have the word like integrated digital delivery. IDD We’re trying to integrate the platform together. We try to interface, integrate different kind of let’s say silo data to be in one kind of let’s say data lake or let’s say data warehouse or we start work with it and produce it.

So we start with this mentality and now we are think we have succeeded to doing it. So we have done a lot of workshops to set with, uh, the commercial guys. The procurement guys, the project controls, and then the procurement, the engineers, and then the BIM side. By kind of experience, I have went through this in my life.

I work a little bit as a planner, BIM commercial. I work in, uh, in cost control. So by, by time you have guy with the sense to speak the same language with them. So if you set with a planner and you [00:53:00] tell him, I need to add the activity code here. It’s different than you say, I I need to add something to have kind of a unique identifier.

If you speak the same exact language, it’ll be easy to get out, uh, an outcome. If you set with a cost control guy, I said, this is the cost element and this is the my SBI, and this is how, uh, uh, let’s say the level of trust on this kind of probability. If, if you sit with the risk guy and you ask, you understand the B 60, the B 60 and the B 80, and how the simulation happening, so.

You see with the BIM guy also, you understand what his process look like and what KPIs look like. You make his life easier while you are integrating this. So I, I sometimes I call myself as integrator ’cause I could, I’m, I’m not a specialist in, in every one of them. I’m a specialist with some and I’m generous and the other, but generous to the level that I could speak the same language with you.

So we both sit in and we start agreeing on the way that we can integrate. So we start having the, the standardization process in the background, integrate different department together. Then we start doing the KBIs. And I know that you, you have a lot of conversation to say about the KBIs, [00:54:00] but we get, we make something really, really simple in terms of the table of.

KBI metrics. What we do is what we’re trying to, uh, to calculate what is the subsidiary question of this kind of KBI who’s the owner, how frequently updated it, and, uh, what is the data, uh, input the Excel sheet or database and so on, and how frequently updated. And we talk about who’s the owner, and we have it very simple, kind of, uh, uh, we call it KBI table.

And we stayed set there and start implementing the whole process to integrate this together, which I know that you have a lot of journey in the middle around it, but it end up with something that the absolute kind of, uh. Uh, goal out of it that we are looking in the center source of truth, that I could open the procurement guys and understand their back.

What is the qs? I could open the bridge control dashboard and we could see the Qs. When I sit with the executive, I could make this data speaking together and I could match number from financial guys to us, the commercial and the contract even. So I could look, [00:55:00] uh, a different side. For example, I’ll give you an interesting one.

Sometimes we see the, the financial team look at the project as losing negative. Mm-hmm. And the cost control look at is positive. And one of the interesting kind of, this was really nice kind of analysis if I be made that you bought the cost control report and the financial report. You look at both posts have every single line calculate, right?

No issue with the calculation. The different is the respective. So the financial guys look at the, uh, the construction projects as a point in time. 

Host: Yeah, 

Omar Habib: he and the other guy the cost control, you look at the simulation of the cost. So he, in, in this point, he was losing, but actually the overall view you are not losing.

And one of the example I have, there was a, it was a really nice exercise that I pick up one of the items and I speak to both of them in the same meeting. Okay. Let’s go through, uh, let’s say the, uh, the window package. Let’s click pick the item. I’m asking this question how you calculate the B and [00:56:00] l.

So he start, go through it and I find out that he, from his point of view, that once we order or so what, once we request the, this kind of material on the a RB for him, this actual, for the construction team, the cons could, didn’t consider it actual cost until they install it inside. 

Orion Matthews: That’s 

Omar Habib: right.

Yeah. ’cause they calculate it in their earning value. So I earned this because I installed that for the, uh, for the financial guys. You look at the commitment as actual I commit. So I I, I just ordered it. So I commit that I’m gonna pay that, but not today in the following months. Yeah, but he considered it.

It’s gonna go, it’s gonna happen anyway. So it’s done. And from the con, the cost control guys, you only look at this done once it’s installed style. So sometimes it’s such a nice conversation, it it, it brings your reports to life and you, you see the value of it once you are sitting in such things. And especially, uh, the other things when you see your reports used to have a very strong decision in terms of which project to bid, which project to [00:57:00] leave, and which project we should give a discount, and how, what is the most successful kind of type of projects we have done.

We have make revenue on top of it. When you talk about the sea level, when you look at the whole company point of view, it’s really interesting when you, when, when you have a different time of perspective in, in such. 

Orion Matthews: Yeah, I think that’s what makes the single source of truth, as you said, and I think that’s just the absolute most critical piece to work on.

And then when you have that single source of truth, you can have different perspectives on the truth, but at least you’re not fighting about. What variable you’re using to measure cost. And you’re not talking about how I connect the cost data and the forecast together and an, you call it an activity id and I call it a step or a task.

Um 

Omar Habib: Yes, correct. 

Orion Matthews: It’s really, it’s super important to have that single source of truth and 

Omar Habib: actually during it, this story, I have a really quick, a really interesting question for you. I don’t know, we don’t agree with that. Yeah. So I have a good one. So one of the challenges I have while I’m having this story when [00:58:00] explained to, to the executive or the directors, I find that most of the talented power bi kind of at that analyst or let’s say the talented developer that they do, they could do every could.

They are not talented in storytelling. They are really good in communic in calculating the data and finding out the issue, but not very good in terms of presenting it. Yeah. And even finding the right colors and find way the design of the dashboard itself, what you are actually doing for this. 

Orion Matthews: Okay, I, I, I’ll tell you a story on this.

I’ll try and keep it brief. When I was a kid, I was sort of like a programmer, young programmer early, like seven years old programmer. And so I, I was doing this, uh, statewide competition called the OIT Tech Challenge. And every year I was a freshman in high school and I won the challenge. Um, and every year what I did is I built this like graphics demo.

Thing that was like, it’s like cool, it played music, you could click things. [00:59:00] Um, I, I had like a announcer, like a radio guy, record some stuff and it was fun and I always won. And, and there was code behind it. It was engineered, you know, I wrote a font maker and stuff ’cause I’m old and we had to do that stuff back then.

And so I won like two years in, three years in a row or something. And then the last year I was like, you know what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna do an AI project, I’m gonna really go hard on something technical. And so I built a neural net model for AI that could solve a maze. Uh, I was really proud of it. I did a lot of thinking.

’cause neural nets at the time were, um, not as popular as they’re today. And I thought I, I was, you know, exploring AI and I wrote all this code. It was definitely my best technical work. And and there and it was reviewed by computer science professors and everything. Right. Um, and it had always been that way for years.

I took third place and it was a really sobering moment for me as a young engineer, technical person, [01:00:00] where I said, you know what? Form over function matters. If I’m being judged by computer scientists and they’re looking at my work and they were like, this cool graphics demo is definitely first place.

You know, to me it really sort of was my aha moment. That form is really important for technical execution. I got it Sort of the hard way or, or the life lesson way. I think a lot of engineering people just never really have that experience to understand the importance of form. ’cause I certainly didn’t.

Yes. So to, to bring that story back to like brass tacks, what we end up doing is we pair designers with technical people. So we look for people that are from the ad agency world because those people know storytelling. And then you bring them in. And so, uh, we actually talked with Jovita about her Green Riyad project, uh, earlier.

Yeah. And she had a sheet. I I heard 

Omar Habib: the, the, the, the opposite. It’s really nice. 

Orion Matthews: [01:01:00] Yeah. And so she had a designer team under her as the project controls manager. And she said it was like super helpful for the project because they’re the storytellers. And then if you compare those people with your engineers and your designers, that’s, or sorry, your, your programmers and your data, people that can calculate SPI, they can do a forecast.

I think that’s the secret sauce to getting that kind of reporting that you’re talking about. 

Omar Habib: Yeah. It’s always a challenge for me when, uh, you deal with a visual kind of executive and you need to know what the right way to to have the storytelling for the information. And I see, I hear this more frequent, honestly, that.

I do understand the calculation. I really like it, but it doesn’t tell me the story. So I think now what I’m doing is 30, 40% analysis and 60% of how we’re gonna tell the story, how we’re gonna tell them. Yeah. How to sense information and how they’re gonna look at it in different way. 

Orion Matthews: And it’s very hard, I think, for engineers to get to [01:02:00] that point because it’s not intuitive at all.

I’ve talked to a lot of programmers that are like, this is what the data says. You don’t need anything else. Like it’s clear as a bell, but the story really matters in this space. 

Omar Habib: Correct. Correct. And the context. And the context. What always we talk about the context. Everything’s whenever we, whenever you are doing a report.

Orion Matthews: Exactly. And, and who are you talking to? If I could switch gears a little bit just to, to we went through bim, we talked about some Power BI reporting. I know that you’re a thought leader in the space, you’re professor, um. What about ai? How do you see that impacting us? What impacts are you seeing right now?

Can you kind of give us your thinkings on ai? 

Omar Habib: Okay, so I think that we, I, I, I, in the beginning, I was really impressed of the ability of just rewrite the email. You remember that time of t was there, rewrite this email for me, recalculate these numbers. I was feeling this, oh, we are on the top of it. [01:03:00] Oh my god, now.

I was really good in terms of, uh, claims and time impact analysis and all this kind of stuff, but I have the good knowledge to, I, I have the understanding of the process, but I’m not, I wasn’t really structured the limit that where to find my kind of, uh, the evidence and how to build it.

Right? And, oh my God, I, oh my goodness. I, I have thought, I have seen that now. The, I have created an AI agent for me, helping me to create the perfect time analysis that help me with me for the, let’s say, the silly kind of process that you need to dig deep, find a lot of information. One of when, uh, uh, before I had you as well, I mean, I met you first time, we have a really big kind of claim that we’re working on, and we, uh, looked at, uh, the client information and I find that, that it was two years time before we start this dispute starts.

There’s kind of, kind of, let’s say corresponding like emails, a lot of things between the client and the, the, the other side. So that ai, small one that we, I just [01:04:00] given accent to the email. He dig deep for every single email to the related to the criteria. We bought it there. It was small agent, it’s not very advanced, and I bought a lot of criteria inside it and we extracted.

All the information related to the support is evident and that, and this kind, usually the plan we get this done in two months is we get done, done, I think in 10 days at that time. All the kind of, the huge claim we have built for this project and we submitted to the client and honestly before that.

I was just using small business in terms of nice prompts, nice kind of, I, I, I see someone and should do something really cool and that, that, and since then I said no, I have to sit down myself, look at it and see how I get the ma the maximum out of it. Now I, I’m using cloud as kind of, it’s really kind of, in the beginning was really essential, but once you know how to automate stuff with cloud, with JGBT, with Canva and you use in it, in, oh my God.

I find myself, oh I’m, I know my, my background is not really data, [01:05:00] uh, actually I’m not that science, for example, I’m not, uh, uh, my background civil engineer, and I’m working in the digital delivery side, so I’m working. Every data regards to construction as much. Whenever I see something in construction, I find the way to automate it with another tool.

Now, I, I just, my, it’s mind blowing for me. So I start looking at it, uh, working with let’s say the chat, no, the, uh, Microsoft Co-pilot. So you could easily send message, send the message, say, what’s my, uh, manager, what is the list? Last 10 tasks my manager ask me for, what is the task I’m missing with Co Al Studio, that which is already integrated with your business kind of licenses.

You can ask these questions. And on the top of it, when you create let’s say I’m, I’m, I’m working now at the BAM Manager for two giga projects. When I have almost 35 team working, those. Project especially. So when he send me a data, I could use this kind of agent to to check before I go deep in it.

So I’m asking if this information is provided compared to the previous, [01:06:00] uh, submission. What’s different? And by the way, a lot of surprise, it’s just kind of QAQC that someone my submit last month that he did 30% and this month he, he submitted something that he did 17%. So he’s going down, you know, he’s subtracting from last month’s kind of progress.

So it’s really cool In terms of you, you talk about uh, I think that the agent itself even in inside the custom wine, inside JGBT, uh, if using a lot of you come is stubborn. Allowing that now, but we used a local one. It was a LMM in internal that it just took about our kind of details, our clients.

And actually we have provided also for our clients that we have start from being a personal passion. And now we start some client asking for a specific kind of deliverable. One of them was the I who kind of, make sure that every project is following the ISO standards and it it filled in the proper way and send in emails for, with the audit plan and make sure that, uh, this person have signed it before published.[01:07:00] 

So we have a small, kind, kind of cobi co kind of agent, AI agent that you ask him a question and you, he can tell you, yeah, this is a process and this is a signed one and this is a draft one. And you know, he give you, uh, what exactly you need for the ISO side and from the other side. We are working, we working in a QS job that the client wanted to get done in two weeks and our estimation was two months.

With seven engineers. So one of the smartest guys in the team, he say, yes. And, uh, you know, I have tried something new with AI that I could create a script. Was, uh, was dynamo that could serve this amount of time and we could share, extract this t sheets from Revit, throw it in the AI agent who will do he work with us as a QS.

And we have done this process and we went back to the client almost. We are we was proposing two months to get it done. We come back, no, it’s double in three, in three weeks as, uh, it, it was required, but actually we added another week just to verifying the information. You know, you find a way to accelerate it.

You need to make sure it’s [01:08:00] right. This other side of the story. You know, whenever you use ai, you need to trust him a little bit. And actually when I, when while I’m using AI also I have read the, uh, from Harvard Business with You kind article says imagine your boss, your boss was, uh, middle bands.

So he just says that in the upcoming years what’s gonna happen is you will be very kind of in that level that you see everything AI finish very quickly and you would like someone that he up to that level. So you’ll find that the robot is the right person to deal with AI to keep everything very fast, you know, so I got a little bit scared when I hear about the experience so far is really, really cool, especially when you don’t stuck in the knowledge hell where you are only reading and just enjoy the, ah, it’s really nice, but.

Reading, applying. It’s another experience, especially with example, we have really impacting our business was Qs was something related to even, we have an AI agent that verifying schedules. [01:09:00] So if we have time schedule and we have specific criteria, we just show it there and give you, extract a report to tell you this exactly what you need, but actually still need kind of, proofing data proofing, uh, uh, profiling or, or data kind of review, reviewing after it when once it extracted.

But it’s so far really cool. I would like to know from your, uh, side also definitely you have, you have gone through a lot of, uh, experience regards it. I know. I need to know what’s new also from your side. 

Orion Matthews: Yeah. Uh, I agree with everything you just said there. I think AI will be an accelerant and will continue to be an accelerant.

I think that single source of truth is really important. And in 2026. I think there’s gonna be a conversation shift. Uh, the CEO of Microsoft just presented last week about this, that data strategy and AI strategy are connected. They’re not separate strategies. And in many ways, I think if you’re gonna have really awesome AI and get 10 x performance out of your team, you have to have a [01:10:00] single source of truth that’s operationalized and ready to go.

And then AI really starts to have that impact. I think one thing I see, so there’s a couple different options. There’s a few paths. A uh, you know, one path is ai becomes hyper intelligent. We all lose our jobs. We’re on basic income. Um, and maybe it’s a utopia. I don’t know. Uh, so I’m gonna set that one aside ’cause I, I can’t really speak to that one.

Yeah. But the second path I think, which might be more nuanced and we’ll see this come about is when I talk to some people that are later in their career, maybe they started in the nineties or something. They talk about how they were the person that had Excel and it was new and it was like I was killing it in my job.

I had Excel and it, and I was the torch bearer all of a sudden of like this amazing way. And then slowly everyone became Excel experts and it became this tool. And and it, and but I think AI will be similar. I think there will be these there’s these people that’ll [01:11:00] be early adopters that are gonna see 10 x performance and everyone’s gonna start noticing that.

And pretty soon whether you wanna be part of AI or not, if you wanted to use Excel or not, you were just busy with slide rules or using VisiCalc or some, some other thing, or you weren’t incorporating into your workflow. Like it just will become part of your workflow. So I think that’s probably the more likely scenario than the other one.

Although I do actually think there’s a decent double digit percent chance that. Ai, particularly as robotics comes online over the next couple years, we will start to see AI sort of be our managers and probably do some humanoid type stuff. But that future maybe is like on the five to 10 horizon.

And for the immediate term, I think it’s it’s probably a five to 10 x multiplier on everyone’s productivity, which is great. 

Omar Habib: Um, it affects productivity, but also makes people a little bit lazy, honestly. Like, uh, I could look back to the years when, uh, I was trying to be the smart guy in the room [01:12:00] while doing some Excel tricks.

And I think this what we grow up. If you are really good in Excel, this, you are really smart, something like that. So you are doing a really long kind of equations to get some specific information automated and structured and that, that now just go to the LGBT, ask him the same exact question, who will give you.

The simple, straight way to get this done, which is really challenging. And you know, it makes people always lazy. And I think that somehow, 

Orion Matthews: so I think I’ve thought about that a fair bit, and I’m probably wrong about this, but my model on thinking there is like ai, if you’ve seen that like four quadrants where it’s like, you know, on the top, it’s like, you know, and you don’t know and then you know, and you don’t know.

So you know what you know great. You know what you don’t know. And then they have the one that’s, you don’t know what you don’t know, right? And I think for ai the, if you, if, and then you know what you don’t know. So like those, taking those two, if you know what you don’t know, [01:13:00] AI is can be very powerful if you don’t know what you don’t know.

So let’s say you just don’t have any, you didn’t go through your class, Omar, and you just start talking to AI about something. And you don’t know what you don’t know about that space. I think you just become a menace. I think where AI is really helpful is when you know what you don’t know, but you know enough or you really know what you know, then it’s an accelerant.

Like, I don’t wanna hire a person to perform surgery on me typing into chat GPT about what to do, but they really have no idea what’s going on. Even if they get all the right instructions, like it’s not the right fit. And so I think that’s where you’re talking about, it’s like they’re the people that don’t know what they’re doing or will probably be amp you.

You can’t use AI if you don’t know what you’re doing in the space. You have to take the class that you teach and then use ai. So it’s like you gotta know what you know and you gotta know what you don’t know and then you’ll be effective. That’s kind of my take on like that piece of the AI [01:14:00] problem. 

Omar Habib: I do agree with you in way, like you need to know some a level limit, a certain limit of knowledge and usually I to expand it or maximize it.

If you ask Yeah, you’re right. If you can’t go for LY and ask what to do, I have a patient now what I’m gonna do, like. 

Orion Matthews: Right. 

Omar Habib: It’s not it’s not gonna like work like that. You’re right. 

Orion Matthews: Well, so real quick, like shifting ’cause I, uh, what do you tell your students if somebody came to you and says, I wanna pursue a career in bim.

Uh, what advice do you have for the younger, the career changers of this audience or the students? 

Omar Habib: Yeah, so generally for some reason when I look back 10 years back, so you look at, there is nothing called BAM in universities, and you might, it might be, there is no even data analytics, you know, that time to be stu people studying in, in the, in university that much might be there, but not every, in, all in all universities or something like that.

So I, I really think first when I go back, if what I should do, so I will be in different level. I would look at I, [01:15:00] I, I, my technique now is just look a successful person in this career and see what he’s doing. But I advise everyone in the beginning that if you look at a career like bim, you know, this, some, some kind of essential tools to, to master.

So sometimes people disagree with this approach, that you start with tools, then you need to know some knowledge, you know, you need to write to, to know how to use the band, and then start write your own novel. Like, that’s fine, but in the beginning you need to use the tool first. So I, I would advise to start with, so tool like Revit, like Navy, since like this, the most used since in, in worldwide, you start to use the tool related to your field.

If you are maybe an architect, you might use ketchup. That’s okay. But start using the BIM tool related to you first. Then try to maximize your technical understanding in your subject because you don’t want end up with being a draft man. He don’t want to be just someone who you do modeling and he don’t understand it.

He don’t want to, to be someone that he do data, but he don’t understand the data. He just nice [01:16:00] kind of communicator or presenter. So start with the data, the softwares that it’s related to you. If you’re working in the typical world, you gotta use Revit. Nevis works. I think for Clash. You might use more new veto, for example.

Uh, uh, uh, make yourself aware with a CC because now most of the, uh, software is going cl to be cloud based instead of standalone base. So you need to be aware more about the BIM management itself as a knowledge. You might go actually for some certificates of if you are not in the early career, if you are, like, you might go for to this, uh, Revit to be certified as a Revit user.

You try to get, be certified in, in the bim. Management, information management, or it’s called the BIM management itself. It is the IO standards. You don’t have to be very experienced to go through it. It just help you to know the fundamental, this six version of it, six courses. You might just get the first course to have BIM Fundamental to understand the BIM workflow and strategy and how the data [01:17:00] connected each other, understand the template, people using it and so on.

I think the baby step is to understand the tool. The most, most important thing is to strength yourself in the technical knowledge you have in your field. If you are architect, if you’re structural or civil engineer, if you are mechanical, electrical, you need to strengths your technical understanding before going heavily in the, in the tools.

Also, just need to know the tool and strength yourself in the technical side. Then you’re gonna find your way and make your life much easier in this, in this space. 

Orion Matthews: And you mentioned that course. Do you have any favorite books? Have you written a book or 

Omar Habib: other resources? I was a big fan of, uh, Eric Wing, so he, I met him to twice and, uh, he, he was in Linda before and now he’s Lincoln uh, Eric and Ball is really, really top class people to learn from.

I think the courses in Link in, in, in, in Linda is really structured is good. Good place to start from just write ing kind of, uh, r training. Uh, Paul also for our structure, you’re gonna find them [01:18:00] in LinkedIn courses or training. It’s open, I think it’s easy to access and, uh, you could get it from there.

Awesome. For if, for box I have for data analytics, I always look at Harvard Business Review. I look at, uh, FDII look at, uh, the other dilute kind of, uh, anana analysis for the data, the, the, the, the data landscape globally. I look at the desk they have, uh, at the end of the year kind of report of a data itself.

But the most, one, the, the most important one for me, all the time is HBR, uh, Harvard Business Review. I follow them and they really like the, the statistic outcome, the they do related to it. 

Orion Matthews: Thank you. And so obviously if I was in the middle of a mega project, you’d be, uh, particularly if I was in, uh, Europe or north Africa, middle East, I’d be calling you for sure.

Uh, you’re the CEO of the WE group, right? It’s, uh, WICO, ctl, 

Omar Habib: co-Founder and CTO. And David is the CEO and the co-founder. 

Orion Matthews: [01:19:00] Okay. And so that’s, uh, we group.com, like W-I-I-G-R-O-U-P if they ever wanted to get in touch that way. And then you’re on LinkedIn, right? 

Omar Habib: Yeah. 

Orion Matthews: Awesome. And so that’s just, uh, I think it’s linkedin.com/omar Habib seven if I, 

Omar Habib: yes.

Orion Matthews: If I’ve got that right. Okay. 

Omar Habib: Even is my birthday, so I always use the same exact name ev all over the platforms. Yeah, 

Orion Matthews: good to know. So is it okay if people reach out, they could connect with you on LinkedIn? Of course, of course. 

Omar Habib: All of you Thereally people. I would more than welcome to help them. And if whatever I do, I actually, I have a small secret here that I always have this kind of, uh, session on Meetup from the guys in Egypt.

I was a literature for free for three universities, winter for the graduation project guys. So over seven years. So, uh, when I left Egypt, I went to Ireland now and created Ireland. So I start, stopped doing, still doing this online. It’s just a passion of what I, I, I have went through a really [01:20:00] nice experience that I started before my graduation.

So in, in like four years before, before I get graduate. So I find that really, really kind of. A nice way to pay off to help other guys is still in under progression. So, however, especially the other grad guys, so if, if was grad or a client, I’ll, I’ll ask him to base for his consultation. But for anyone in just in Canada of still university, I’ll be more than welcome to support and help.

Orion Matthews: Great. Awesome. Well, thanks so much for joining us today and sharing your experience. I always enjoy our conversations. Omar, you are a legend in the industry and, uh, I appreciate you sharing your a all of your learnings here today. So thank you. Oh, 

Omar Habib: I really, I really was happy being with you today.

I’m, I’m really, really kind of feeling really blessed with the invitation. I really find you are one of the really kind of expert guys in this space, in, in the project management project control with the data itself. I find really enjoy the conversation with you in US, and now we have another conversation.

I feel like I’m really lucky to have [01:21:00] this with you today. 

Orion Matthews: Thank you very much. Well, thanks for coming on. 

Host: Welcome to the Major Project podcast, your inside. Look at the high stakes world of billion dollar projects.