Autodesk (ADSK) – Running in Tandem
This past week, the JPMorgan Digital Twin Conference took place and analyst Sterling Auty had the opportunity to speak with the GM of Autodesk Tandem, Robert Bray.
Tandem is the company’s cloud-based platform that transforms the “built asset lifecycle.” Autodesk Tandem helps AEC firms harness BIM (Building Information Modeling) data throughout the project lifecycle to create and handover a digital twin. Autodesk Tandem helps owners connect operational systems to the digital twin turning fragmented data into business intelligence.
The example given at the conference was a building with a 50-year lifecycle. It will have an initial construction project and then multiple potential renovation projects over the years, and Tandem is able to work across the different Construction Cloud projects and leverage historical data for new projects. Additionally, if a designer adds a piece of equipment and then a project contractor ends up ordering a different part, Tandem will reconcile what was actually delivered and all of the specific parameters like serial number, order data, predicted maintenance schedules, etc. to make sure the right data is pushed out to other applications.
Focus Areas – The biggest areas of interest for Tandem are those that are more “BIM mature,” meaning customers that are already using Autodesk tools to their fullest extent and thinking about using the data holistically through the asset lifecycle. Right now, according to JPMorgan, Europe broadly falls into this category as well as specific large customers in North America.
Repeatability – Many of the questions that came in during the session focused on competition, and according to Mr. Bray, the biggest differentiator of Tandem is its configurability and repeatability. While there are other digital twin solutions out there for the AEC industries, everything for the most part needs to be customized on an asset-by-asset basis, making creating a digital twin an expensive and time consuming process. Autodesk instead has the vision of making Tandem a more repeatable process that can be applied to multiple assets while still being configurable to the workflows and data requirements of a particular asset owner.
Pilot Phase – At the moment, Tandem has over 300 pilots running that generally focus on delivering value to a single site or new construction project. Over time, Autodesk plans to take these Tandem use-cases and push them to the owners’ entire portfolio of projects and sell additional product like BIM 360 and the construction cloud into the segment. The repeatability, which JPMorgan discussed above, is a critical part of being able to extend to an owner’s business on a larger scale.
The next catalyst for Autodesk will be its Q3 earnings report, scheduled for November 23rd after the close.
