Jim Jacobi, P.E., just entered his ninth year with Houston-based Walter P Moore, where he is a senior principal and CIO. Jacobi’s background is in structural engineering — two degrees in civil engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor — and prior to joining Walter P Moore he was CIO at Halliburton, and before that, vice president and chief engineer for Brown & Root.

“I progressed up through engineering, but was always enamored with technology,” said Jacobi, who exudes a welcome professional enthusiasm. And he has good reason: “We are so fortunate to work in the profession in a time like this,” Jacobi explained. “I use a slide rule with the best of them, but [technology] has a lot more potential. It's fun to come to work everyday.”

What does that workday consist of? Much more than “bits and bytes;” Jacobi said his formula for success is to balance reliable technology and a good business plan. As many firms can attest, the person tapped to perform the “CIO” duties has often lacked a refined business sense.

“Dial back the clock 15 years, and it was common for the CAD operators to be tapped,” Jacobi said. “A lot of them were ill-equipped. You have to have the right skill set.” Fast forward to the present, and Jacobi noted that the industry is recognizing how important it is to install CIOs or CTOs who can flex business muscles, too.

“A lot of the engineers have no idea the level of complexity that is really entailed — this is big business,” said Jacobi, who spends a good amount of time meeting with his technology steering committee, which is populated with senior managers of operating groups, to get input on how to pursue technology. Once his priorities, goals, and annual budget are in order, Jacobi captains the team that develops the emerging technology, always asking himself, How do we get it from the laboratory envirnoment into the production line?

He also has to find time to “keep up with the fantastic offers” that reach his inbox everyday, whether he asked for them or not. “There’s a lot of junk to sift through,” laughed Jacobi. And though separating the w00t from the spam is often an uphill battle, he keeps a sharp eye out for intelligence surrounding emerging areas, like cloud computing and social networking:

Cloud computing: “I'm watching cloud computing because, strictly form a cost containment perspective, it would be great. We could have a significantly lower cost, without having to maintain our own internal server farms. It’s intriguing from a financial perspective."

Social networking: “How is all that going to play out? Per the ‘always-connected’ generations, what are their expectations and what can we learn from them? What's the best map for an engineering firm like us? We’re in a business space that’s not known for a litigation-free lifestyle; how do you manage all that free-flowing communication in a business envirnoment?”

He also has concerns, like the performance barriers of the equipment, for example,  which bog down as model sizes grow. “The slower the performance, the more frustrated the designers and engineers get — something I’m worried about.”

And like many others in his field, Jacobi knows how important it is to gather and share information with his contemporaries, and although you have to be careful to protect a competitive advantage, he understands that with new technology “you can’t hide your candle under a bushel basket for long.”

“The real differentiator is not the software and the hardware they purchase; it’s the innovation wrapped up in the minds of the team,” Jacobi explained. “It’s about how we function as a team.”