CHICAGO – The most critical issues of responsibility for IT management include AEC design and business systems, IT infrastructure specific to AEC businesses, and defining the AEC IT leader’s role. Leading CIOs — including Chris France, Kurt Anderson, and Jim Jacobi — will be discussing these issues and others during the AEC Technology Strategies 2010 Conference hosted by Stagnito Media. Scheduled for May 20-21 in Green Valley Ranch, Las Vegas, the central theme for the 11th annual event is “Tactics for Adapting Today, Strategies for Thriving Tomorrow.” Join fellow business and IT leaders in architecture, engineering, and construction in this peer-to-peer forum hosted by HOK’s Senior Vice President and CIO Ken Young, AIA, to learn about the business issues driving technology decisions in design and construction firms.

StructuralCIO.com editors believe that the following sessions will be of particular interest to you as a structural CIO:

Keynote Session: Demystifying the Cloud: Virtualization, BIM and the AEC Industry, by Chris France, Chief Information Officer, Little
As the AEC industry continues to embrace Building Information Modeling (BIM) as a platform, firms are faced with a series of new challenges in fully utilizing the information portion of building models. Successful organizations require increased processing power at the desktop as well as the ability for geographically dispersed team members to collaborate on the same model at the same time. Furthermore, the solution needs to be cost-effective. This session will explore how virtualization can help AEC leaders realize significant costs-savings while improving business processes as they embrace the challenges presented by technology. Chris will share lessons learned as his firm coupled virtual/cloud computing technology to BIM to overcome the technical obstacles, reduce the costs of IT infrastructure, and allow their people to “go mobile.”

Chris France has specialized in information technology for over two decades. He started his career at IBM Federal Systems as a software and systems engineer and progressed to program manager of major DOD systems. From IBM, he worked at Bank of America where he led efforts to merge and consolidate the information technology of major bank acquisitions. Prior to becoming the CIO of Little, he consulted in the technology-intense Wachovia Capital Markets. At Little, Chris not only leads the firm’s information technology strategy, planning, and operations, but he also works with clients to ensure that their diverse technology needs are addressed and incorporated during the design process of their new facility.

Focus Session: Leveraging Business Systems Technology for Effective Project Management, by Kurt Anderson, Chief Information Officer, GeoEngineers, Inc.
Project management is the core of business in professional services companies. This session will discuss how AEC firms can better align business systems with today’s technology. The presentation will center on three primary themes — integrating project management elements with enterprise business systems; technology implementation with the overall goal of web-based, anywhere-anytime access to systems; and close alignment with business leaders (COO, CFO, and CEO) for successful design and implementation. The presenter will show how successfully integrated technology-based business systems can support the tracking of client relationships, project planning, project execution and team collaboration, and work product delivery. In addition, the session will demonstrate how effective business systems can also enable easy access to management reports and metrics and facilitate accountability across organization.

Focus Session: Social Media and the AEC Industry (Roundtable Discussion), facilitated by Jim Jacobi, P.E., Senior Principal & Chief Information Officer, Walter P Moore
The AEC industry is experiencing the entry of various social media venues for communicating in new and unique ways. This working group discussion will explore the perceived and realized benefits of different social media types as applied to the business model used by the AEC industry. This discussion will explore the following areas, among others: catalog/statistics of social media technologies; computing risks and security issues associated with social media sites; legal considerations; electronic communication expanded and redefined; examples of social media sites and their business use in AEC; sustainable content management models; and the value proposition for AEC players.

Visit www.aectechstrategies.com to register for the conference or to learn more about the two-day agenda, sessions, and speakers.