Global innovation and technology discussion with Ausenco CIO, Anuj Anand

[Music] hello and welcome to Red's Business and Technology podcast I'm your host Jackson Barnes I'm your co-host Brad Ferris and I want to first introduce our special guest from Red our founder Nigel did you introduce yourself yeah thanks Jackson really appreciate it so Nigel Hein founder of red we set out on the journey six years ago to reimagine everything done digitally make people's lives better through technology and here we are still doing it and reimagining Technology with podcasts and so yeah thank you for having me here no worries and today we've got our guest who is from azenko the global Mining and oil and gas giant based across 26 offices in 14 countries with projects with over 80 locations recently also named one of the top 10 most Innovative cios to follow in 2021 and Anand do you want a news thanks for coming on and did you want to go through your background first sure mate firstly thank you so so much for having me on probably the most high-tech setup I've been in a in a long time and and ever probably the second most ever so well done thank you thank you already shows the passion and Technology over here yeah it's really excited to be here um yeah so I guess I started probably in engineering 13 years ago as an engineer so before it was Inca uh before senko it was a company called Alcan engineering now Rio Tinto Alcan so that was my first job and got my first job after as a graduate so I did my work experience over there and um then converted the work experience to full-time work uh I did try going on a six-month sabbatical through Europe but that got canned because it was on a one of the biggest projects uh done in Australia in Northern Territory in an area called Gove um and the project was running full swing so it was pretty much either stay on the project or go and never come back yeah and I always thought you know the the advice the old man gave at the time you can always go on holiday you can you can always do that and it's been about 15 years and it still hasn't happened so that's a funny one I got the exact opposite advice from my dad and I don't think he realized how quickly he said mate you're young once so you better enjoy you can be you said you're young once you can be old and working forever so enjoy it while you can so I think a key differentiate over here around uh I'll say it's into among friends around Brown parents no choice everything else will follow that's right and then you uh join a zenko and so as an engineer first yeah so I started in the instrumentation controls department and um spent I guess some of my informative years in in the engineering I guess project side you know so I went to side a couple of times and always had an aptitude for technology so from the start even at Alcan there was a point of time where I decided that I wasn't going to sit down and manually fill in 2760 data sheets um quite elaborate data sheets and you'd have to read a drawing and then go in and type it in and then read the drawing look at the process data go and type it in and there was a lot of it so I had a full year to do it so decided there was an easier way to do this and may or may not have broken through their database um and and figured out wrote an Excel script and you know connected the Excel spreadsheet to the database and uh made sure that I filled in all the data within a few months versus the year that was allocated and then they realized that I must know a bit about technology so got told that I could help out the IT team who needed some help at the time and that was my first foray in Tech doing some work experience there and when I moved to osenko um it was actually very similar in that they needed assistance with the Design Systems and the design tools of the 3D design tools that they used along with the engineering side so I helped build that bridge between the two and that was the constant Focus for me and working on projects helping use technology that actually made sense for the projects versus versus just technology so it was an interesting um Avenue and an interesting background compared to everyone else that I meet within the technology space uh definitely yeah so spend a lot of time doing that and then at some point of time one of the projects that I worked on and built this software platform for the project they voted or put it into a contest for most innovative solutions on a project and it saved them a fair bit of money so that actually won an award in London in 2014 and that's when I guess the c-suite started taking a bit of notice going Anuj must know a bit about technology he's done a few things in the past he's helped us make a tangible difference to projects and that's when they called me into what I call the principal's office I remember sitting down in her West End uh I think it was level three and the c-suite was level five at the bent house and you know one of the EAS came and tapped me on the shoulder saying um Neil and Greg who was our CIO and CTO at the time want to talk to you and I was like oh man I've done something wrong I'm in trouble for something I'm gonna I better pack my bags and get ready to be walked out after this and uh so I did pack my bags and then I go up and I had a very different trajectory I was always part of a high potential leadership program in the company and you know always thought you know I'm gonna go into GM of engineering run an office you know move to a different country potentially and um build my run rate that way and when I walked in they're like oh I need to sit down and you know very casual setting um in the principal's office and I was like yeah what's what's going on and they're like have you ever thought about a career in I.T I was like no no don't really like those guys never give me permission to do anything you have to take it myself yeah I love the guys um yeah so that's how it started off and uh as they say the rest is history and well done it's pretty impressive focusing on systems and realistic outcomes for the business and then there you go straight into CIO did you touch on an overview of azenko who they are yeah for sure so asenko is uh widely spread you know as you said quite geographically spread around the place about 3 000 people globally give or take my team is about 55 people globally across the various regions um so we're very big in the Engineering Services mostly focused around the mining space everything that we do and the core of what we do is around mining we've just moved into the ESG space big Focus for us over the coming years is around that ESG space really helping our clients evolve as well so worth just made some Investments when it comes to software when it comes to technology related to ESG measuring our own outputs and then using that and the the work that we're going to do to help our clients evolve as well yeah I'm interested to know you probably spent the last six years in North America the difference you see between what the North Americans from an adoption of technology versus Australians right because I know you spend a bit of time working with IBM and the Watson and the aibi space so anything you can share that you know good insights that you've been you know playing in the the big league so to speak and you know a little Aussie down under you know what can we Embrace or what could we do better yeah great question Nigel and I think you know I see it over here being back for about seven months now and you know quite focused on the technology meeting a lot of vendors meeting a lot of clients a lot of people in this space The Marked difference I would say is the adoption like you just mentioned Nigel and how quickly people are ready to take the plunge versus what's going on over here not saying that you know what that backward in Brisbane you know little Brisbane you know like for for what it's worth it's actually doing quite well when it comes to technology there's a lot of great companies like yourselves in in this area you know playing in this field however you know in in Canada or Silicon Valley of the north which is Vancouver Brad you've you've seen it you know and um so close to San Francisco a lot of the startups a lot of the technology you know a lot of the offshoot from Silicon Valley does go into Vancouver you know so it's got a great Tech space it's got a great little Community when it comes to technology very good to get talented resources in that region um as well but again adoption's quite fast you know people are ready to adopt and actually take the risks and make the Investments versus what I've seen over here and I think that's pretty important yeah okay yeah so any lessons I guess in your time here only been seven months like would you see that Australians are probably a bit too conservative we should be taking a few more calculated risks yeah definitely you know and it's one of those things you know like it is that practical or reality based approach that I often think about and talk to my team about you know like so when it comes to newer Technologies you know you shouldn't just jump in because it's new right like when it comes to artificial intelligence there was this big buzz when it came to VR and AR there was this big buzz and everyone made all these huge Investments and leaps overseas and I guess the piece that was missing from that whole thing is what the real realistic output of that was going to be what was the goal going to be you know just because it's cool technology doesn't make it great for yourselves right like you know where's the value going to be you know for ourselves we went um you know when it comes to VR and air we actually went with the approach of you know what the mark difference for us was going to be bringing the remote or site-based um travel Etc to the office you know so you don't actually have to be at site um you know remote mind you don't have to travel you don't have to leave your family you could put in a headset and virtually be at the side if that was possible you know so that was the outcome or the goal that we were trying to achieve we may or may not have got to it but we actually set up you know magic Milestones is what we call them you know to to say whether we wanted to go or no go after we were able to prove technology at a certain point so we would set these milestones and make most of our investment aligned to those Milestones so we would always say all right you know gate one's going to be X if we achieve it you know we make a go no go decision at that point of Time Versus saying that we're going to spend five hundred thousand dollars and you know get to this point you know straight away so even when it came to IBM Watson you know we made our investments quite um you know staying quite cognizant of the fact that we might not achieve that goal however if we did tick the boxes we would get a lot closer to ticking that uh you know meeting the goal or the Milestone so yeah yeah good framework yeah fantastic and it's worked so far for us you know making sure that the goal is realistic making sure that we're setting something that's going to be important to the business you know I feel with a lot of proof of Concepts a lot of um new technologies and new adoptions you know new implementations people over promise and you know that that's the problem right like you can always go and it's up to us as Leaders within the business to actually bring a reality check to that situation going well okay you know how are you going to achieve it what value is that going to make to to the business you know and for myself actually coming from the floor I can actually see some of those tangible benefits you know like it will make a difference if we can get um you know a combination expert on the phone or you know with a VR headset being able to look at what's going on on the site universe is actually traveling you know and then they can look at about 20 sites versus just being at one site you know that's that's so cool so how much of that how widely implemented is is kind of the vrar not very much right now right you know so I guess we had we didn't uh we didn't take the boxes at an early stage you know so we actually went through those milestones and went all right we've bought the headset we've actually invested in some programmers that specialize in it so you we've made a bit of traction you know we've got 3D models um that are available to be viewed through a headset you know so it's not just on a screen like you could actually put a headset on you could do a walk through it does take a lot of work to get to that point so is it one of the roadblocks is it is it um software the hardware communication on site change management at this stage I'd say the big problem for us is is the time it takes to you know with developing the software and like taking the model you know if it was a click of a button type of thing to say actually you've got the the model a 3D model you know that you can view on a screen great and like if it was click of a button or you know minimal investment to go for made a b that would make it a bit of a realistic outcome you know at this stage there's still a lot of programming you know with unity or whatever it is to to actually go through and get to that next next conceptually it sounds so promising but so that's great right so it's so difficult to implement so when you go to level six I think he's here where the executives are fine yeah level six is when you parachute today do you um go through that magic Milestone approach when you're trying to pitch like a new Technology Innovation to them yeah all the time you know so every time we go through any of these new technologies innovative ideas we do get the buy-in from a lot of the c-suite you know and it usually takes like two or three people to actually be heavily invested in the idea apart from just myself you know I can um I can say you know hand on heart I am quite The Optimist you know and I look at a lot of the Technologies this has got great value you know like Brad said you know with the VR piece it was like oh this is going to be amazing this is going to be game changing you know and then it might take someone else you know one of my colleagues or um you know to actually go through and you know test it out a bit with me going is it going to get to this point you know have you got enough off the gates or magic Milestones that we spoke about in place to to ensure that you're going to get to that you know how much money are we going to spend before we potentially don't achieve anything you know so it's important to actually make sure that it's not just me making some of those decisions yeah it's really good advice well just on that I don't know it's just interesting right so you've worked with a lot of vendors a lot of Partners like in the business case putting that advice you know I'm coming up with something that makes sense from a commercial point of view how do you as a lead-in CIO lean on your vendors for that help and that assistance right so as a technology business the more we can learn to help you know partner can you talk a bit about that 100 nights you know I think this is a conversation that I've had with multiple people that I work with you know it's that understanding of our business right you know so you can't just have a blanket business case that you think it's going to be a one-size-fits fits all and I think the relationships that we establish you know is um you know we do the same thing with our clients you know we try to actually get into the business and understand what they're doing what's going to make a difference to them to help them prepare that business case you know you might never get to the point of knowing all the nuances but if you actually understand what we're trying to do what sets us apart um you know I think that makes the biggest difference to actually develop a business case together and co-collaborate on a business case versus just saying we believe it's going to be x y z and you know that's the value that we're going to bring to it without really understanding what the business is and what we're trying to do yep so and I think the only way that you can get to it is developing that relationship and having these conversations about what sets us saying go apart or what sets any business apart fantastic yeah so getting to know the business so that's a bit of advice you've got for it Partners what other advice would you have for um selecting a good it partner I think the biggest thing for me is having that relationship being able to sit down and you know anyone on my team will tell you this I think you know even the conversations I've had with Nigel anyone will say this you know we're not going to work with anyone we're not going to sit down and you know have a beer or coffee with you know I want to do that you know at a personal and professional level you know I think what it really boils down to and I'll I'll try to play this out is a lot of the time things might not go through and you know when it comes to technology it's quite binary right zeros and ones you know so there will be points of time where um the technology will not work or operate as as you expected it to to do so you know I think the worst case scenario um is that you go back to a service level agreement and say no you said that it was going to be down you know at a minimum for an hour a month you know and it's down for an hour and 30 minutes and now you have to give us this credit back I'd rather sit down with the person and just say hey this happened or it's happened constantly how do we get around it you know you know and that can only happen if you've got a relationship with someone versus you know just going through and like being very transactional you know I'll send you an email you know fill in the paperwork we'll buy the software and there's a lot of vendors like that you know and when they don't perform you get to that point well here's the SLA you owe us this and give it to you but I think the most important thing is to to be able to sit down together and work through this and get a strong relationship and that's great yeah Partnerships you know Partnerships the success of your role in your organization and which is really the power of the Partnerships right that's 100 right so just on that vein what keeps you up at night as a CIO going into 2023 what worries you I think the every CIO or CCO will say this at this point of time it's uh cyber security or losing information or having having a breach through uh through any framework any partners that you're working with you know one of one of those little nuances you know making sure that you're as airtight as possible you know it's getting to a point of time as we see almost on a weekly basis that you know you might not plug every hole so you know it's that that's really what keeps me up at night at this point of time and with a global team I guess you know your challenges are you know exponential compared to so many others can you talk through some of the I guess you know what you're seeing is done elsewhere in the world best practice is there any anything that you can share in that regard yeah look Nigel it's it's a hard one right like you know the more you share the more you open yourself up as well right like you know what vendors use what strategies you use it's it's it's at that point of time right now whatever you have or say can be used against you as well sure you know and um not to share it you know I'd love to share with you guys you know at a personal level but you know I think what I see now more than what I've seen before 4 is the ability to have the right Partnerships in place you know whether it's um arctic wolf or you know crowdstrike or any of these companies that we work with or talk to it's making sure that you've got a robust structure in place a robust support mechanism in place that if something does go wrong you've got the right team to help you recover or it's to minimize that downtime you know I think one of the things that we're focusing on next year is around making sure that we've got the right DRP in place to recover and have the right recovery strategies in place to make sure that we're able to you know come out off any breach I mean you can't get the risk you just cannot by definition get it to zero so yes those mitigation practices you put in place Partnerships policies controls all that kind of stuff um and just being diligent is is critical and that's what we're seeing a lot of as well well generally speaking English um what advice would you have for other cios in Australia to look at um first would it be compliance just what who they're partnering with without it like selecting a cyber partner like what advice would you give to them I would 100 say to have the right Partnerships in place in the right agreements in place um before anything else because you know you you're never gonna be able to tick every box and you might not have every answer yourself but if you have the right Partners you know they may be the ones that bring to you you know different things or different scenarios that you might never see being so involved in your own business and we've had that over the past couple of years right like we've had multiple partners come into the business going have you thought about this have you thought about this and I feel there's a bit of a trap in this whole piece as well because you could over commit you know and then when's the end of it you know we could theoretically spend millions and millions of dollars trying to cover ourselves but you know what value is that going to be right you know going back to the business value I feel like we're getting to a point now where the cost of cyber is potentially more expensive than the cost of what we're trying to protect back to pens and paper yeah you know it could be the answer yeah it's a scary time and especially as CIO when you partner with someone you're putting your neck on the line right because we touched on this couple weeks ago when the the excise of uber um didn't report a breach and he's facing up to eight years jail time yeah well didn't report personally and then covered it up yeah so he I think I was I was listening to something about that on the weekend actually and I think it was it was more getting pinned because he was covering it up then for the the actual breach itself but it's definitely um it's definitely an interesting time and we've had we've definitely had some different conversations in here right when it's like okay because at the end of the day it's what price you put on the risk like you're saying um and it does it's the topic around many boardrooms the aicd just released their cyber governance principles for Australian directors um and you know the conversations we've been having is around okay well you've kind of got your your total cost of the risk you know you'll mitigate so much of that risk with controls process Partnerships tools Etc and then that last bit is um the insurance um but even that's Moving Like the Way premiums be calculated and I think insurance companies been burned so they don't know how to price it and then I don't want to know what they'll be saying now oh well medibank didn't have insurance so they might have left a bit of a bit of room for everyone else but they couldn't like I read something I heard something the other day that they couldn't get insurance oh really yeah you know they were at a level you know I think that they're required and too high risk too high risk you know and I think that's potentially like I have been in a session recently as well a few weeks ago with with a few other cios and stuff you know and the conversation was around um cyber Insurance you know and a lot of them were saying you know that not only and we're seeing this as well like not only are the insurers minimal that will offer cyber Insurance you know previously it's a little three years a year you could go out and get 10 different options now you get one or two yeah and it's pretty much take it or leave it so your premiums are almost doubled the amount the insurance payouts get to a half so theoretically you're getting quarter of what you used to get prior to to a few years ago it was interesting and um it was Rob I think from McGraw nickel and kind of surprised me but didn't surprise me I guess and that he was saying people are electing businesses electing not to not to to take the money that they would spend on insurance and just double down on their internal controls and spend the money on a cyber program internally so I've even heard of businesses self-insuring yeah that was that was kind of the phrase yeah one thing that even saw our insurance no matter how good your policy is is the reputation hit though all these big brands that have been hit you know what dollar value would you would you put on that your new name front page on every newspaper yeah you get slammed yeah it's definitely not good and again talking about technology you know one thing that came up in conversation today talking about newer technology we were talking about geolocations and you know with trucks and and things like that and quite topical you know talking about Uber I read I think it was over the weekend in North America they're talking about targeting target targeted advertising have you heard about this this one no so it's targeted Advertising based on geolocation so say Brad catches an Uber to go to Howard Smith wards I was there on Saturday yes yes I saw you it's working but the Uber will have a screen in the background um in the back seat that will Target ads to you going to that particular location and we'll say that you know he's gone from here to there you know so it'll actually pick this and again now it's getting to your personal information that it knows you're going from here to here it'll Target ads at you you know potentially that restaurants at Howard Smith wolves and influence your decisions to get to that point of time um the big outcry on this whole thing was in the States you know when um with the abortion debate going on right now Etc you know is like when someone's actually going through to go to a different state or go through for various reasons you know trying to not be known you know now their personal information is actually out there as well you know so yeah it's a very topical one and you know again when it comes to cyber security you don't want that getting out there and Uber has been caught with their pants down multiple times I don't have the best record with all this stuff do they holding personal information it's scary if someone got into Google how much data they'd have on everyone I mean yeah I just don't know if they'd ever get to the point where they can analyze any of that information so that's what I'm holding on to it's like you know you've just got so much information you'd never know what to do with it or how to actually break that down so yeah it's true probably worse with Medicare because they just have like your personal you know identifying with information nothing else where girls were but too much doesn't matter get in so as a CIO you've got three roles really you've got a strategic role uh protection you know maximize the asset and then an innovation role right so changing gears a little bit is touched on a bit of innovation but from an ESG point of view you know can you share some of the Technology Innovation that you know you guys are going to be faced with over the next you know five ten years I feel in in its infancy right now right Nigel like everyone's talking about it there's so many different variances to it and I feel like no one on none of the software vendors have really cracked the code when it comes to EST just as yeah very early days right very early days you know everyone's coming and selling it to you you know going oh I've got this and then you say well who's used it before or wherever you used it and they're like no one yet but you know you you'll we want you to be here first yeah we'll get we'll get you to be an early adopter you know so I think we're at that stage but we have just signed um with a platform pretty early day so I'm not going to say their name sure but we've just done another really great platform where we think and we've gone through the same analysis that you know I spoke about earlier you know making sure it's the right fit for our business we'll be able to get reports you know publish our own monthly ESG statistics um you know in a single pane of glass you know change that and to make sure the inputs are correct going into this and get the outputs and then hopefully we'll get to a point where we'll get our clients to use the same systems and tools that that we actually have in place as well fantastic so again I feel early days but definitely a focus area for us and what we'll we'll work through it with certain vendors to crack that code what are the change gears a little bit and um discuss something more relevant to I guess um red and Technology we've noticed a massive growth in co-managed IT services or that hybrid support model where you've got some internal team looking at a certain it support functions and then you Outsource other other parts of that what's your take on that good ban or thoughts yeah look we went down this path a few years ago where we we went you know like I'd say we had a bit of uh you know top three approach you know we narrowed down to look at where managed Services would take us and what it would look like for usenko um in the end of it you know by the time we actually got uh the point whether we were getting the presentations and the numbers it actually didn't get to the even close to the numbers we wanted it to in a full managed service model so we do use managed services for certain things you like when it comes to network as a service and and certain bits and pieces however you know I think the answer to your question is like my belief is a hybrid model is the way to go you know keep some control and and you know make sure that we actually like I'd go back to the most basic economic principles of comparative advantage you know do what we do best and you know get someone else to do what they do really really well to do it really well as you know themselves so so that's the theory that that I've used um and I think the most uh legs you know for Success would be around that model however it has to be cost effective while still having the right element of physical touch you know and that white glove service you know currently within our business you know most of the people will tell you that they do have that you know ability to just pick up a phone and someone will be there in like five minutes right like you know if you're in the office or pick up the phone virtually you know on a team's call and someone will be able to assist you quite quickly one of the things that we found as we started testing this out in in just Service delivery was there was a lack of that you know and there might be you know a bit of a transactional piece that we just spoke about with a vendor slash client relationship even internally you know like our clients are actually everyone's sitting on the floor however being your size I guess as well right I guess that's the different thing is it's a right fit partner in there right um whereas you throw three thousand people so many countries and offices and that kind of thing it'd be pretty hard to you know just fully Outsource that commercially I'd imagine um so your approach and advice for similar size organizations would be to assess what your internal team is good at yeah and then what makes sense to Outsource correct yeah that's 100 you know like bring a partner like red you know say you're the best in infrastructure or manage you know whether it comes to Microsoft um you know and that set of tools you know that I think that should be the focus area and say like keep your internal team you know make sure that their focus areas on certain things you know that level one or level two support and then like everything else can be behind the scenes when it gets escalated yeah yeah I want to say back on the on the cyber security um comments you made earlier um how has cyber security evolved in the I mean being a zenko 13 years now but since you went into the IT realm five plus years ago how's it evolved from back then until now I I can honestly say like at the start what we would look at in terms of cyber security was what antivirus protection you have on your on your laptop yeah you know now you can think of about 10 different things straight at the you know top of the list you know like have you got ITP have you got the right you know ad solution have you got multi-factor authentication have you got all these other things in place versus you know I feel like the conversation of what um antivirus is on your computer no one cares about anymore right like that's literally gone out the door whereas five years ago it was like oh have you got so far so have you got you know McAfee or whatever it was you know back in the day back in my day sorry Jackson it might it might not be your day it's only five years but no I I agree I agree this was you know these be the antivirus tool and all my antivirus tools better than your antivirus yeah it'll pick up as much malware but now that's completely completely no one talks about that anymore well that conversation is a movie right that was antivirus is more a protection mechanism now it's more Strategic Defense you know like you have all you've got to have xdr you've got to have you know the human firewall you got over all of the pentas and um you know it's quite um pervasive yes so many attack surfaces that's interesting with 3 000 staff so right obviously like people can sometimes in this instance be your you know weakest line of defense around training awareness testing that kind of stuff do you have a we have like that is literally one of the things that we looked at a year and a half ago when we started having this conversation we could have you know again we could spend millions of dollars on you know cyber in in a whole bucket of of funds however the end user was really the weakest link you know so what we've done over the past 18 months is we have a monthly awareness campaign um pulled up the statistics actually today for various teams because we're talking a few of the teams you know and like over the Year how have they performed and everyone's done pretty well you know most teams have actually like learned you know like we used to have a click rate that was well below industry average and now we're well above the industry average in in you know doing a lot better wow that's cool yeah got those data points we've got the data points which is the most important thing right Brad like you know we've gone through and like we've had a couple of campaigns where zero percent you know not anyone's cling maybe the easier sort of phishing emails but still you know not one click across a couple of campaigns is brilliant that's really good compared to where we started off with I think one of the campaigns we had a 37 or 38 click rate where the industry average was 15. yeah you know so so seeing those numbers start coming back you know it actually goes to the fact that we're making the right Investments you know actually doing this you know there was points of time where I thought we need to actually pivot and look at a different strategy because this is not working that's pretty good like that's cool to see the the benefits and that's like I almost it's terrorist awareness training is fairly low cost really um for pretty high value so um no it's definitely something we're a big big Advocates of so it's good to hear that you've um that's that's some really good numbers actually yeah good work and I'd never say that we've cracked the code when it comes to it but you know I think it actually goes to show to your point is that it does make a difference you know if you can educate the people in you know when when we have a new starter they actually go through cyber security awareness training yeah you know never was the case before so and again you know it might take one single click that's all it takes right like so anything more than zero percent to fail theoretically but um you know I think we're starting to get a bit more comfortable that we are on the right track and we are educating the people with the right platforms and the tools versus you know we had our strategy session at the start of the year in Canada we were actually thinking of you know changing the way we're doing things and what other um you know holistic approaches can we use to start teaching people about cyber security and when not to click um but then this the numbers are starting to prove themselves which is good that's awesome yeah well the unconscious of time we've gone for a while and Nigel about any other questions you guys had am I allowed to ask another one come on so I do have two okay sure we can always cut it back um I'm interested around that Innovation piece is there anything else you can talk about that's cool that's a tech that you maybe you're not playing with what you like to play with um if it's if if you can talk about it yeah 100 Brad I love talking about it because um you know it's something that I started a few years ago was around um you know data as an asset you know like I've always thought that that's really the value for a company like ours and you know the more you look at it these days with again going back to the Cyber topic just touching on it you know with people losing data that's probably the most critical piece and for a company like ours it is pretty important to like Leverage our data and I don't think we've done enough in that space which is why we started looking at Alternatives and you know IBM Watson was one of the examples that you know we spoke about offline but you know trying to leverage our data our historic data you know senko has been around for 30 years and we've got 30 years of information some of it's still in files and folders some of it's just scan drawings however there's a lot of value in almost every bit of data you know it might be how not to do something even the majority of the time is how to do something but you know it might be a good example on how not to do something but you know we haven't got that single pane of glass of you know show me a gold project that we did in remote Africa you know between um 2006 and 2008 you know so yes people know like I I know where to find that information because I've been around for a while but you know not someone starting tomorrow will be able to find that information easily so that's really a focus area for us next year and we're trying to come up with the right data platform and single pane of glass using AI saying you know Brad started today what is he going to work on all right he's an electrical engineer he might want to look at you know he's working on a project that's a gold plant in uh remote Asia you know what else can we show him that could help him you know kick his hit the ground running yeah you know so that type of AI approach is really what we're thinking about now it's amazing uh looking we're working on similar things we're a data stroke business as well effectively but just being able to have that Insight at your fingertips yeah it's good that yes I know it's there and I can spend three hours and I can dig it up but how much quicker I can make better decisions having that information kind of at my fingertips so yeah it's exciting yeah it's like we want to get there again we're not there yet right yeah and I don't think like I've spoken to so many companies about this and you know different vendors and different you know Partners Affairs Etc it's a very difficult one you know and people will come and sell you like a data lake house and and what's the latest one I had um something else to do with with lakes and and fishing but yeah I don't know um but yeah you know there's all these Solutions out there but finding the right one and making sure that it is ticking the boxes that we need from a realistic and practical purposes the difficult piece to the puzzle that's cool yeah and then my other question more personal and I don't think we covered the beginning but why did you go to Canada um so interestingly so this was my second stint in Canada I didn't go in an engineering role in 2011 okay um so that was more around engineering design systems making sure that we standardized across North and South America um with the right tool set the right standards right procedures you know making sure that a product coming out of Vancouver or Santiago or Lima looks the same as a drawing coming out of Brisbane yep and that was it loved it came back to Australia moved into a technology role and some of the thinking was around you know building the team and growing the team with a you know the resources that were in available in Vancouver versus versus the resources that were available in Brisbane for the reasons you mentioned earlier yeah and we did you know so a lot of the core infrastructure team is actually based out of Vancouver okay compared to Brisbane and the last question and the reason you came back yeah liking it so far yeah cool yeah good one we've gone a little bit longer than usual but I think if you say um Canada and data anymore Brad's gonna ask for your autographs thanks for just coming I really appreciate it thanks for joining yeah thanks for having me mate really appreciate it guys are coming in fun conversation [Music]

2022-12-11 11:48

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