AECO industry & our schools and universities cannot achieve this alone, they will need for our software vendors to be well aware of the challenges we face and provide us with tools. So, let’s hear from Autodesk on how Interoperability and Open Standards are pivotal for effective collaboration across multiple tools and industries.

Interoperability and Open Standards in AECO
Speaker: Henrik Edstrom, Distinguished Software Architect, Autodesk

Real-time workflows in the AECO industry rely on a diverse ecosystem of tools from multiple vendors—making interoperability essential for effective collaboration, reduced friction, and successful project delivery. Open standards are central to addressing these challenges, enabling consistent data exchange and rendering across platforms.

We’ll begin with a brief overview of the current interoperability landscape in real-time AECO workflows, including key standards like OpenUSD, glTF, 3D Tiles, MaterialX, and OpenPBR. We’ll also touch on core challenges such as balancing data fidelity with real-time performance, bridging the gap between design/authoring tools and visualization platforms, and navigating the growing landscape of real-time environments—from native applications like Unreal, Unity, and Twinmotion, to web-based platforms like Cesium, and cloud-connected collaborative ecosystems such as NVIDIA Omniverse.

This will be followed by a roundtable discussion to share perspectives, challenges, and opportunities around adopting and aligning on these standards across the industry.

We also pivot to some of the practical applications of these tools and real-time emerging technologies such as VR and Digital Twins. We begin with a unique and innovative solution that was used by the FDA as an empathy building tool around health and wellness technology.

A Revolutionary Approach for Building Empathy in Innovation
Speaker: Nethra Ram Mohan, Director of Immersive Experiences, HKS

Realtime Visualization and Virtual Reality technologies have helped develop techniques for deeper empathy building. Through narrative transportation a user is immersed and engaged in the world of their stakeholders, thus fueling meaningful innovation.
HKS supported the FDA in the creation of Lilypad , an open source VR Idea lab. This immersive and interactive VR environment allows medical device developers to create new solutions, visualize how their medical devices may fit into the lifestyles and homes of people as well as integrate well with other health technologies. It engages users not only through audio narrations and visuals, but also through carefully curated activities that are performed in the environmental context thus allowing innovators to create more meaningful and collaborative solutions.

We will look at another practival application of a Digital Tiwn Platform created by Jacobs that integrates real-time data through sensors and uses real-time tools like Unity and Unreal Engine.

Digital Twins
Speaker: Jim Kessler, Visual Media Director, Jacobs

Jacobs’ RealScene platform for Digital Twins offers a wide range of real-time immersive experiences connected to a myriad of client-provided external data, simulations, sensor data as well as other Jacobs solutions and data platforms. We will present a number of these RealScene modules diving into the specific requested functionality and application development frameworks. The RealScene platform has been developed for both Unity and Unreal Editor.

We end the sessions today with a session from the Engineering & Construction field, where Newcomb+Boyd is using AI to reduce the time for Construction Administration.

Modernization of Workflows and Processes in Engineering and Construction with App Dev & AI
Speaker: Reeti Gupta, Newcomb+Boyd

Newcomb+Boyd is re-evaluating and modernizing it’s workflows and processes using Data, Real-time processes & AI. This talk will provide information on how to leverage in-house applications to collect data for our projects that will be used to build an AI workflow. We examined our CA process for MEP to build out an inhouse APP to create Site Reports sent in real-time from the site to the office cutting down a lot of post-administrative tasks.

Fireside Chat: Costs, Risks & Rewards of AI Integration

An open discussion with all speakers and participants on the implications of adopting AI at scale—balancing the cost of data, compute, and sustainability with gains in labor efficiency and innovation.