Pictured: Jim Barrett, Turner Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer and Jennifer Downey, Innovation and Virtual Design, Construction Manager
The summit's enthusiastic and visionary programming serves to motivate attendees to continuously drive positive change for Turner and the broader industry
SILICONE VALLEY, Calif. (PRWEB) April 29, 2019
Turner Construction Company held its fifth Annual Innovation Summit in Silicon Valley, California. The event brought 225 Turner colleagues together with business and industry thought leaders to exchange ideas and collaborate around the theme of Courageous Innovation: Exploring What Could Be.
Presentations from start-up founders and CEO’s revealed how the industry is being transformed by innovations in artificial intelligence, business intelligence, 3D printing, architecture, disruptive manufacturing processes, and robotics.
Speakers included Smartvid.IO CEO Josh Kanner, Versatile Natures CEO Meirav Oren, Reconstruct CEO Zak MacRunnels, AI SpaceFactory CEO David Malott, BLOX CEO Chris Giattina, and Dusty Robotics CEO Tessa Lau.
The program featured presentations on innovating through intrapreneurship by Microsoft's former Chief Xbox Officer Robbie Bach; on a transformative process for rapidly prototyping and testing new ideas from New York Times bestseller Jake Knapp, on facilitating disruptive innovation from within from Boeing HorizonX Investing Director Beckett Jackson; and on how to adopt an entrepreneurial mindset from PlanGrid co-founder and CEO Tracy Young. Daniel Guillory, Head of Global Diversity and Inclusion at Autodesk, discussed how diversity is essential to the creative process and relayed a model for advancing innovation using a founder’s mindset.
Craig McGrory, Group General Manager Transformation and Digitization at CIMIC introduced HOCHTIEF's global innovation initiative whose purpose is to leverage intelligent technologies to enhance the efficiency and quality of project delivery.
Participants and sponsors of Turner’s Innovation Challenge – a program which provides a structured path to bring great ideas from conceptualization to company-wide adoption – presented on innovative technologies and processes being explored at Turner. Attendees learned how the ongoing Innovation Challenge is helping Turner advance its understanding and utilization of artificial intelligence; use data to work smarter through business intelligence; explore new applications for prefabrication and modularization; enhance productivity through transformative process improvements; and develop engineered solutions for the disaster resilience and recovery organization SBP.
Showcasing successful intrapreneurial ventures already underway at Turner, the programs final presentation series featured talks on the Turner Accelerated Payment Program™ which gives subcontractors the opportunity to receive accelerated payments thereby improving their cash flow and strengthening their balance sheets; The Turner Engineering Group which provides skill, oversight, and analysis to optimize project design and solve design-related challenges; and Turner’s Self-Perform Operations which add value through the targeted use of skilled in-house labor forces.
“The summits enthusiastic and visionary programming serves to motivate attendees to continuously drive positive change for Turner and the broader industry,” said Jim Barrett, vice president and chief innovation officer. “The summit is an important part of Turner’s cycle of innovation development and supports our mission to be an innovation leader that creates significant and measurable new value to our clients and stakeholders.”
About Turner Construction Company
Turner is a North America-based, international construction services company. Founded in 1902, Turner first made its mark on the industry pioneering the use of steel-reinforced concrete for general building, which enabled the company to deliver safer, stronger, and more efficient buildings to clients. The company continues to embrace emerging technologies and offers an increasingly diverse set of services. With an annual construction volume of $12 billion, Turner is the largest builder in the United States, ranking first in the major market segments of the building construction field, including healthcare, education, sports, commercial, and green building. The firm is a subsidiary of HOCHTIEF, one of the world's leading international construction service providers. For more information please visit https://www.turnerconstruction.com.