“The pace of change has never been this fast, yet it will never be this slow again.”
Nearly 1,500 days since its last user conference, Trimble CEO Rob Painter welcomed more than 5,000 construction industry professionals to its Dimensions 2022 event November 7-9 at The Venetian Resort in Las Vegas.
In his keynote, Painter addressed how the company is driving technological change to optimize the entire construction project workflow.
Painter said Trimble remains centered around its mission of changing the way the world works and doing so via its Connect & Scale strategy, launched in January 2020. The customer-centric strategic direction is two-fold: 1) connect hardware and software, and 2) dynamically link project stakeholders, data and workflows across project lifecycles.
“Connect & Scale is modernizing and simplifying how we do business and making ourselves easier to do business with,” Painter said. “We have tens of millions of users of our software at Trimble today. We manage over $500 billion of projects through our systems. It’s an enormous amount of breadth and reach that we have, and what we’re doing is intersecting that with our underlying technology stack.”
With that, Painter outlined some the progress that resulted from $2 million in research and development in the last two years:
- A new 3D laser scanning portfolio
- The MX9 and MX50 mobile mapping systems
- The R12i GNSS receiver with tilt compensation
- Connect2Fab for CAD and CAM fabrication
- And Trimble Business Center enhancements
To create more digital and open workflows, as well as enrich its software ecosystem, the company has also been active on the acquisition and partnership front. Recent acquisitions included construction financial management software provider Viewpoint and project management software provider B2W.
And perhaps the most important milestone along Trimble’s quest to digitize and streamline construction workflows was the announcement of an expanded partnership with Microsoft and the creation of the Trimble Construction One Cloud. (We’ll share more on that partnership in an upcoming article.)
“It’s our ambition to build the best industry cloud on the planet,” said Painter. “We want to build a technology platform that’s fortified by a common data environment that’s extensible for anyone to use to improve upon this platform. And that’s all about for you to work with partners you can choose to work with.”
Those in attendance also heard a special virtual message from Microsoft CEO Sayta Nadella about the partnership.
“Without question, we are living through a period of historic economic, societal and technological change. But for all of the uncertainty we continue to see in the world, one thing is clear: organizations in every industry are turning to digital technology to help them do more with less so that they can navigate this change and emerge stronger.
“There is no better example of this than construction. There is such an incredible opportunity to use digital technology across the entire construction project workflow to transform and significantly improve productivity, safety, quality and transparency, as well as sustainability. This is just the beginning in a world facing increasing headwinds. Digital technology is the ultimate tailwind.”
Painter closed by saying: “Everything we’re working on is meant to help you do your jobs more productively and sustainably, and your message to us is loud and clear. We’re building the reach of Trimble. We’re investing in the technology stack. We’re building industry clouds, and Trimble Construction One makes it easy for you to access all of this.”
