What about digital white boarding?

We use digital white boards in different areas. One is facility management, where we have three facilities that we operate at the same time with customers in all three of our [major event] locations. They'll use the digital white boards to describe what the screen layout for all the three locations is looking like, and how we are going to handle the customers in each location.

And the network operators will use the digital white board to describe things like their network design for any given operation. We're moving some of the networks overseas and we hook into other organizations' networks, and there are a number of rules and regulations that we have to have on how the networks are designed to meet government and company requirements. So they'll use the digital white board to talk to each other across the ocean. We've been doing that for about a year and a half.

What's been your approach to getting people to use these collaboration tools?

The primary approach is, before we go purchase a tool we say, what's the concept of operations? In other words, how are you going to use this? We just can't go buy a tool and throw it out there. We did that, about four or five years ago. We purchased some tools, threw them out there, and nobody used them, so it was a waste of money. You need to have buyoff where a couple of organizations say, 'Yes, we'll use it and here's the concept we have in mind.' That's enough to kick it off.

But can you really predict how you're going to use the tool before you're actually using it?

The concept of operation is there to ensure that you have more than one person agreeing to the fact they're going to use the tool. Then you initiate the concept and it usually morphs into something else. Which is fine, because that just means people are using it. Probably 80% of the time we end up using the tool differently than we thought we were going to. What you don't want to do is have a smart engineer who's very articulate come in and sell an idea, and we buy a tool and nobody else uses it. It just languishes.

What happens if you have teams in one or two locations that are all excited to use a certain tool, but the third location that's involved doesn't want to do it?

What happens is the tool comes in and let's say team A and team B are using the tool and team C can't get there from here without the tool. They actually have to buy into it. For example, we've got a voice tool that allows us to do collaboration. It's a unique voice box, a radio system. There are two or three on the market, and they don't integrate together. So site A doesn't want to buy that box because they're used to using a different box.Â

But if sites B and C are used to using that box, then you basically say, 'I'm sorry, I can't afford to bring your box into three different locations when all I have to do is add one box to your location.' So it goes in and that becomes the collaborative tool that we use.

Have you been able to determine any kind of ROI on any of these collaboration tools?

Interesting question. I cannot put a number to it. But the rule of thumb in our operation is, we have to maintain the same number of people but expand our capability every single year. I've got to expand the [simulation] environment that I described earlier. I've got to take it to more places, integrate more labs and more capabilities, and I've got the same number of people to do it. And we've been able to do that.

Collaboration is the key to making this work. I've got the same number of people, they're located across the enterprise, and I've got to do more things every single day than I did yesterday. The only way we can get there is with collaboration tools. It also requires us to change the way we operate, so we're constantly looking at tools and operational concepts. In other words, how do we manage what we're doing? It's a constant battle.

There are two key elements to this. Management's role is to provide the direction, the vision and the tools. And then the engineer's role is to provide the processes around how to use the tools and to standardize the way we're doing things, so we can do it across the enterprise. You can put the tools in place but if you don't have a common language or common process, they don't help you.