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I have the pleasure of being joined today by Dave Robinson. Dave is the founder and CEO of a company called Quarterback, a leading infr company that
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solves complex problems for critical infrastructure, asset management, and so much more. Dave, great to see you.
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Thanks for making time to join me today. Great to be here, Dave. Thanks for having us and uh looking forward to having a chat. Likewise. So, folks, just to set the
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scene for what we have for you today, going to have a conversation with Dave and get to know who Dave Robinson is. We’re going to learn a little bit about
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his academic and career path. We’re going to talk about his experience uh in the military. We’re then also going to
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be talking about quarterback the company and their core offerings, their services, the markets and industry sectors they serve. We’re also going to
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talk about what led Dave to form the company over 7 years ago. We’re going to talk about some of the details that uh
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they work with with regard to critical infrastructure and asset management and supply chain challenges around there and so much more. Dave, you’ve had an
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amazing career path starting with your time in the Royal Australian Navy. I can imagine that was an amazing foundation
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to build a career on. Um what were some of the highlights of your time time in the Navy sort of before you got you know
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out of that space? Yeah, it was a uh certainly a baptism of fire uh in terms of uh your first sort
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of job really I guess out of high school. Um so uh I went in as an
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electrical and electronics engineering sailor and uh and so from there specialized into really into weapon
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systems. So uh that’s big ball guns, missile launching systems, really the
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critical weaponry componentry on the uh the key war fighting ships of of the Navy. So some of the highlights I guess
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would be uh you know firing those big uh those big guns uh torpedoes, missiles um
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and seeing I guess you know how that all looks in practice as well as you know multiple different trips and uh things
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around the world uh both active service in war zones and and more peace time keeping missions. you just have a
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different life that you probably never experience outside of that environment. Um, you know, you wake up one morning
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and you might be uh, you know, trying to fix a fake flood in the ship and then two hours later you’re uh, you know,
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you’re firing missiles at targets being towed across and then maybe finishing off with a quick sunbake on the afternoon or something like that. So,
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um, it was good and make the lifetime friends. Uh, it was obviously something else that um, that I’d always treasure
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and most people would tell you the same. uh but probably relative to this conversation is the uh I guess the
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things that taught you about how to manage critical infrastructure, critical assets and what does that mean in terms of what it could look like uh for for
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the situation you’re in. Yeah, indeed. And and everybody I know that’s come out of any form of military whether it’s the navy such as yourself
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or air force or army or or whatever it might be. Um, one thing they tell me, as you’ve just highlighted, is that not
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only do you learn about some of the critical infrastructure challenges, but you also learn about what critical actually means and the difference between a what we might think is a 24/7
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electrician or or plumber fix comes the next morning versus it’s got to be done right now, it’s got to work every time,
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and there is no get out of jail card if it doesn’t work. Those sorts of skills are not really something you can get
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anywhere else other than the military, are they? No, I don’t think so. maybe maybe outside of the asset space I guess
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police and fire and things like that would probably similarly have critical services but uh I can’t think of
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anything else that you sort of have to you know and and again something like a gas turbine or a missile system and if
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you’re floating in the Persian Gulf uh and uh you’re in in an active war zone and you’re the primary you know
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propulsion or the primary weapon system of the ship and if that goes down you haven’t got long to fix it uh and so you
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really the system needs to work but also yes to your don’t you know you really appreciate what is critical uh and how
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does that relate to um you know to how we need to manage those things. Indeed. Well, and and I’m sure many people said that to you, but I I greatly
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appreciate what the folks like yourself have done to keep this country safe because we take so much for granted on a day-to-day basis because people like
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yourself do exactly that. Um now once you’re out of the Navy you held an amazing range of of senior roles across
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infrastructure and asset management particularly around reliability and some of the biggest names in engineering and
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so forth which uh led you to actually launch your own organization your own company called quarterback uh somewhere
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around I think it was circa 2019. Um walk us through that sort of journey as far as your career path goes then I’d
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love to then discuss sort of what brought you to launch your own company. Yeah sure. So yes, so I got out of the
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Navy in 2004 uh effectively with um you know trade level engineering qualifications but very specialized. You
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can’t walk out of the Navy and they walk into a a company and start looking after missile launchers typically. So [laughter]
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uh so you sort of I stayed in and around defense for for a while uh really helping them with quickly into sort of
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the the systems side of uh of how those ships and vessels and things were managed. Um and from there that
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naturally then took me into a space which is more around what you know today we call but the life cycle management of
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the assets what does that mean short medium long-term how do you get place the systems and the processes and things to do that uh that triggered me as an
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interest to get into uh and do a master’s degree so to formalize I guess that process but you know something that
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um that uh yeah to really make sure that that the education backed up the knowledge so uh started that with um
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Central Queensland University and part of that was process So I needed a a research topic. So I worked uh on Vy
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industries. Actually Vizzy the recycling and the paper guys and all that. Yep. And uh and did a national project with
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them which put me to Melbourne. Um and from Melbourne then I spent more time with Vizzy rolling out national systems
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and reliability practices. Um but then got uh essentially transition into consulting and consulting in and around
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leading systems and uh and asset management software um in the market. I
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spent about 10 between about 10 years roughly in that space uh you know working with big water companies,
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transport agencies um you know uh all sorts of heavy blue chip critical infrastructure uh companies uh and then
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from there uh spent six years in a uh strategic asset management company that sort of I guess similar in the DNA of
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what we are in the sense of you know a software product that was built to solve critical problems and uh help customers
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be better as well as then consulting services and professional uh professional people to help the customers bring that to life. So in
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2019, uh I’ve been spending a lot of time in and around enterprise customers. So you
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know, think about big big railways, uh big water companies, like you know, multi- agency, multi-ep department
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businesses that have to uh you know, get funding and and manage that money every year in a in a complex process worth
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typically, you know, hundreds of millions if not billions per per year. and they really struggled with the um I
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guess how to make their planning processes integrated better but really efficient and effective and they really
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struggled just because of the scale and size of them. So I saw that as an opportunity. Uh I saw that as also
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something I was quite passionate about. Uh and launched quarterback uh off the back of that. Uh and the name
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quarterback actually come from uh the I guess the premise similar to the American football quarterback but being
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the person that could go in here where they wanted to go and then guide them you know in that direction and make the play happen I guess to get the outcome
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that they wanted. So um so that’s the background I guess the nexus of quarterback and um yeah 7 years later
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here we are. Wow, that’s quite an amazing journey. I appreciate some of the insights there as you’re sharing all
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of it. I can imagine that sort of that as you said that transit as you outlined the transition sort of out of the Royal
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Australian Navy then coming back into civilian life. I imagine that that opportunity to go and study and do your
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degree was it was probably a good buffer zone to sort of get back into everyday 9 to5 Monday to Friday 7 to 5 type life
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night whatever life it was. Um and also you know add to the experience you already had. By the sounds of things,
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they you went from the the significantly big expensive infrastructure of the Navy to also similarly large corporate
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enterprise infrastructure that that essentially was the same types of challenges maybe not firing big cannons.
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Um, so I’m really keen to to to look at that um next step that you know once
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you’ve got some of that under your belt and you had some amazing experience to then realize that uh you know there was
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an opportunity there to launch your own business and and for a lot of us that have gone through that journey you know there’s sometimes there’s a eureka
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moment or an aha moment or we see a gap that we can sort of fill in that. I wonder if you could sort of walk us through um that sort of process that led
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you to that once you sort of come out of the Navy and you’d had these amazing roles to sort of launch your own business and in particular was there an
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epiphany or an aha moment or did you see a significant gap in the market you can go and fill that sort of led you to the
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point where go you know what I think I should launch my own business build a team and and get out there and help people solve some of these complex
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problems. What what sort of drove that decision process and walk us through how you led into that? It’s a good question. So um the the
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opportunity I saw was uh and I won’t name any names but working with one of the biggest railways in Australia uh and
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being deep in their business with the people uh in the middle of a major transformation program and just seeing
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uh I guess the uh the challenges they were having with I guess having a voice that could help them bring a lot of this
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stuff together into something cohesive that everybody could sort of align to and go this is what we’re doing where
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we’re heading to and this is what it means for me versus what it means for you. Um so I guess distilling that
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complexity down into you know practical sort of outcomes that people could work towards. So uh and and through the
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conversations I was having in that process um it became quite clear that that they were struggling to find people
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to do that in the market. Uh so quarterback when I first started it was really intended to be a group of say you
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know four or five uh you know specialist people who could come in and take that role on with the customer in partnership
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but effectively be the voice of reason and but also you know an assertive direction but also a well well
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wellnowledged direction to know where to go and what to do next and where the value really in the process sits. So,
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uh, I had a bit of an epiphany, I guess you would say, at that point when I was asked getting asked by several
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different, um, essentially several different leaders across these sorts of organizations to go and have conversations and, uh, and see if I
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could help their organizations in these, um, these processes. Uh, and then not long after that, uh, we started to grow,
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uh, brought in sort of second, third people in the company and so on. But the projects we were doing were really highrofile like that. We’re a, you know,
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couple of person business and we’re dealing with in Victoria, we’re dealing with multiple layers of government, treasury and all sorts of things around,
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you know, long-term strategies for some of their biggest agencies. Um, and that was very high profile, very high
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pressure. But I also found that I guess, you know, my ability to be able to converse across those layers, across
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those different people and talk in their language but connected back to what the the facts were really made a big
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difference. Um, and I think that’s sort of flown through to our values in the company. we really pride ourselves on
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being authentic uh adaptable uh and impactful and so from day one almost
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that’s been the that’s been the I guess the way I’ve operated and and that’s flowed through to the team. So there was
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that moment with I guess quarterback as a as a services business essentially. Um and the sort of partnerships that we’ve
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had with our customers six seven years some of them still you know and and uh still delivering value. Um and then with
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workup which is our software platform that we’ve built our asset management platform really the epiphany with that
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was early early days uh again with one of our customers who’d been looking for
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a system to do something similar to to what workup does but had been across the market globally and had a look around
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and you know had seen all sorts of different opportunities and uh sorry options and and strategies that they could have taken but nothing was really
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hitting the mark and didn’t fit that space and I remember when we first showed our concept back to said business
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um and uh and they saw what it was and it was a very small concept element of
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the full platform. It wasn’t the whole thing. It was a proof of concept. They were blown away and to get that feedback
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from people who I knew had seen so many different products and you know softwares and everything else um and uh
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and knowing what impact that the tool was designed to have and how it would fit into their their business and other businesses and infrastructure. That was
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the second uh moment for me. So what should have been probably a multi-month consideration about do we start building
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software and do we really want to you know transition into being a software company as well and all these big uh you know hairy questions took about two
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weeks and it was like we got we got to do this guys because we’ve got something special here and I know the market in
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this space and I know what there is and isn’t in there and what we’ve got here isn’t in there and the c the customers need it and if we can’t that we really
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got to a point Dez where we were uh coaching and I guess you know guiding
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our customers into a much better process, but they didn’t have the system to manage that process. And so when it
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come to the management of what we were doing, we kind of got to a point where we’re like, gez, we’re teaching you how to walk, but we’re not really giving you
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the shoes to put on to do it. Um, and so that was again sort of the nexus where workup triggered from. And from there
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it’s been there’s been many an aha moment from there actually uh in the sense of sitting with customers people
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who again you know very experienced asset management practitioners um and the responses we get uh you know it vary
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from I’ve never seen something like this before to this is just exactly what we need to run our business better you know
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all these sorts of things. So, it’s really it’s exciting. Um, but there’s been a few epiphies along the way. Um,
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but um and and these days I guess when they do happen um they feel good because you kind of you know you’ve had a few in
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the past so they get rare as you get older. Yeah, indeed. Well, you know, in many ways and there’s two parts that two
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parts I’d like to just quickly come back to. I think one of the first things that really leapt out of me there is a lot of the organizations that you probably deal
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with what you do with them and for them is probably not part of their core business. getting in there,
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understanding what the opportunities are, how to realize significant tangible uh and intangible benefits from the the
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sorts of things you can do for them. I know, you know, for many companies when we think about things like cyber security, it’s not necessarily a core
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business for them. They have a business partner that does that. I I imagine it’s the case for you you and your team there at quarterback that Dave you will have a
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conversation around initial advisory consulting work realizing the opportunity making it clear that you can do this for them and then they
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essentially entrust you to get in their organization get to know their stakeholders get to know the parts of the business unit so you can then help
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you help them get to that point is it the case that you then essentially become a trusted business partner inside
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that organization to bring that value that they themselves can’t because it’s not part of their core business deliver
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some of those outcomes Yeah, that’s that’s a good way to think about it. Uh the so if you especially with government
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agencies or big business like more often than not, even though they might have, you know, several thousand people in
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that organization uh doing different things, they’re all really busy in the day-to-day running of that business.
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Yeah. Uh and and what they struggle with is to when it comes to things that need to be different or when it comes to, I
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suppose, complex problems that are outside of your day-to-day team or or skill base. um having a partner that
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they can bring in like us um but not a partner that’s going to come in and then write back a report to tell them how
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they should do it but actually get in and do it with them so it’s done and the problem is whether it’s solved or it’s
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ready to be executed in terms of solving um has a big has a big impact and one
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thing I always say to my team is imagine you’re on the other side of the fence right it’s our job to make you look good
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uh you know that’s really what it comes down to and you do that by doing what you’ll say you’re going to do. Um, but
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also like I said, being authentic and delivering solutions that drive tangible value, not just another report that sits
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on the desk with a big badge on front of it that really has no impact. Um, so we live by that.
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Um, and as a as a business, both quarterback with our consulting and with the platform itself, that’s really
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absolutely the way we the way we work. And part of the I guess with with workup and how that relates to what we do in
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the services side, workup’s a, you know, it’s it’s a commercially available software platform. So it’s, you know, it’s not just a tool or widget we use.
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Um, but the beauty of that, it enables us to do things that we wouldn’t otherwise be able to do in the period of time we do. And we can leave that with
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the customer so that that then they’re enabled with this information and knowledge source and data that they can
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then take away and start to be better themselves. Uh, and that’s that’s really a key um I guess a key uplift of from
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where we were when we started to now and and the evolution of what we’ve done um uh you know in the company.
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Indeed. And for our audience, I think one of the things I really want to just highlight just briefly to come back to that first point was, you know, often
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it’s the case that they may have their own project management office. They may have program managers. They may have project manage technical staff, but but
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they may not have actually had experience in the types of things you’ve done or the background or the network or the contacts, the expertise, and in your
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case, the software with workup. Um I is it right to think that it’s often the case that a lot of the organizations
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that come to you and certainly the ones you’ve worked with and I’m sure in the future where that they they might have a PMO, they might have a project manager
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officer or a program manager or director, but what you’re bringing to them is not just the expertise and the
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knowledge, but also the the background experience and skill set that you can just walk in and start today and deliver some real outcomes from today versus
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maybe, you know, three or four years trying to learn on the job. I imagine that’s a big part of the value proposition while that you you’ve
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actually got experience. you’ve you’ve been there, you’ve done it, you roll up the sleeves and printed the t-shirts and they can get immediate value from
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working with you as a business partner in that expertise where it’s not their core business versus maybe just picking someone off the market that’s a program
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director. Correct. Yeah, that’s spot on. And and I think this is generally something that gets missed a lot when um when I guess
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you know a customer for example is talking to you about uh you know what does something look like and and and how
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long it’s going to take and what’s it you know how much is it going to cost and all the usual questions you get asked around a project. Um, but people
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often don’t value the experience you’re bringing to that equation. Yeah. You know, so and you would know this
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from from from what you do as well, Des. It’s a case of, you know, you’re not just paying for a person to sit in a seat to tick a box to
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say you’re doing something. You’re paying for years of experience and now technology technology capabilities to
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enable us to do this to a point where, you know, you would have otherwise taken many years if at all got it done. um but
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had to learn along the way through a whole bunch of um you know ups and downs and that’s really what I guess you know whether it’s us or any other consultant
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good consultants do is they should help you to avoid the pitfalls of the process and get you to the outcome as fast as
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you can um and you know we strive our strive on that uh and pride ourselves on
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that um but the I think the point around you know bringing us in and hit like we
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we we help solve complex problems that we’ve we’ve seen uh our customers spend
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multiple years with others is trying to do. We will come in and have you a solid solution in 6 to 9 months where it might
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have been two to three years bubbling away not really getting anywhere. Um and that’s just the nature. If we can’t do
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it, we’ll quickly say we don’t think that we’re the right fit for this. Um but nine times out of 10 because we get
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engaged in our brand and what we do. Um then you know we are yeah we pride ourselves as really punching above above
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our weight in what we do. Uh and and the outcomes we deliver to our customers I guess a testament to that indeed. and and from everything you’ve
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said so far and everything I’ve heard today on our conversation, you know, there’s no doubt that quarterback has a real focus on delivering uh both high
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impact and tangible outcomes to your customers. Um, which I’d like to get into in a moment. But one of the things that I’m seeing more and more and I’m
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sure it’s the same in your your part of the world in your industries you work with, certainly in the space that I’m in. Uh there are two things that people
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are really really focused on now, which is the the time to market. How quickly can we get this implemented and take it to market to monetize, but also the the
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the time to a return on investment. So, you know, having a partner like yourselves on board working with things
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that you’re experts in seem to me that you can dramatically reduce the time to market and also reduce the time to a
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return on investment. Um, with that in mind, I wonder if you could just shed a little bit of light kind of, you know, on what that looks like with some of the
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customers you’ve you’ve dealt with and, you know, just some key steps around some of those customer engagements that you’ve been able to drive success while
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it comes from without necessarily naming the customers. No, no, of course. Yeah. know the [laughter] uh first thing is obviously
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uh yeah there will be no names used but um indeed but uh again so we have uh and and and
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benefit comes in a few different ways tangible benefits it’s you know it’s not all about you know saving saving money
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but um that obviously that’s a good thing when we can do that so you know one example uh we were engaged over
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about 18 months um by uh by a large government transport um company uh and
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we were looking out part of their critical infrastructure portfolio and across a lot of uh a lot of regional
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coverage complex assets, excuse me, complex assets and uh and really high
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value, high risk. So what we were tasked with was to look at the current existing way that they were getting managed,
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everything about the I guess the strategy and the plans and the things that go with that and then uh take a
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step back and say well hang on is there a better way we could be doing this and are we on point? Uh look fast forwarding
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the movie um you know we took them through quite an extensive process across a range of stakeholder groups in
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their organization use our technologies and uh and technical I guess nouse uh but engage with theirmemes the people
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who really know these assets or you know this part of the region whatever it may be and ultimately got to a point where
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we got a sign off um of uh a complete strategy change over the next 10 years which resulted in you know well north of
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$10 million worth of benefit from a 18-month program that would have cost them, you know, a lot less than the
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benefit they got out of that. But that strategy then set them on the course where there was going to be repeated instances of that efficiency uh from a
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cost perspective, but also from a disruption perspective. So that because of the the change, it meant that a whole
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bunch of these assets that had been I guess uh flagged for uh for activity to be happening, works and shut down and
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all this sorts of stuff, they don’t need to be now or there’s going to be less of it. So from a community perspective, there’s massive, you know, benefit from
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a disruption. It’s a secondary thing that we don’t always talk about, but it’s huge. And you know, as we all know, as we live in the suburbs, especially in
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the major cities, you know, when there’s work on whether it’s our health or education or our transport or whatever
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it may be, um it disrupts everybody. And the more often than not we hear, you
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know, the community and your neighbors say, “Ah, they just ripped that up only two two years ago and now they’re back
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there doing that again. Don’t these guys talk?” And part of my response, well, I work with them. Actually, they don’t.
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So, uh you know, it sounds simple, but it’s a big impact. Another one I guess a different benefit but you know again we
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always for the customer is we were able to help another uh another major government agency lock in a much more
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steady financial strategy for their whole business. Uh and so when you’re talking about long lead infrastructure and um you know things that we’re
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talking about assets that take a long time to either get made or ordered and they’re they’re big juicy pieces of infrastructure. It’s not like going to
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Bunnings and buying a a hammer. um you know the the the lead time that goes
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with that. There’s a massive flow on effect in all sorts of cost and efficiency but also just a a supply
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chain reliability to be able to do what you need to do to sustain that asset portfolio. And so we enabled a uh we
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worked as part of a broader program but again sort of leading and directing and we enabled that organization to lock in
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multiple years of funding in a trusted model where government the tiers of government were very happy with uh and
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and confident in the outcome. Uh but that was transformational back to the to the customer’s business because now they
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can embed their capability. They’ve got a long many multiple years to plan for uh and it just makes everything it’s
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like being in rough seas and all of a sudden the sea goes calm. Well, that was I guess the impact of what that project
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was for for for how the impact we had sorry on on that customer with that project. Yeah. Yeah. And and often, you know, and
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certainly my own experience, I’m sure it’s the same for you. You know, sometimes some of those, you know, tangible outcomes that people talk about
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have intangible benefits and, you know, in in in my past, I work with large logistics operator where we’re doing a
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data center trans transition for them from one uh uh vendor to another. And one of the things
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that we just couldn’t have was an outage. And and what that led to was the ability for the organization to schedule
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loading and forklifts and warehouses and distribution centers and drivers on the road. And uh so the the CIO walked me
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out to the reception and said, “See that chalkboard? See those three numbers? Zero days to death, zero days to harm,
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zero days to incident. You cannot impact that under any circumstance. And you know, if we need to, we’ll talk about
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more money with that.” And it was an interesting wakeup call to go actually yeah when we when we talk about some of that stuff from a business point of view or enterprise point of view there’s a
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lot of focus on cost savings or whatever the case may be but sometimes the the the the value that’s being bought in
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improving some of these systems actually is directly down to saving lives which is a bit of a cold shower for some
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people who may not have been exposed to that. Um, I’m very keen to get a bit more detail around Quarterback’s core
24:26
offerings and services and particularly then to sort of delve into some of the markets and industry sectors you’ve both already serviced and worked within and
24:33
some that you’re looking forward to going forward from, you know, 2026 onwards. Maybe just start us with a
24:38
30,000 foot overview of sort of quarterback’s core offerings and services that they stand on currently and maybe just a couple of examples
24:44
where you’ve you’ve been able to deliver those. Yeah, sure. So uh Quarterback’s core
24:49
customer base um has come out of transport. Um so my whilst my background and other people in our company’s
24:56
background ranges across everything from defense to mining to water and utilities to ports and all sorts of different
25:02
things in between. Um uh the I guess you know the whole where the customer pulls
25:08
you is where you go. uh and uh so for us at the start we were engaged a lot in
25:14
transport and specifically in and around rail uh railways and uh and ports were
25:20
were the two main ones we had. So when we say railway that involves departments of transport and things like that it’s not just the railway but effectively you
25:26
can think about you know big large scale transport uh agencies being you know marine ports and uh and rail. Um from
25:35
there we also had work in across things like health infrastructure. Um we’ve
25:40
done uh different work with education. Anything with big assets and big infrastructure we’ve worked in. But our
25:46
sweet spot uh you know for the from the start of the business to now really has been has been born out of um yeah rail
25:53
and ports and just I’d say transport sectors uh generally um which is where we’ve had a lot of impact. Um then from
26:01
there then you get into the more specialized views of what these agencies are and how they work and operate. And obviously that’s when you start to
26:07
really understand the workings and mechanics of them. Uh and that enables you then to have a bigger impact in terms of change and and improvement.
26:14
Fantastic. And I’d like to dive into a bit more of that customer journey in a moment. But before we do that, you’ve talked briefly about some of those sort
26:19
of core industries you’ve worked with so far. What are some of the other industry sectors that you can service and support that you may not have necessarily had an
26:25
opportunity with yet but over the next 3 to 5 10 years as they have requirements you know whether it’s as you said you’ve got rail and large infrastructure
26:32
particularly transport there must be a plethora of other uh spaces where you can offer value that you may not have
26:38
had an opportunity with that you’d like to have a conversation with. Yeah 100%. So um the best way for us to
26:45
think about or for for for the audience to think about it is any big infrastructure portfolio is our sweet
26:50
spot. So, uh, with workup and the services we deliver in and around workup and just generally from through
26:56
quarterback, um, we don’t go and do a lot of really deep, um, I guess you’d
27:02
call it like, you know, heavy reliability processes or, um, you know, really deep maintenance processes,
27:09
um, in things like, you know, manufacturing facilities and things like that. Um we do work with businesses that
27:15
have typically large scale long life infrastructure that are critical critical infrastructure is if you Google
27:21
that you’ll see a whole list of different um different infrastructure sectors and we can make can cater and
27:26
manage to all those um but generally speaking capital intensive big large
27:32
infrastructure portfolios critical services that have uh assets with long life cycles um but also that you know
27:40
they’re extremely expensive and extremely high impact to the community, water, power, rail, transport, generally
27:46
roads, buses, light rails, fies, all these sorts of things. Um, excuse me, education, health, any of the assets we
27:54
touch and uh touch and use most days, they’re the ones that we can fit into. Um, you know, the previous company I was
28:01
in, we did a lot of work with councils. So, that’s uh that’s another one. It’s just again another smaller scale, but an
28:06
infrastructure portfolio, none of the same. So, and outside of that then, um,
28:11
you know, there’s some, um, there’s some work we can do in and around mining as well. So, you’ve got all the mining,
28:16
rail, and what they call non-process infrastructure. So, all the infrastructure and supporting facilities around the mines themselves, pick the
28:22
port, all that good stuff. Um, oil and gas is another one. Again, the infrastructure side of that, absolutely,
28:29
uh, smack on for what we would do. Um and uh and then you know I guess a bit of my roots in defense uh is always
28:36
something we’ll be interested to get into and we’re looking at what that looks like now. But um especially with the software with workup and and we’ll
28:44
touch on this in the maybe bit later in the some of the places we’re going it’s really going to open up what we can do
28:50
with the customers as well and just in terms of some of those solutions and capabilities. So that’s exciting. But
28:56
yeah, for now I think you know the best way to think about it is critical infrastructure, big infrastructure, the things we touch and use every day.
29:02
That’s the sweet spot where we live and that’s typically managed by state governments um uh or state government
29:07
agencies themselves. Yeah. Yeah. I was reading some of the case studies on your website which we’ll mention in a moment for our audience
29:13
because I’d love them to not only go and visit your website and bookmark it but to actually read a number of your case studies there. There were a couple
29:18
things that really jumped out were uh you know just high level things in in in disc in I guess the way we described
29:26
them but what we seem to be very deep dive things like you know financial performance and and and planning just
29:31
you know what infrastructure have you got where is it who manages it how where is it at in its life cycle of of of
29:38
productivity uh when’s it going to have to be replaced what’s going to cost even I imagine even down to what’s the money
29:43
rate and interest rates in five 6 10 years um some of your case studies talked about things like scenario
29:49
planning programs where you you can then go and discover what they’ve actually got out that they may not fully appreciate. As you said, the left hand
29:55
doesn’t always talk to the right hand, but then actually run some of those scenario and and programming planning to look at what if. That seems to be a big
30:02
part of what you can bring as well to all of these industries where they’ve got a lot of stuff out there in the field or wherever it might be and
30:08
sometimes they either forgotten about it or they don’t know where it is and they don’t even know who necessarily manages it. That seems to be a big part of the
30:14
value you can bring in the early days where it’s some of that consulting advisory saying, “Well, do you know where your assets are? Do you know what
30:19
the state of the assets are? Do you know where they’re at in their finance life cycle? Or better yet, you might have actually capex these. Can we opex them
30:25
for you?” That seems to be a big value add even just for an early conversation that companies can have and say, “We didn’t even know that’s possible. What
30:31
can you do for us?” Um, you mentioned that in a number of case studies which allow people to visit on your website. walk us kind of through that process of
30:38
those early conversations, how you even get to that point and say, “Well, let us help discover what’s out there and play some of those scenarios out as to what
30:44
you can do with better planning.” Yeah. So, it all stems back to to, you know, I guess having asset management
30:50
conversations. And so the difference between engineering conversations uh or finance conversations or maintenance
30:57
conversations or project conversations and asset management conversations is asset management conversations generally
31:03
are a combination of all those things with respect to how your business runs. Whether your business is a railway or
31:09
it’s a gas plant or whatever it may be. That’s really what asset management is about. Bringing together all these
31:14
different factors and then sitting back and looking at what we’re trying to achieve and how we be safe, sure, but how do we drive better performance? how
31:19
do we lower our cost? That’s the nexus of what that I guess broad brush of asset management does. So for me as a I
31:26
guess as a senior a senior leader going in and talking to um you know the senior leadership on the other side of the
31:31
fence and the customer the conversation first is starts a business. So we’re talking about their business. What are
31:37
their key challenges? Are there stakeholder and shareholder challenges that they’ve got? What does it look like across their business strategy for the
31:42
next say 5 to 10 years? Or if it’s government, what does it look like in terms of your service profile for the next period of time? um you know what
31:50
does the customer base change? Are they looking at how they doing things differently? Where does the key risk live? all these sorts of things and that
31:56
typically sets the scene for okay if that’s what good looks like in terms of
32:01
where we want to get to or there might be multiple different dimensions that they’re considering and this is we’ll get to this in a minute but this is
32:08
another thing Dez where look at just look at the moment right now it’s the it’s January we’ve got floods and fires
32:14
across half the country right the other half the country doesn’t have the same problems going on and even in one state
32:21
we’ve got both those things happening within a week of each other so you All of that affects all these customers that
32:26
we have and their infrastructure. So, it’s not just often a question about what are your business doing now and where you’re heading to, but it’s like
32:32
do you know what’s coming or what’s not coming and how do we prepare ourselves for that. Um, so a lot of the time the
32:40
customers we talk to, they’re struggling just to get the day-to-day right. You know, they’ve been whether they’re
32:45
trying to improve their capability or their businesses processes whatever it may be. So when we go and sit and talk
32:50
about probably more the bigger ticket items, eg more strategic concerns, bigger risk, bigger is impacts of
32:57
financials, whatever it may be, these things really set the tone for okay well
33:02
how do we put in place a process and a capability that enables you to be responsive and manage these things into the future with whatever happens to
33:08
change. And so, um, you know, our tagline for Quarterback used to be, uh,
33:13
that we’re asset management transformation advisors. Um, and that’s really, I guess, a pretty good
33:19
reflection of what we are. Uh, so we go in and we help our customers to go from where you are today. There’s probably 10
33:25
different avenues that can can happen to us from here. So, how do we put in place better plans that are digitized in the
33:32
system and if someone comes and someone goes, you don’t lose all that knowledge, but also intelligent, right? leveraging
33:38
good technologies and AI is exciting. We’ll get to that soon. But um yeah, how do you put systems and practices around
33:44
planning in place that effectively future proof your business is best as best you can? It will never be 100%
33:49
future proof, but as best we can get it. Uh that then enables your people to be more focused on higher value activities
33:56
and and getting that output done as opposed to, you know, cranking the handle in a process that’s been the same
34:01
for 15 years and you’re not really getting any better. Yeah. Uh listening to the news this morning, uh the weather prediction for
34:08
Western Australia says that somewhere in the outback it’s going to hit 50° and if there’s a piece of rail track going from
34:14
Perth to to to Adelaide or or Victoria that’s going through that, it’s going to bend and it’s going to expand. That’s
34:20
just the way [laughter] steel and iron is. And then as you said, we’ve got, you know, we’ve got cyclones up in the
34:25
Northern Territory. We got floods uh uh in Queensland and and New South Wales and we’ve got bush fires in Victoria.
34:31
So, uh, there is no more critical time to have a partner like yourselves there at quarterback, uh, to to help them
34:37
resolve that. Um, you you mentioned workup, and I’d like to just just cover that for a couple of minutes. You know,
34:43
when you when you go into the organizations, you’re working with them, you go in there not only with the expertise and the skills and the the
34:49
knowledge and the the team to back you, but you also actually built your own platform uh, tailored specifically to
34:55
the types of outcomes that you want to help customers uh, achieve. um just
35:00
briefly describe workup what it is and and we sort of looked at what led you to build it. I’d love to know a little bit
35:06
more about what it is and how it’s delivered and then we can sort of look at where it fits into kind of I guess imagine you bring the people in to talk
35:11
about the consulting advisory. You do the data and asset discovery and and planning of scenarios and you put into
35:16
your platform work up to to do some of those scenarios and and and modeling but also then potentially go forward
35:21
managing I imagine. That’s right. So again um like most
35:27
things in our in our company the the term workup has a has a meaning uh so where quarterback came from us you know
35:33
initially going in and helping the customer with the direction and then getting the team to roll uh to get the outcome workup is a military term from
35:39
the Navy and so uh when you are deployed to a ship or an operational asset uh
35:45
it’s the same whether it’s army air force or navy but effectively an operational asset for me it was ships and you’re going to a mission so your
35:52
mission one uh one year might be you’re going to but back in the day you’re going to Christmas Island for peacekeeping. So the way that you train
35:59
on the ship is to be ready to go peacekeeping. Okay. Uh so you would be worked up as a ship’s crew to work
36:06
together to deliver what peacekeeping looks like through the asset being the ship and all the associated systems. If
36:12
you were going to say the Persian Gulf for an active service engagement or deployment, it’s a whole different set
36:18
of workups because now you’re talking not peacekeeping, you’re talking active potential, you know, war conflict. Uh,
36:23
and so you need to be worked up to a high level of readiness, but also a different level of readiness, you know.
36:29
So if you think about what that looks like in reality when it hits the ship, it’s an intensive period of planning and
36:36
exercising to get a group of people ready with a plan for how we’re going to deliver that mission. And so work up,
36:42
the name workup comes from that. So when we go to our customers with workup, we can go in and say and and give them, I
36:50
guess, the system that can help their people come together to work themselves up into the relative best plans for uh
36:57
for what the future may hold or for what they already know. You know, that it might just be, you know what, we’re not
37:02
having that many environmental issues or we haven’t got that much governmental change. we’re pretty steady, but what we
37:07
do see is XY Z future uh things coming over the horizon and we just need to be all coming together better so that we
37:14
can deliver a better outcome as a group and as an organization. And I saw this recently with a customer that it was
37:19
across a whole bunch of different business units. Not necessarily a whole lot of I would say external drivers of
37:25
change or or pressure, but internally they just couldn’t keep up anymore because there there was so much to do
37:32
but not just work so much interconnectivity between the decisions that if they miss something it could well be worth 10 or 50 or 30 or$undred
37:38
million dollars. So for them, working up is initially how do we work together so
37:43
that we’re more efficient, more effective, but we’re set for what we need to be set for. And that’s really where the name workup comes from. And so
37:50
uh when we talk about scenario planning, um and these sorts of things, that’s exactly what it is. What are the assets
37:56
we’re holding, the critical infrastructure we have and managed? How do our teams of people manage it from strategic to tactical? So you know,
38:02
long, medium, short-term. um and then into then handing that over for I guess a dedicated programs of works if that’s
38:08
our choice for someone to go and deliver uh and within the organization then
38:14
we’ve got that what we call line of sight so as a line of sight that goes from what we’re doing as an organization
38:19
what do we deliver what do we deliver to our customers um right down through to you know this specific asset in this
38:25
specific spot in this specific year we’re doing this thing because that’s the best thing we can do to deliver on that mission for our customer um and so
38:32
that’s the I guess The premise of workup as a as a system and the way it’s designed is it enables that ecosystem to
38:39
light up and come together uh across all the different dimensions whether it’s corporate, it’s strategy, it’s
38:45
engineering, it’s finance, all these sorts of things. Um but then really brings it all together into one integrated place where we go the the
38:52
business is now as ready as we can be for what the future’s going to present to us and that’s what workup does. Fantastic. There’s two things that
38:58
really jump out of mind here and that is datadriven decision-m that is the new normal and it looks like you’ve nailed
39:04
that and also dashboard views for that decision-making and being able to get a single source of truth that I can make
39:10
sensible decisions based on that data without necessarily being complex and in many ways I’ve seen you know even data
39:16
centers and I’m sure it’s the same in your world where lots of very big things are managed from spreadsheets um and you
39:21
know there’s macros in there there’s typos there’s all kinds of nonsense and then they upgrade from one platform to
39:27
another or one version and things start working. Seems to me you’ve not only solved a problem that was long overdue
39:33
needing a solution, but also that you’ve given decision makers the the ultimate tool to do exactly what they need to do
39:39
while you’re working with them doing those workups to to make decisions as they’re going through the process, working out how to get a better outcome,
39:45
but also then ongoing administration, maintenance, and reporting. I imagine from an onote basis because when I think
39:51
about what you do a lot of people, you know, make day-to-day decisions, but I imagine it is very normal for you to make 3 to 5 to 10 year road maps where
39:58
something you’re working on now needs to still function in 10 years that goes into work up to continue to ensure it
40:04
not only does do that, but if any issues come about, it’s raising alert or alarm or it’s on the dashboard immediately.
40:09
Yeah, that’s right. And I think one other So that’s exactly right. And and the thing that I’ve noticed again being
40:16
in this space for for a long time and seeing uh I guess the market uh and systems and so on, you just touched on
40:22
the key point that is this evidence there’s the evidence-based decision-m it’s an expectation now and if you
40:28
haven’t got it, it used to be 10 years ago that you know the upper e echelons of of of of decision makers weren’t that
40:35
savvy. So they could be fed something through a presentation or a report or something and if that was what they
40:40
wanted to hear that’s fine. But these days it’s it’s not like that. You need traceability. You need defendability. If
40:45
something happens, how is this decision made? Where did it come from? What’s the evidence underpinning it? How do you you know how current and good is the data
40:51
that you’ve used to make this decision? So on and so forth. And it’s everywhere. So what organizations struggle with though
40:58
and you would know this from your um pieces especially around some of the the data centers and so on is around the
41:03
theory. So there’s all this theoretical information that’s put in front of people to say this is what uh you know
41:09
this model’s telling us this is going to happen or you know based on XY Z analysis we’ve done we think it’s this
41:15
but it’s but the problem is from that theory to actual reality of what happens is a big gap and that gap is where
41:21
either value is lost or mistakes are made and so we see with workup we really focus on getting from we call it closing
41:27
the strategy to execution gap and which means there’s a strategy and a strategy is just that it’s a long-term you know
41:33
approach typically multiple years at least of where we’re trying to go and how we’re going to try and get there.
41:39
Backed up by a robust set of evidence-based plans with all the data and everything in them that needs to be there to justify the asset, the work,
41:45
the investment, the whatever it may be flows right down through to the point of execution where the people on the
41:51
ground, the boots on the ground, the shovels and so on are going, “Yeah, we did or didn’t do that and this is why.” And then it flows back. So
41:59
work up as a practical system cuts that theoryish gap that happens from a lot of other I guess you know a lot of other uh
42:06
platforms and things that we’ve seen in the market and um and it’s something we really focus on. That’s great and I’d love to have you
42:11
back on the show again to talk specifically about that in more details which I’m sure we will in a future date. Um, one of the things I’d like to to to
42:18
just cover briefly before we wrap up is when organizations think about some of the spaces you work in. One of the
42:24
things that often is a barrier to entry for them uh and creates a bit of concern is you know what what is it like to to
42:30
work with a provider or a partner or an organization. And I generally describe that as sort of the customer journey.
42:35
And so you know as we both know you know that sort of every customer journey comes with its own set of unique
42:40
requirements um their own challenges their own personalities. But if you were to describe to our audience what an
42:46
ideal customer journey might look like from the first point of contact through to your initial calls, meetings, maybe
42:52
requirements, gathering, scoping through to the actual commencing of work and some of the project management, reporting, approvals, any of the key
43:00
states of handover or ongoing maintenance and management etc. uh what does an ideal customer journey look like
43:05
with quarterback and what are some of the things that that people should be thinking about once they’ve had a a
43:11
chance to tune into this conversation think you know I should just reach out and have a conversation with them around that because that part of the customer
43:17
journey seems like it fits me what’s an ideal customer journey look like uh knowing full well that there is no such
43:22
thing as a silver bullet that one thing fits everything but there must be some key steps that you can advise the the
43:28
audience to that you know you can help them at any one of these steps no matter where they are in that life cycle or that that road map.
43:34
Yeah. So, there is we’ve definitely got a uh what I call the um there’s a there’s a term in marathon running which
43:41
is starting off on the right foot and if Yeah. So, there’s a lots of books about it, but starting off on the right foot
43:47
means you got your you know the sho the right shoes on, your socks are comfortable, you you’re ready, hydrated, all that. You’re not starting uncomfortably, you know, you start on
43:53
the right foot and that sets the tone for your whole marathon. And I use the word marathon because the works we do,
43:58
we’re talking hundreds of millions of dollars, billions of dollars of decisions uh that come from the the work we do and the systems we use, they don’t
44:05
happen in two or three months, right? So we don’t get typically go in and do a project for say a month or two. We don’t
44:10
get me wrong, we have done month or two long projects, but they’re very small, you know, specific things that they
44:16
might need a quick hand with that we know the customer typically and they’ll say, can you just give us a hand with this for five for a couple of months, please find this, no problems. But
44:22
generally we’re talking, you know, 6 to 12 plus month projects and programs. And
44:27
I use the word programs because it’s often a combination of projects within um uh the the scope to to help them get
44:35
to a point where they might be asking for, you know, two three $400 million or trying to figure out a way to reduce
44:41
disruption in a whole region of of their state, you know, by 20%. So these aren’t
44:46
smallcale problems and, you know, to use that term, they’re big boy problems. Um, and so the customers that we engage with
44:53
starting off on the right foot looks like ideally their leadership. So whether that’s a sponsor or it’s someone
44:59
it’s a senior person essentially that’s going to be the voice on their side about why we’re doing this and what does it look like uh engaging in conversation
45:06
and as I’ve touched on before from a at a business level like what is it we’re trying to achieve here and what does it look like what does good look like from
45:12
where you’re sitting from your stakeholders where they’re sitting but also then about the organization you know have we had false starts before
45:19
what are your what are your people like are they are they slow responders are they really go-getters are they mix the
45:25
two what’s the culture like of company. So, you get get a feel. But really, it’s that I can think back through multiple
45:31
different projects and programs that have been really successful for us. And it’s being able to sit down in the first
45:37
hour with your I guess with my equivalent peer uh or one of my senior people’s equivalent peer in the customer
45:44
and really getting aligned on what good looks like, the program makeup, not necessarily the solution to all the
45:50
problems, but the program makeup and what we need to put into that to bring it to life. But there’s also a big part
45:55
about people alignment and style. And people often jump straight to the technical stuff. Oh, we’ve got this best
46:00
data scientist or we’ve got this engineer. It’s just like, yeah, that’s great, but how do you work and what do you like? We’re very authentic. We’re very
46:06
we’re very we like to have a laugh as a business. That’s generally we have humor, but we’re high performance. We are
46:12
absolutely a high performance business. And you know, you could probably think about us as a combination between um you
46:18
know, I guess the the sort of outcomes or the the the level of sophistication from say a big four or one of these
46:23
strategic consultancies with an engineering consultancy with a tech firm, right? But then at the core,
46:28
you’ve got people that know asset management and how this works with deep experience that can engage with your
46:34
people and work at all levels. So that having have sorry having that established and understood at the start
46:41
uh again and setting the tone is that’s the most important thing and if you can do that in the first hour or two and
46:47
everybody goes this is where we want to get to and we’re all on the same page and ideally on a piece of paper on one page you can say if this is what it
46:53
looks like in 12 months time we’ve been successful right and then from there then you get into the detail and that’s
46:59
when you know you’re sure you get into your all the project stuff that goes with it the reporting we’ve got all very well structured
47:05
high quality lean but high quality you know project controls and reporting and governance and risk and all the good stuff that goes with it. We’re dealing
47:11
with you know big critical infrastructure partners. So um you know we can’t be um I guess you can’t you say
47:17
can’t be cowboys uh and we’re absolutely uh you know got very good structure but we’re also very focused on outcomes and
47:23
getting to the output quickly. So um we engage across the organizations uh and
47:29
get them to move. But the number one most important thing in any of our projects that I would say to anyone
47:34
listening is you need a very good leader on your side of the program. And if you
47:40
haven’t got one, you need to get somebody that can act as that leader for you on behalf of you. Uh, and know how
47:46
to get the information out of the rest of organization to be that focal point in their absence because it is the number one success or non-success factor
47:53
in any of our programs that we do. It’s not the tech, it’s not the data, it’s none of that. It’s it’s that leadership on the customer side that can help steer
48:01
the ship effectively in the direction that we’re trying to get get towards. Yeah, that it’s a great reminder that
48:07
people do business with people and uh as you said, you know, if there isn’t stakeholders on both sides of of the
48:13
coin in the business partnership, then somebody’s going to let the side down and and particularly when the scale of
48:19
organization that you’re talking about with the sort of infrastructure and the challenges talking about they need to have, you know, across the organization
48:25
cap contact and capability, but also that trust and rapport. But one of the things that really jumped out at me there was that, you know, it sounds like
48:32
one of the first things you do is go in and develop essentially a common language, a common vocab so that you’re all on the same page talking the same
48:37
language in the same terms so that there’s no missteps or misunderstandings in these things cuz there is big risk in
48:43
those sorts of things going sideways. Well, Dave Robinson, it’s been great to chat with you today and and get to know a little bit about you and your
48:49
background, your academic and military background in particular, um, and learn a bit more about your role there as as
48:54
founder and CEO of Quarterback and how you came to to build this organization. Um, and we’ll look forward to having you
49:00
back on the show again soon. But I wonder if you could maybe wrap us up with a bit of crystal ball gazing. I love to do this with my guests on the
49:06
show. And you know, when we think about looking into gazing into a virtual crystal ball, your organization, your
49:12
industry role in particular, uh, gives you a very unique lens on the world. Um, it certainly affords you a particular,
49:18
you know, insight into some of the challenges that are coming up. When I think about your world, I wonder if you
49:24
could maybe just give us a quick minute or two crystal ball gazing on what you think key decision makers in
49:29
infrastructure and asset management and related industries and market sectors should be talking about right now in
49:35
their boardrooms to ensure that they’re well placed uh with regard to some of the challenges they’re going to face this year in the next 3 to 5 10 years.
49:42
Uh you know we’ve mentioned things like AI uh we’ve mentioned things like workup. what are some of the things they should be talking about as as topics as
49:48
talking points and certainly some of the challenges that you think they need to be talking about themselves internally within their boardrooms and then
49:54
obviously ideally have a chat to you about to see where you can help them. Yeah, I think um there’s so many crystal
50:00
ball in my hands. Um you know there’s so many different ways to be fair part of the work we do generally in our programs
50:06
uh is to sort of give the customer that crystal crystal ball somewhat for what you know the future can and may look
50:12
like in different uh in different future future um yeah future directions. But I guess to wrap up quickly with one thing
50:18
so we’re working on this and and starting to um to get into this now. So if we think about the workforce of our
50:25
customer, let’s just call it, you know, customer A, and they’ve got 30 people, let’s say, in their planning and
50:30
strategy and asset management department. So they’re not a big big department, but they’re not tiny either. They’ve got a, you know, they’ve got a relatively um good number of people.
50:39
Most of those people at the moment are um are focused on the day-to-day as in when I say that yes asset management’s
50:45
long term but they’ve got their roles they got their PDS they’re sort of living in their their box somewhat of what they need to go into work to do
50:51
each day just like we all have for the last 50 years and they go in they do their best they get some insight they
50:57
give some innovation here and there if they’re invited to forums or whatever else but really everyone runs in their swim lane in their business processes
51:03
and they do their work and they go home and if they want to do more they have to get more people because it’s just the
51:08
nature of uh of humans at work. So, um the key thing that I’m seeing now as a I
51:15
guess on the on the edge of what we do in asset management, remember asset management is not like marketing or one of these sort of markets where things
51:22
move very quickly through to the next big fad. We’re talking, you know, engineers and finance people and things
51:27
like that. So, it’s not typically that uh super dynamic rapid edge leading edge of everything all the time. Having said
51:33
that, I think uh AI as you’ve touched on, but especially in and around uh
51:40
large language models and agentic teams or as we use agentic squads uh being
51:46
able to be embedded in workup in our platform. Um, and that being able to do
51:52
decisioning is a word I would use, decisioning and analysis that goes well beyond a swim lane of a certain person,
51:58
but really lights up the ecosystem of data that’s been built into the system again through the base layers of
52:04
foundational data management, core governance, all the good things you need for a trusted AI system to work, but
52:10
still having humans in the loop, but are thinking about you could have a 10person uh human team with uh a workup enabled
52:18
AI and aentic team uh in the system that has you know that we’re just turning on different uh agentic roles and so on and
52:25
so forth and fully tailored workflows to suit the customer’s profiles and what they do
52:31
that can run like a 150 person team with five people running it right at the
52:36
that’s that’s governance and the key shift that I would say to a leader on the other side of this conversation is
52:43
think about data quality and data inputs as a key process that you need to manage more than you ever And it be should
52:50
become almost the primary factor of what your people are doing into the asset management ecosystem because the
52:57
processing of that information the management of the day-to-day processing of information through other parts of
53:02
the business and then how does that get interpreted and and analyzed that will be in the future something that is you
53:10
know not fully automated. There will always be humans in the loop but it will be something that Agentic teams and when we’re building this now we’ll do at
53:17
speed that we have never seen before. uh and your people will have need to focus on the inputs, the data, the logic, is
53:25
the logic good and then managing test points in the workflow. But then governance, knowing what to look for at
53:32
certain points on the output side and being able to interface with the system and run it like a team of 150 people
53:38
that’s essentially AI doing that work for you through trusted workflows on top of trusted data. So if and where you’re
53:45
thinking about okay gez I’ve got I need to get a new team in place or we’ve just
53:51
you know we want to improve our capability it’s don’t I don’t think it’s going to be like it was 10 years ago where you go well we’ve got a full
53:56
maturity journey now we’ve got to do all these things in this sequence and this is how it works and then we’re going to get certified here and certified there.
54:02
That’s all good. It’ll still be there. But I think the winners will be the people who realize where value is created and that’s created through these
54:09
core business processes and they will be lit up with AI and agentic workflow management through workup which again if
54:16
you think about the terminology of what workup does it’ll work your businesses and their businesses up to be uh ready
54:22
for that next frontier of speed and responsiveness um without the the people
54:27
extended people cost and technical debt. uh and for me that would be where I’d be suggesting people start to think because
54:34
if they’re not already because uh it is going to be transformational in the way that I guess not just government but any
54:39
entity manages u you know their assets and what does that mean in terms of their ability to make better decisions.
54:45
Fantastic. some great takeaways there and if people aren’t already putting those uh agenda items on their uh board
54:51
meetings going forward they maybe want to ask themselves what they’re doing in business uh and more importantly have a
54:56
conversation with you and your team. Uh and folks for wherever you see this interview we will include links to all
55:02
the key resources such as the website, social media profiles and so forth for
55:07
both Dave and Quarterback the company on LinkedIn and so forth as well as quarterback’s website. We’d love you to
55:13
bookmark that. There’ll be a link there, but just so you can find it. It’s quarterbackbac.com.
55:18
Uh we’d like you to go and have you grab a coffee, spend some time getting to know the organization on their website,
55:24
get to know the team. They got a great about us page there that introduces the team to from Dave and the amazing uh
55:30
peers that he has in the organization. They’ve got some great details there around the services they offer and and
55:35
their their approach to the delivering those services. Um one of the things that I also like people to do is bookmark some of the case studies
55:41
they’ve got. You’ve got a great resources section there on your website. I’ve read every one of them once or twice just to get my head across them
55:46
and make sure that I can authorively speak about them. Uh if you’re in any organization that’s even remotely near
55:51
the space that quarterback and certainly the tools work up that Dave and his team can offer value to read those case
55:57
studies, get across them. Make sure you can thoroughly speak about them. be aware of where maybe some issues and challenges that you’re not able to
56:04
remedy or resolve immediately particularly with compliance and regulation requirements that Dave and the team can have conversation with you
56:09
whether it’s just over a coffee over the phone or a face to face or Zoom meeting and look at what can they do for you
56:14
today to avoid issues that might in 3 to 5 to 10 years time bite you in the bum. Um and do reach out to Dave and his team
56:21
sooner than later. Um schedule the time to speak with them, start a conversation, see if they can help you out. Um because by the sounds of things,
56:27
there is a great challenge out there solving complex problems for critical infrastructure, particularly reli
56:33
reliability and asset management and more. Um where Dave and the team can get you some quick wins, some quick value, but also long-term opportunities as a
56:40
business partner. Dave, thanks so much for making time to catch up with us. It’s been great to get to know you, get to know the company and the background
56:45
and rational for it. We look forward to having you back on the show again soon, but in the meantime, stay safe, safe travels, and really appreciate your
56:51
time. Thanks, Dez. And uh really great to speak to you and look forward to catching up soon. Thanks, Dave.
