A few years ago, I started as a BI Developer at MCG Civil (now HEI Civil). Today, I'm the Data and Automation Director and I'm still learning. But the journey between those two roles taught me something that nobody else will tell you:
You don't have to know where you're going to get somewhere amazing.
How It Started
I came into the construction industry wanting to do one thing: help people and make a positive impact. In construction, impact looks different. It's not abstract. It's concrete (pun intended). When you improve a process, you see it immediately. When you automate something, people's lives get easier.
I started small, automating processes I was doing on a daily basis. Little things. Time-savers. But then I noticed something: if I could automate one report, I could automate all of them. So I made a pitch. "What if we officially introduced BI/data analytics to the company?" Nobody knew what that meant. But I knew it mattered.
One Report
We started with one BI report. Now we have over a hundred reports and automated workflows across the company, touching every department: HR, Safety, Equipment, Accounting, Operations, Finance. That growth didn't happen because I was a brilliant BI developer. It happened because people saw impact.
Today that work generates over $1 million in recurring annual ROI. We are eliminating more than 19,000 manual hours per year across three divisions. A single automated time-off workflow eliminated 1,600 hours annually and produced over $121,000 in recurring savings. Those numbers matter. But they are not why I do this. They are what happens when you solve the right problems for the right people.
The Part Nobody Talks About
Here is what I wish someone had told me early on: you can build something technically excellent and still get it wrong. When I started my role, I did not understand change management. I was building things without building buy-in. I was solving problems without solving for people. I created friction I did not need to create.
That realization changed how I work. Now I design for adoption from day one. I think about ownership, definitions, and how people will actually interact with the system before I write a single line of code.
Change management is not a phase at the end of the project. It is a design discipline.
What Real Collaboration Looks Like
At HEI Civil, I found a community. Real people who show up for each other. Who help. Who listen. Who push back. I get to talk to people across accounting, safety, equipment, HR, finance, operations. Everyone thinks differently. Everyone needs data in different ways. That variety is not a problem to manage. It is what makes the work interesting.
When trust is there, the conversations feel different. We are solving problems together. That is the collaboration I love. Not forced. Not performative. Just genuine partnership built on a track record of follow-through.
Where the Work Is Now
One report became a hundred. One automation became an entire workflow infrastructure. We are now doing something that did not even exist when I started: AI governance. I have designed a full AI governance framework covering approved tools, usage guardrails, prompt documentation standards, data handling, confidentiality rules, and output validation. My team has operated under that framework for over twelve months, and I am now leading the initiative to scale it enterprise-wide.
That work is what I am most proud of, because it means we are being intentional about something most organizations are still treating as a free-for-all.
For Operators, Leaders, and Anyone Who Has Been Burned Before
The organizations I see struggle are not short on tools. They are short on strategy. They bought the software. They did not build the adoption plan. What I build, whether inside HEI Civil or through A River of Data, is infrastructure that is built to be owned. Documented, governed, and designed for the people who will actually use it after I am out of the room.
If that is the problem you are sitting inside of, I am available for engagements in English and Spanish.
The mission has not changed. It just scales differently now.
Want to talk through your data and automation challenges? Start a conversation.