Tobias Pforr with Octave

SUMMARY KEYWORDS Barcelona Cyber Security Congress, industrial talk podcast, Tobias Pforr, asset management, utility challenges, network intelligence, data quality, electrification, distributed energy, regulatory requirements, actionable insights, documentation solution, dynamic environment, Octave Live, industrial engineering. 00:00 All right, before we get into the conversation, I want you to be aware of a conference that you need to put on your calendar, and you have time.

It is the Barcelona Cyber Security Congress. It is necessary. You need to up your cybersecurity game. You're connected, you need to make sure that you're protected.

Right here, this event, Barcelona Cybersecurity Congress. It is November 3 through the.. you have time, November 3 through the fifth this year in Barcelona. And I'm telling you right now, the team at Farah who put this particular Congress on the best.

You will not be disappointed, and you know what else you get to do. You get to network with some of the best cybersecurity professionals from around the world. You need to do this. You need to put this one on your calendar.

All of the contact, all of the information is out on Industrial Talk. I'm going to be there, I'm going to be broadcasting, I'm going to be talking cybersecurity with the best in the world, so be there. Put this one on your calendar, that is November 3 through the fifth. I'll see you there.

01:16 Welcome to the Industrial Talk Podcast with Scott Mackenzie. Scott is a passionate industry professional dedicated to transferring cutting-edge industry-focused innovations and trends, while highlighting the men and women who keep the world moving. So, put on your hard hat, grab your work boots, and let's go. All 01:34 right, once again, welcome to Industrial Talk.

Thank you very much for joining the number one industrial related podcast in a universe that celebrates you, industry professionals all around the world. I say it once, I say it a million times. You're bold, you're brave, you dare greatly, you innovate, you collaborate, you're solving problems each and every day. You are making the world a better place.

If you're looking in the video, which I highly recommend, you can see that we're in Austin, Texas, Octave Live, this is Numero Uno. This is the number one Octave Live in it, and we get to broadcast and talk to great people. Speaking of great people, Tobias, how do you say your last name? Tobias 02:13 Fort Tobias, for 02:16 yeah, okay, yeah, 02:19 that's all right.

It's not, it's not an easy one, 02:22 Kelly. I couldn't spell it, that's where Doug got sure I 02:25 know how to spell it, since, since my early days, so I'm used to it. 02:29 All right, let's get cracking. Yeah, yeah, I looked at it, and I said, nope, no tap out.

Yeah, 02:38 it's a tricky one, 02:39 yeah, but it's, it 02:40 actually, it actually comes from the French, and eventually then migrated into German, that's how I got that name. 02:47 Oh, yeah, so see, a lot of the history. All right, all right, you having a good conference? Because I, there's been a lot of changes, probably good changes, but this, this is, I'm enjoying this conference.

I, I enjoyed the keynote and the conversation too this morning. Clarity, I like that. So, anyway, are you having a good conference? 03:10 Yeah, I do.

It's, I mean, obviously it's the first octave on tour, the first one that we all go through, but it's the first one, actually, for me in that setting. I joined last year, so I was part of Hexagon already before, but then worked more and more with the enterprise software division, and then actually completely migrated last year. 03:32 So, you, how long were you with Hexagon? 03:35 So, I joined 22 I looked after a flying laser scanner, so was working in that business, but was actually asked by management to move into cross-selling EAM to Geosystems customers.

So that's where I started working with a formerly ALI division, and get to know, like, EAM asset management, and actually we brought laser scanning and asset management together, because we realized a lot of customers are struggling with knowing where their assets are, because the better, like the more you know about where they are, the better you can fix them. 04:07 See, that's sort of a segue. I agree with you 100% Here's what the fascinating, by the way, you're out on the I have Swiss chocolate right there.

He gave it to me. I'm not saying it looks like it came from an airline, did it come from it? Did it's always a good, 04:25 it's always good to, to, to bring some along. 04:28 Anyway, what it was interesting to hear some of the, some of the conversations.

I'm still fascinated by the challenges that exist in today's market, and and everybody's still dealing with I don't know where the assets are, and you being in the utility space, it's not bound by four little walls, it's it's over a huge area, it is, but I'm just still fascinated by that. Where do we, as we segue into the. Utility conversation, we need to give us background on who you are first, right? Then go from there.

05:06 So, me at heart, I think the easiest way to explain it is I've always been curious, I've always been tinkering with a lot of things, and I feel really happy at the intersection of people, technology, and business, because no matter what we do with technology or with business, it needs to create value for people. 05:27 Yeah, 05:28 and that's ultimately like what what I do in the core of it. I am a trained industrial engineer, so I have industry like mechanical engineering and business engineering.

Did an MBA focusing a lot on new business development, so that's pretty much my red thread, thinking about where are we heading, how do we get the whole organization actually to move into into that that direction. Worked in a variety of different industries, and what I learned throughout the throughout my whole career is it always boils down to who's your customer, what's their problem like, because ultimately everything the customer worries about is their problem, not your solution.

So, the better we understand the customer's problem, and we design our solution to be in the background to create value, the better our fit 06:17 is. Ha, you know, you were sold by many people within Octave to look at it again, because I want to naturally go to the other name, which I don't want to go to that other name. Where does the utility side fit into that bio? 06:35 So, into my bio.

Yeah, I actually worked at a utility, so I worked in corporate development of the fifth largest utility in Switzerland, so I live in Switzerland. Yeah, I was actually.. that doesn't 06:47 stink, 06:48 no. So it's good, I know.

I know the utility side, like from the inside, like looking at it from our perspective. Also, the utility, like you have so much like challenges in terms of like energy price and like we're oh yeah producing hydro energy transmission distribution trading both in Switzerland and in Italy and thinking about like how do you manage all that regulatory space the market space like you're dependent on so many different factors, and in that context, we're looking at growth, like how can we organize growth from that company perspective, and so that's actually how I got to know the utility space.

I did a lot of innovation work. We actually started a startup incubator within our utility to say, like, we need to have a portfolio of different ideas that we're pursuing, like all the way from asset management, drones, service applications, you, you name it, and then actually, when I, when I venture, or when I, when I'm migrated from Geo Systems within Hexagon to Ali, it surfaced that I have a background in utilities, and then people say, like, hey, can you look after networks and then service, because we need to, we need to move this business forward, and we need to serve our customer base.

08:10 The challenges that exist in the utilities are pretty phenomenal. I mean, I, my background is utility, it was a different ball game back then. Now I listen to what you're saying, and, and they're challenging, and it's like, wow, way above my pay grade, in, in, and I have to go to the Swiss side. How do you deal?

Is the population expanding to the point where you need to do or bring on more transmission, more generation, more distribution, because here in the United States, nobody wants transmission in the backyard. We got to figure out how to get more power to the location. We need more power, you know, generation, distributed generation, which is also another challenge. I don't even know how system operators deal with that.

It 09:06 is a huge challenge. I mean, the point is not necessarily that the population is growing because of that, the energy demands are rising. What you have in the last couple of years is an acceleration of the electrification, so you have more electric vehicles, more heat pumps, you have more photovoltaics, so all that puts an additional load on the electric utilities. If you look at water, wastewater, there's challenges as well, like it's not the same drivers, obviously, like electrification, but you have drought, you have like floods, like climate volatility that you have to account for, but you also need to make sure that the system runs like literally, because if water stops, it gets stale, you have like a huge quality issue, and no matter where you look, like there are challenges, and what our customers look into, and they, they stated, like our.

System is their single source of truth, and if we help them to get more actionable insights, that's actually how we can add value to their day-to-day operation. 10:09 Yeah, see, here's again my understanding, and typically, and it's changed dramatically. I'm very linear in my thinking when it comes to the electric utilities, I'm just damn, I got the, I got the power generation, I got, you know, transmission lines, I got a substation, I got down to, now it's down to distribution, I got another, whatever it is.

How does the, how does the octave solution help with the dynamic market today. No matter, in the utilities, you got the water, you got gas, and all of that, 10:49 right. So, I mean, first and foremost, we are a strong documentation solution, because first of all, you need to know what, what the system is. So, it's basically an as-built documentation, because every single sort of truth starts with reality, like what do you have, but then what we're actually looking into is like it's a, it's the so-called NIS, so it's a subset of a GIS, a geo information system, you have the network information system, and we're transforming that into a network intelligence system, because we realize, like, that the customers, of course, they want to know where the things are, but then they also need to know, like, what to do with it, like, you know, are you talking about, like, the linear, like, topology of it, that's fair and square, however, you have a lot of dynamic elements in there, like, when you look at electric, you have photovoltaics, which means like you have to look at, like, how's the weather going to be?

Like, do you have a surplus of production that is just fed into the grid? Basically, what do you do with the existing production? Like, how do you plan all that? You have electric vehicles, you have climate, like heat pumps that when it gets colder they consume a lot of energy, so there's a lot of that like dynamic elements that need to be forecasted in a sense, so that you can then keep the system resilient and keep it actually functioning, and so when we look at our our network intelligence solution, that's where we say, like, we're expanding into operating, because ultimately the system needs to be run, you have work orders that need to be that needs, you need to be executed, you need to keep the system running, but then also like integrate more and more intelligence into the system, so that you can generate actionable insights and know what, what you have to do to keep the system running, 12:41 here's, here's the challenge, so I, I was deploying a system for a utility company, and it's always, it always gets down to 12:53 data, it 12:54 does, and the validation of that data, and now you have in a utility, you have a situation where the assets are just, they're not, they're all over the place, and there's tribal knowledge of what exists out there, in that, you know, no, we put this up there, and nothing ever got updated, right.

How do you, how do you recognize the fact that there are tons of utilities? Don't get me wrong, and I guarantee you that the information on the assets are like pole health, like the health of a wooden pole. How do you, how do you begin to sort of tackle that challenge? 13:36 So I mean, obviously, like when you want to have intelligence when you want to have actionable insights, it points to data, like you need to have clean, high-quality data.

Yeah, and it's right there. So, in the last couple of weeks, I had a lot of personal discussions with operators, like with grid owners, and we came to the point of data quality, where they say, like, look, we have it documented, but we don't even know, 14:05 do you check the 14:06 assets are actually at that right location? 14:09 No. 14:10 So we discussed, like, right there an idea where I said, like, look, I mean, if you're anywhere there with a mobile device, would that be valuable for you if we say we do a background check while you're working on the asset, what's the what's the GPS coordinate of the device, and what's the GPS coordinate of the asset actually in the system, and if there's a high delta, we just prompt it, they say like that would help a lot, because that way you have also scale, like because you have a lot of people working on the assets, and so the data quality, or the data cleaning, actually needs to be something that is happening on the day-to-day operations 14:51 of the, yeah, you can't, 14:54 you can't just go like five years in and then clean up the data again, and then five years again, like you constantly.

Have to like, when you're working on it, one check element needs to be like, is the data still accurate, because everything else relies on it. 15:09 See, this is also just long ago I was always, I worked on patrol, so I would patrol the lines, transmission, I was in industry, so I did transmission, so we would patrol the lines, we would have the single line maps right with us, and we would patrol the line, validate the single line, and you know how often the single line maps didn't jive.

Yeah, we were busy all the time, yeah, trying to get, and then taking the single line maps, hey, they have to be updated. Yeah, who's gonna do that, right? And I love the, the, the technology to be able to do it in real time, and we haven't even begun to touch on the impact of storms, 15:54 right? 15:55 And, and you know, as well as I do, I'm a consumer, where's my power?

Where's my power, and then all of a sudden everybody out in the field just throwing things up, trying to get the power back on, and they never come back. 16:10 Yeah, there are a lot of challenges, but we also need to like look together with our customers, like yeah, the different challenges that we're working on, like how do we prioritize them, because I mean there's so many different possibilities, but we need to, we need to look at like what's actually the core value. 16:29 You do, I agree with you 100% What is it?

Just it, the utility, the grid, what they did worked, even with all the flaws. If I came to you and I said, 'Hi, I'm Scott Utility, and I've got this service territory, and I have distribution transmission substations, I have all of my assets everywhere, and I have data. If I went full in and saying I'm ready. Let's, let's, let's begin to deploy.

How do you approach a utility? How do you say, okay, I got it, you're all in. Let's, these are priorities. This is sort of second level, whatever.

How do you do that? 17:19 That's a good question. I mean, we're fortunate to have, like, we're looking at 25 years of business, so we have a lot of customers that have already started, and they run the system, but I mean, the good thing, but also the challenging thing is, like, we're not looking at static systems, like they're dynamic, like, yeah, so dynamic. I mean, you just mentioned storms, like 17:45 storm, just what storm, and then you, then 17:48 you need to replace a lot of things.

It's, it's aging infrastructure, so you need to modernize it, and ultimately, I mean, everything starts again with the documentation, yeah, to make sure, like, do you have everything in there, and also, how, like, I like to work from a, from a big picture into the small details, yeah, to say, like, hey, how can we get, like, the big picture going, yeah, and then we figure out, like, all the small little elements that need to be fixed, and then you dive deeper into that, but, yeah, I think it's like, with, with every, every big project, you need to bring it into bite-sized pieces.

18:25 It's always culture, it always gets down to people. It's never the technology. The technology, from my perspective, it's, it's robust, it works, it's good. And you know, and it might get the human individual saying, I don't like entering and complaining and whining a little bit, but the reality is it's always the humane aspect of it, yeah, and that adoption 18:46 from both perspectives, because I mean we gotta bring together developers as well as the users, like our developers look at it from a different perspective than the user, 18:56 yeah, 18:57 but we need to force ourselves to see the world from the user's eyes, 19:01 yeah, 19:01 because they use our software day to day, and the better we understand actually what the problem is they're trying to solve, that's where we can actually make a difference with our software.

19:11 Put your future hat on, Tobias, the power industry, the utility industry, utilities in general, lot of attention, got a lot of regulatory requirements also, and that whole regulatory requirement slows things down to a crawl sometimes, but Where do you see it sort of going moving forward, and and because I believe what I see, the future utilities better have their act together. There's a lot of, they got to do it, they got to change, and they're not really prone to changing, 19:55 which is, I mean, it's not a slight on 19:58 utilities, but I.

Worked at them, and I know I know it myself, 20:03 but I mean to your point, like it boils down to people, like when you, when you look at regulation, also when you look at utilities, and you say, like, there may be slower in changing things, I think that's not always a negative thing, in a sense, because you don't want to have too much change in an electric bill, like grit, like you want it to work, and I mean it has become a commodity, you just expect it to work, and then you yell about it when it doesn't, but in order to achieve that, yeah, there is so much work that needs to go into that.

You have so much, like, I mean, you work with with power generation distribution, there is so many risks in there. So you want to make sure that people are safe. That's why it's good that you have processes. That's why it's good that you have regulation in there.

But I think the challenge for us, like, you know, putting, putting the future head on. I don't think, like, when I look into the future, I don't see a path that leads us to less complexity. I think complexity is increasing. 21:14 It just is.

21:16 But that's, that's where I think if we find a way to make the system simple and make them work, we can help in managing that complexity. We can't help reducing that complexity, but I think ultimately it boils down to how do I manage that, because there you have constraints, you have cost constraints, you have resource constraints. Yeah, I mean, when I worked the utility, we had a challenge. Our headquarters was up in the mountains, because that's where the production was, that's where you needed the hydro, 21:50 and 21:50 right, yeah.

But then, when you're moving to a digital age, and you need people that know how to, like, manage cloud applications that develop AI applications, you name it, because those are needed there as well. You don't necessarily get them to move to remote places. 22:07 Yeah, so you have the demographic 22:09 challenge in that as well. 22:11 Yeah, 22:12 but that's where we help our customers, or we try to help our customers navigate that to say, okay, you have changing workforce, like, how do you get a solution up and running?

Like, what happens if you don't have your on-prem solution anymore? It becomes too costly. What role can we play in that, so that you can keep on using the system? And so there's so many different elements where we look into reducing that complexity, or not necessarily reducing the complexity, but making it manageable.

22:42 Yeah, see, I think the utilities in general, given all of the changes that have taken place, I think they've done a marvelous job. We're sitting here, lights are on, they're not flickering, good quality power, whatever that is, it's 60 cycles. Thumbs up. Thank you very much, and you're right.

If we start messing around too much, and all of a sudden my gear starts to have a problem with the power quality, yeah, and then I get a little upset, I 23:13 notice it, 23:13 but yeah, you've gotta, you gotta hand it to the utilities, because no, when I was in it again, we didn't have nobody talked about demand side distributive energy, nobody that was nobody, you know, we were, we were still, you know, putting on, you know, geothermal generation, but it's still there's your transmission line, get it over there, build your substation.

It is still worked. It's far more complex. It is 23:48 just, but I 23:49 mean, that's that's also the interesting part, like you have distributed energy resources, but then at the same time you also have self consumption. Yeah, see, so because then I mean, again, it's a dynamic system, you have like dynamic feed-in tariffs that somehow encourage you as a user to produce your own energy, yeah, and that is also something that is tricky in that whole landscape to factor in, because still down the line you are obliged to give that consumer power when they need it.

Yeah, they consume their own energy, but when they need it, like their lifeline or their insurance, they rely on you. Yeah, so, but that's what I like about that industry to figure out, like, how do you help in managing that dynamic environment, 24:44 and they account for every electron. Yeah, I don't know how they do that, but they do it right, every dog on electron. I think it's a wonderful, and I believe real value the future has to depend, hinge on.

And creative individuals like yourself, Octave, other companies, just like that. I just think it, it, it's just critical. I don't see any other way to get around 25:10 it. It is, and again, to the point, like that's that's where, like, organizing that, or like orchestrating the people behind it to create value for people.

25:21 Tobias, somebody says 'Hey, I'm in the utility. I need some help. How would they get a hold of you? 25:27 Reach out over LinkedIn.

Drop me a drop me a DM. I'm happy to connect. 25:31 I coached him. You are absolutely spectacular.

All right, once again, that's Tobias. You need to reach out to him. We're going to have all the contact information for that gent out on Industrial Talk. So don't come to me and say I can't find Tobias.

He's out on LinkedIn and a link in Industrial Talk. Once again, we're broadcasting from Octave Live. If you're out on the video, you can see that I tried to get some of the Octaves. I'm right outside the showcase, right there, we got in a rich right there too.

He's right there, and if you knew Rich, he's a nice guy too. I think everybody on Occupant is nice. There you go, that's my plug. All right, we're gonna wrap it up on the other side.

Stay tuned. We will be right back. 26:15 You're listening to the Industrial Talk Podcast Network, you 26:26 There it is. You're out on video.

There it is. His stat card, Tobias Octave, is the company. Octave Live was the event. It was in Austin, Texas.

And you know what stands out on Tobias is stat card on LinkedIn, just between you and me. He's got mountain ranges because he lives in Switzerland. Yeah, that's not bad. I need Tobias.

I need to visit you. I got to have a reason to visit you, but I need to visit you soon. Let's try to make that one work out. Is that a great conversation?

I could talk about utilities all the time, and I wouldn't get bored. I would talk about it all the time. And here's the great and most amazing thing. So, we're at Octave Live, and we're doing Octave Live stuff, and they're talking about all of the incredible technology that they'd be rolling out, man.

It is amazing, and it's an amazing time to be in utilities. I get to meet people like Tobias. That doesn't, that's not bad, that's cool stuff. Anyway, the utilities, they are changing.

They are being impacted in a positive way by technology, you got to check out Octave, got to check out Tobias, you got to go out on industrial talk, and you got to sort of connect with him, because he's got some answers, got some sage insights. Yeah, I liked it, you know. You know what else I did, had dinner with him and a couple of other utility folks, and yeah, that wasn't that wasn't bad either. That was, that was a great conversation.

All right, industrial talk is here for you. I say it all the time. You need to tell your story. You need to succeed.

You need to tell your story to succeed. If you're not telling your story and you're not out there with a human face, not an AI face, human face, you know, the companies that going to be able to handle that human interaction and be able to tell their story, they're going to do well, because I think companies and businesses will want to interact with you, and they, and not to mention inspire the next generation. Go to Industrial Talk, click, connect with me. We're a marketing company, we're a media company.

We have it all, but it's all around your success and the ability to be able to tell that story. Yeah, that's what we need to do. You need to succeed. We need to inspire that next generation.

All right, it does real talk. Connect with Tobias. All right, people, be brave. Derek, greatly hang out with Tobias, change the world.

We're gonna have another great conversation shortly, so absolutely stay tuned.