XLr8
Win More Work!
In the corporate race, we either grow or we die. So, business development is Job #1.
How do we do that? Differentiate from the competition. Deliver better. Focus on and invest in growth sectors.
In Transportation Design growth areas include: BIM/Digital Delivery, Digital Twins, The Full Digital Pipeline.
How do I help businesses win work?
I get them good at the project design and delivery infrastructure today. And help get them ready for tomorrow.
Customer service starts with the relationships, but then it's the deliverables. Do you give clients what they want? More than they want? Are you a Trusted Partner?
The design infrastructure comes in two platforms: AutoDesk and Bentley. That's it. You need to be very good at the platform your client demands. Better than your competitors.
Your Design Platform: How Good Are You?
The tools are set. They're not going away.
(60 seconds)
Are you going to really good early or sort of good later? Lead or follow?. Leadership earns more contracts!
Getting Good Costs the Same Early or Late. Why Wait?
Getting good costs the same whether you get good early or get good late. Why wait?
(36 seconds)
Business as Usual? These are HEAVY Platforms
OpenRoads is a heavy platform. It is layered. It's full of surprises. It's built for integration and live-updates - NOT for simplicity and speed.
OpenRoads Drainage is the heaviest design technical stack I've seen in 35+ years, and it's not even close.
It is not business as usual. Implementation and adoption is not business as usual.
(38 seconds)
Can you Adopt a Fat Platform on a Lean Project?
What does it take to get Competent? What does it take to get Good? How do you not blow up Project Budgets?
How much and when?
(62 seconds)
You want to be strategic about how you implement.
You may not fully build out your plan, but you definitely need to plan out your plan.
How much work do you have now/soon? How much more do you expect to win? How critical is this client? Is the platform broad? If you're asking if you should learn OpenRoads if your clients are largely DOTs, that's an easy answer: Yes! A more nuanced question is "when should I prepare to adopt OpenRoads Drainage when it's not explicitly required yet?"
I help organizations get really good with the platform.
Fix Your Macros!
You can fix your Micros, but you absolutely need to evaluate your Macros - your Big Systems, your BIg Multipliers.
I've seen money spent on fixing little things, when Big Multipliers are grossly neglected.
- The micro might be teaching formal classes or developing effective self-study training courses (lean!).
- The macro is XLr8ing your implementation, adoption, and expertise-sharing systems - in scalable and, ultimately, self-sustaining systems
(73 seconds)
What are your biggest Macros? Your Biggest Multipliers?
- Communications (manageable and harvestable expertise-sharing systems (peer-to-peer and expert-to-expert))
- Your internal Learning and expertise-sharing Systems
How: enhance your default standard (Sharepoint, most likely) or build an integrated custom (it's not particularly expensive or difficult)
(150 important seconds)
Do you want to do Slow Over and Over or Awesome Over and Over?
A final argument (final on this page anyway): what we do, we do over and over and and over and over...
Only by sharing your expertise broadly and quickly will you ensure that you are working Awesomely.
(110 seconds)
What I've done: What I've Done
Quick Links: YouTube Channel JeffMartinPE | My Resume | About this web
- Details
- Category: XLr8
Better + Faster = Excelerate = XLr8
I'm not a "salesman", but I firmly believed I could save InRoads users (and offices) enough time and improve quality enough to make a living.
Twenty-five years ago I started a company to do that full time: provide civil engineering training and consulting services.
Saving time is about speed AND quality. Speed without quality does not save time.
Faster must be coupled with Better:
Excel + Accelerate = Excelerate = XLr8
I called my company Civil XLr8.
Twenty-five years later, I can still sum up what drives me in those four letters: XLr8
Grow or Die!
It's a race. We either grow or we die. So, business development is Job #1.
How do we do that? Differentiate from the competition. Deliver better. Focus on and invest in growth sectors.
In Transportation Design growth areas include: BIM/Digital Delivery, Digital Twins, The Full Digital Pipeline.
How do I help businesses win work?
I get them good at the project design and delivery infrastructure today. And help get them ready for tomorrow.
Customer service starts with the relationships, but then it's the deliverables. Do you give clients what they want? More than they want? Are you a Trusted Partner?
The design infrastructure comes in two platforms: AutoDesk and Bentley. That's it. You need to be very good at the platform your client demands. Better than your competitors.
Design Platform Adoption
Are you going to really good early or sort of good later? Lead or follow?. Leadership earns more contracts!
HEAVY Platforms
OpenRoads is a heavy platform. It is layered. It's full of surprises. It's built for integration and live-updates - NOT for simplicity and speed.
OpenRoads Drainage is the heaviest design technical stack I've seen in 35+ years, and it's not even close.
It is not business as usual. Implementation and adoption is not business as usual.
What does it take to get Competent? What does it take to get Good? How do you not blow up Project Budgets?
How much and when?
You want to be strategic about how you implement.
You may not fully build out your plan, but you definitely need to plan out your plan.
How much work do you have now/soon? How much more do you expect to win? How critical is this client? Is the platform broad? If you're asking if you should learn OpenRoads if your clients are largely DOTs, that's an easy answer: Yes! A more nuanced question is "when should I prepare to adopt OpenRoads Drainage when it's not explicitly required yet?"
I help organizations get really good with the platform.
Fix Your Macros!
You can fix your Micros, but you absolutely need to evaluate your Macros - your Big Systems, your BIg Multipliers.
I've seen money spent on fixing little things, when Big Multipliers are grossly neglected.
- The micro might be teaching formal classes or developing effective self-study training courses (lean!).
- The macro is XLr8ing your implementation, adoption, and expertise-sharing systems - in scalable and, ultimately, self-sustaining systems
What are your biggest Macros? Your Biggest Multipliers?
- Communications (manageable and harvestable expertise-sharing systems (peer-to-peer and expert-to-expert)
- Your internal Learning and expertise-sharing Systems
How: enhance your default standard (Sharepoint, most likely) or build an integrated custom (it's not particularly expensive or difficult)
A final argument (final on this page anyway): what we do we do over and over and and over and over...
Benefits now benefit everyone ever after
What I've done: What I've Done
Quick Links: YouTube Channel JeffMartinPE | My Resume | About this web
- Details
- Category: XLr8
What skills and attitudes drive me to your success?
- My dad built businesses (and subdivisions and office parks).
- My first job as an EIT was with a three-person office. We surveyed, designed, and staked out. I even cold-called developers seeking work (thank you, Recession 1990-1991).
- Packed up and left Florida for a three-month consulting contract in San Diego. Turned into a five-year engagement.
- Founded Civil XLr8 to “Go National”. Not wanting to hire staff, I instead took a local job at CalTrans, before ultimately working directly for Bentley Systems for 13 years.
Upon sending my kid off to college, I restarted Civil XLr8.
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To maximize firmwide uplift, it starts with your communication systems.
Your communications systems must
- maximize the scalability of your value and
- maximize the synergy of your people.
It should be
- Manageable from the top
- Engaging across the base
- Value-Harvestable
- Manageable and Managed
Those in need must be able to find what they need when they need it.
- Just Enough, Just in Time, at their Fingertips
How do we do this better? Are our limitations valid? Do we really have to wait?
Tools. I'm happiest when I'm bringing order to chaos (see The Six-Ball Juggle). Some processes are near impossible without tools that simplify them. Engineers can work wonders with a spreadsheet, but at some point they themselves get too complex and breakable (without reliable ways to tell if they're broken). If I could make a living programming, I'd do it. My scope is different.
I have freely published some software programs.
- FlowMonster is/was a hydraulic normal depth calculator that the City of San Diego used for over twenty years - saving them hundred(s) of thousands of dollars.
- Ini Manager - I wrote this so to make the InRoads enterprise-wide Standards Management possible. Community Involvement (and Quality Practices in general) require contribution to be easy - or it fails.
I tend not to program anymore, but I do customize XSL/T reports. OpenRoads Configuration/Administration is complex to the point of absurdity - and the primary way to review in bulk (and import/export for mass manipulation) is via Exporting/Importing XML files. XSL/T transforms to and from those standard formats into formats you can actually use.
Innovative Communication. There is nothing really innovative in using websites to communicate. Except in managing civil engineering projects. We tend not to do that. The first project I used a website to educate the stakeholders about the decisions they would be making and the results of our discussion was Oklahoma DOT - MicroStation & InRoads Migration). Amazing results and surprise contributions from across the state (because they had access to all the information). Today I document as I go; I can provide instantaneous access to all project stakeholders: Fast, Lean, Secure Project Websites
Agile Implementations made possible by Constant Communication (Live documentation)
Vision and Effective Communication are critical to moving organizations. I led the City of San Diego's Engineering Application Services programs in the late 1990s. I led the technical aspects of Oklahoma DOTs migration from MicroStation/J and InRoads to v8. I have designed training programs for large corporations. I have helped shape expectations and culture. I have consistently improved communication and sought to develop a culture of Uplift Everybody and Shared Expertise. I know the value of injecting energy and instilling confidence.
US-183 North Mobility Project, Austin, TX, $612 million. Drainage Modeling and Sheeting in OpenRoads Drainage and Utilities on ProjectWise. Parsons Corp.
JFK International Airport Redevelopment Program, New York. $1.24 billion. Drainage Modeling and Design using Civil 3D/SSA on AutoDesk Construction Cloud.
Valley Line West - Edmonton Light Rail (Utilities) in Edmonton, Alberta. Subsurface Utilities using OpenRoads Drainage and Utilities on ProjectWise.
- I made extensive use of ORD BIM capabilities, integrating data from disparate sources into the utilities data model.
- I then used View Display Rule technology (my favorite new platform tech behind Item Types) to streamline the review process. In-project ROI!
- Watch The Six-Ball Juggle for my thoughts on simplifying complex processes.
Drainage/hydraulics has been the most ever-present discipline in my career. Fresh out of school designing and permitting drainage systems in rainy Central Florida.
In what would be typical throughout my career, deep drainage experience in the Roadway Software ecosystem (InRoads, GEOPAK, Civil 3D, OpenRoads) means you're most valuable leading in that role. At Intergraph, I helped develop the algorithms for full-flow/surcharged HGL calculations (this was before HEC-22). Even most recently, when added to Multi-discpline Mega Projects, my expertise is more rare and valued in the Drainage and Utilities realm than in the roadway scope (a video perspective).
The OpenRoads Drainage and Utilities software is really two complicated technology verticals grafted together. Elite expertise in BOTH those verticals is rare. My career has largely been about intergrating those two verticals (and otherwise blurring barriers).
Drainage Engineering: a summary
Intergraph Corporation: While primarily focused on InFlow (drainage) and InSewer (sanitary) development, certification and support, InRoads was the Civil behemoth. It’s impossible to work the periphery without a good competency of the core. I also certified the InSpan (bridge) software package.
- Highway Interchange Design: I-4/Conroy, Rural Highway Design, Bridge Geometry support (HNTB Orlando).
- Foothill Transportation Corridor - South Alignment Studies with full templates and complicted end-conditions. (PBS&J, Irvine)
- I-15 Managed Lanes Direct Access Ramp geometry modeling and drainage (CalTrans).
- I-805 Managed Lanes (Kimley-Horn, San Diego).
Highway Engineering: my history.
I started my career with a full-services Topo-to-Stakeout Site Engineering company. A PE, an EIT and me. Lots of responsibility right away.
- Job 1: Full project responsibility early site engineering including drainage in very rainy Florida (Spring Creek Square - 30-acre shopping center working directly with the developer and contractor).
- Job 2: Site and drainage design and permitting for Orange County Public Schools Improvement programs
- Job 3: Intergraph InSite certification lead.
- Site grading course design at Bentley, including InRoad, the InRoads (GEOPAK)Site Modeler import/graft, and first OpenRoads Site Grading Courses.
- Here's some valuable training on grading: CivilHelp.com: Site and Drainage Grading
First Job: On the rod or the Leitz Set 2 for topo or stakeout surveys.
Most currently, agency-level configuration of OpenRoads Survey, including Custom Operations and Annotation setup and import/process QC.
Quick Links: YouTube Channel JeffMartinPE | My Resume | About this web
- Details
- Category: XLr8
What do I bring to an Organization?
A very broad Bentley Civil Skillset - Roadway, Drainage, Site, Configuration - with an eye on advancment and integration.
- I can help refine and enhance Vision
- My career has been focused on Organizational Transformation
- I identify opportunities and synergies - two birds with 1.1 stones (I love to get double value with just 10% more effort!)
- I am entrepreneurial and market-driven: expand your Total Addressable Market.
- As an independent consultant my default collaboration mode: Align, Design, Document the Design, Buy-in and Refine, Build, Deliver, Query and Refine
- Early, clear communication is critical to maintaining alignment. I like to manage my projects via Fast, Lean (but full-featured) Websites
- I've gone team and I've gone solo
- Example: I built a nation-wide InRoads and Drainage Consulting Company
Examples: Experience
- Details
- Category: XLr8
I am pleased to announce that I am working at TYLin as Rail and Transit Sector BIM and Digital Delivery Manager. I am so excited to be able to promote the Digital Integration Revolution forward. Everybody up!
Bentley Civil Users Conference - 2025 - it was so great to see work family again and two meet new devotees (of the software, not me). Really well done (Great job, Scott!)
IHEEP was great! A quick shout out here: IHEEP 2025.
I used to be a real-life design engineer. Road, Site, Drainage.
Nowadays, though, it's hard to ignore bad process and manual methods. Little of what we do is a one-off. Why repeat waste when it's fixable? When you're statewide, when you're national?
I promote growth adoption and fix things, preferably systematic things.
If I were to put it into bold meme form, I'd say
"I fix the present and prepare the future."
As a sole engineer on a design-build site project, I was all about click speed.
As a designer on big road projects, I was about better process.
As a lead in enterprise migration, two-way communication, feedback loops, and documentation held my focus.
As a training development lead at a global infrastructure systems company, I was taught to think Systems and to think BIG.
Once you start to analyze everything looking for systematic opportunity, including
- better quality
- integration
- internal and external growth, and
- finding new markets,
you can’t go back. You simply cannot ignore the Macro – the bigger multipliers. Especially where you’ve proven fixes in the past. The Bigs - Arguments for Fixing
My most Impactful Advice
Within your organization, within your core operations, and towards new opportunities, here's what your biggest Success Multiplier is: your Expertise Sharing Systems specifically and your Platform Mastery in general.
Expertise is best: Well-Shared
Your organization's greatest asset is its people - specifically, their expertise. If you are not investing in the growth of your shared expertise, you are missing out on your greatest multiplier. Every important specialization's experts should be sharing their talent with each other and with all the contributors in that specialty.
(if 11-minutes is too long, then you can skip straight to the 90-second lede Specialty Collaboration Forums build Systemic Synergy (and they're easy)*)
Many organizations just default to Microsoft Teams for collaboration (very limited) or SharePoint (which few engineers know how to use well).
Internal discussion boards/forums like Bentley Communities or Reddit are easily and inexpensively implementable and can provide the foundation for a culture of synergy and uplift - a culture of shared contribution and continuous improvement. Imagine if the best ideas of your brightest minds were informing the decisions of all your staff.
Why leave this greatest opportunity to chance?
Growth Opportunities in Infrastructure Infrastructure
The growth in the infrastructure industry - in your enterprise, the new work you win – lies in:
- Reality Integration
- Construction Engineering & Inspection
- BIM
- Digital Delivery
- Digital Project Integration.
I can bring 35+ years of technology adoption to your future.
I can help you improve your present as well.
Drive the Revolution - Infrastructure Digital Integration (BIM and Digital Delivery Adoption)
Uplift: Comprehensively Designed, Optimally Shared
Training is best: Consumable (Lean, Findable, Updateable)
As our software platforms become increasingly fat and margins remain unyieldingly thin, the wiggle room lies in making training lean.
For the consumers: Just Enough. Just In Time. At Their Fingertips (easily findable).
For the creators/sharers/training managers: Findable, updateable (to extend shelf life and reach).
Here are some examples that are more easily updateable than a PDF and far more consumable than an unindexed one-hour meeting recording (stored in a File Pile).
Free Training Content: Item Types and View Display Rules
Your Digital Tomorrow Starts Today!
Item Types and View Display Rules are the technologies that enable Digital Delivery, permitting and taming BIG DATA. You can - you must - start using them right now. It's easy. It's profitable.
Free Training Content: Ponds in ORD
CivilHelp.com > Pond Design in ORD
Very lean training on how to Design Ponds in ORD: I wrote this because there was a gap - an important, very complex workflow with no available training (Bentley used to have a couple of classes that spanned this subject, but they "went away").
Pond Grading (Templates for Pond 3D Modeling)
some constrained-area solutions for 3D pond grading (complements Bentley's Basin Civil Cell which works upward and outward).
"Better Every Day" is NOT Good Enough
You gotta be better, FASTER than your competition.
My OCD: I am a "Bigs" Fixer
(90 seconds)
Prepare for the Future
We're at an exciting time in the industry - the biggest revolution since dropping the pencils: Digital Delivery at the DOT level. Integratability as a requirement. Here's the secret: the technology that makes integration possible, Item Types (or Property Sets in the Autodesk ecosystem), can improve your quality and save you money right now. As in, the project you're currently working on now. Item Types and View Display Rules are the technologies that unleash - and tame! - the power of The Big Data Age we're in. Lead now or be left behind.
For BIM-ready Drainage and Utilities you have two platforms: OpenRoads Drainage and InfoDrainage. These are really heavy platforms = high risks in implementation. You WILL want an implementation plan to adopt these beasts. Get help; "winging it" is ruinous.
Stay Lean - But Level Up
Our modern design and delivery platforms are really fat. Training is fat. Projects are lean. How do we resolve this?
First of all, make use of Learning.Bentley.com. It's the standard. It's modular, AND you are likely already paying for it.
Second: find or build lean alternatives or gap-fillers (there are a lot of gaps).
Third: effectively share your customs or "leans" with your full user base.
I can help with all three of these.
Links
Driven by Experience: What I've Done
Quick Links: YouTube Channel JeffMartinPE | My Resume | About this web
- Details
- Category: XLr8
