A forward-looking company needs a forward-looking leader to manage its product delivery efforts. Fortunately for InEight, that leader is Mark Edwards. As Chief Delivery Officer, Mark is responsible for managing, delivering and maintaining InEight’s product roadmap. That means determining which features are slated to be released next, leading those features through development and testing, and then turning them over to the services staff to be activated for customers.
“I definitely have the best job at InEight because I get to work with customers around the world to understand the challenges they’re facing. Then we work together to deliver solutions to those challenges. Following the journey from problem identification to solution design, development and delivery is a unique opportunity, and I’m fortunate to be able to lead a team that does this every day,” he says.
Mark describes InEight as “a big small startup” in terms of its attitude towards product development. The company’s smaller size allows it to be agile and quick to market, but the industry challenges it solves are in no way insignificant, nor is the value that customers derive from InEight tools.
“The amount of overhead we can eliminate on a construction job through connected systems and connected data is significant,” he notes. This, in turn, improves the quality of the data and empowers customers to use it to understand their construction projects in unprecedented ways.
As the owner of InEight’s product roadmap, Mark is future-focused, and has some ideas about where construction is heading and the ways technology might shape how the industry works going forward. It’s a future marked by improved stakeholder collaboration and better-connected data, he says. “Technology is also introducing more data than ever before. With drones collecting data on jobsites, intelligent equipment reporting operational data and adaptive learning data models, we can harness this data to make construction safer and more productive than ever before.
“We’re also going to see the different stakeholders in a job become closer, working together as a team rather than independent stakeholders. Owners want to know more about what’s going on in construction and engineering. And engineering and construction won’t be separate anymore. I think it’s going to drive the need for consistent systems and everybody using an integrated set of tools.”
Outside of work, Mark enjoys spending time with his three daughters, and stays busy working on various projects around the house. He also enjoys a little fishing and getting some time on the tennis court.
