
This is hallowed ground-the final resting place of 1,177 sailors and Marines-it is very important to preserve the site. “We worked with the National Parks Service on the first comprehensive survey of the USS Arizona Memorial in 30 years. We want to test and demonstrate the full capabilities.” There are usually a lot more capabilities in the tools than most people use.

He adds, “We’ve developed these solutions to from field to finish. Our team seeks out large projects, big challenges, innovative stuff that might really be ‘out there,’ stretching the limits of what we do, and we learn from it.” Strategically, this makes sense. “We want to be more of a trusted business partner with end users. “There has been a serious effort by Autodesk to not fall into the trap of being just a software vendor,” Pete said. I asked about Pete’s new role as a strategic projects executive. Since joining with Autodesk eight years ago, he has taught civil software suites, provided support for end users, performed with his band at Autodesk University, and served as one of the company’s technical evangelists (the actual title on his business card at the time). Pete is one of us, a guy who started out in the field and in front of the workstation he even founded and served as CEO of his own technical services company.

Pete is well-known to many in the Autodesk AEC (architecture, engineering, construction) user community, specifically the surveying and civil side. Even from its earliest days Autodesk’s products have enabled folks to take the measurements to plan, design, build, operate, and maintain-but now they can get more out of the new wave of mass-data-capture measurement technologies. Though he was quick to add qualifiers to that statement: “We are not in the measurement hardware business, but we are now more closely aligned with measurement than ever before.”Īutodesk has always been in the measurement business, as the value of measurements is realized only if you do something useful with them. “After all of these years, I’m really happy to be able to say that Autodesk is now truly in the measurement business,” says Pete Kelsey, Autodesk’s strategic projects executive.
