STOBG’s Rob Leon is Embracing Change

As Chief Innovation Officer of STO Building Group, Rob Leon’s vision and mission is far-reaching, and can take many forms—from building cross-functional teams to fostering internal entrepreneurship to leading industry partnerships—but ultimately it’s a philosophy.

“When we think of innovation, we tend to think of ideation sessions with colorful stickers or hackathon type events, but innovation is much more,” Leon said in a recent blog post. “It’s a state of mind—a strategic approach to planning.”

Construction management giant STOBG, comprising 14 companies across 54 locations globally, named Leon to the role in December, following his almost 30 years at Structure Tone, STOBG’s flagship company.

We caught up with Leon, a 2024 BuiltWorlds Maverick, to find out more in advance of our Construction Tech Conference, where he will deliver the keynote address.

 

You’re newer to the role of CIO, but certainly not the industry. Given your experience, what’s your personal definition of innovation in AEC?

Although the title is new, I have been part of a team leading our innovative pursuits within the organization for many years. Innovation is a state of mind—a core component of strategic planning and essential for the sustainable growth of our business. Innovation touches all corners of our organization—from our core business of building projects for our clients to every department within our functional services group. Innovation can come in the form of new technologies or process improvements, and should be focused on finding repeatable and scalable solutions to project and business challenges, expanding services to our clients, reducing the friction of systems and processes, and, of course, driving change across the entire AEC industry.

STOBG is sometimes described as a family of companies. How do you drive innovation across such a decentralized organization?

STO Building Group (STOBG) is one company uniting 14 builders who have come together to pool our expertise and resources. We operate collaboratively, while empowering each company to stay true to its distinct business model and heritage. This allows us to share and have access to real-time data, lessons learned, trade relationships and buying power across a vast amount of projects—over many sectors, markets, project types and project sizes—like no other construction company has access to. We drive innovation across the organization through our collaborative team of IT, data, tech ops, and innovation, and through programs such as our Centers of Excellence, Emerging Leaders and Superintendents Round Table.

We have also built our Innovation Engine for anyone in the company to submit an innovative idea and evaluate it against our strategic vision, with the prospect of selecting the idea for a pilot project. The submitter is invited to help bring it from proof of concept all the way through implementation.

The industry’s workforce shortage is perhaps its biggest obstacle. Can innovation/technology be a marketing tool to attract new talent?

Absolutely! By fostering an innovative and technology driven culture we can inherently attract the new talent needed to remain a leader in our industry. It also puts us in a command position to collaborate with high schools and higher education partners in influencing curriculum, establishing intern programs, and ultimately recruiting the best talent available.

The obligatory AI question: Any quick wins you can share with AI at STOBG?

What I can say now is that we are running several models across many different project types and using AI to be predictive, identify risk early enough to take mitigating actions, and provide intelligent insights to make good business decisions.

 

Join us for Rob Leon’s keynote address and much more at Construction Tech, July 23-25, in Chicago. Also learn more about Leon and all 50 on the 2024 Mavericks List.