LiUNA - November 2021 by Business Chief USA

Cloud transition drives LiUNA affiliate and national growth DIGITAL REPORT 2021

IN ASSOCIATION WITH:

CLOUD TRANSITION DRIVES LIUNA AFFILIATE AND NATIONAL GROWTH 2

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Matthew Richard, Chief Information Officer at Laborers’ International Union of North America, reflects on the US Bipartisan Infrastructure deal and transition to the cloud

ost of us wouldn’t enjoy the idea of being accountable to 500,000 people, but Matthew Richard, Chief Information Officer at Laborers’ International Union of North America (LiUNA), looks relaxed as he reflects on its cloud transition changes and prospects of driving digital benefits to its large membership base across the United States and Canada. With US construction on the up and incoming President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure deal in the offing, LiUNA finds itself in a sweet spot. The Union pushed hard to vote Biden in, and has a close ally in new Secretary of Labour, Marty Walsh, who happens to be a LiUNA member. “If the deal makes its way through Congress, that’s a lot of work for us, and puts money into the benefit plans of our members,” said Richard. “We could be talking multiple decades’ worth of work.” A strong believer in infrastructure – both parents worked in the natural gas industry – he has wanted to see construction investment prioritised for some time, and even though nothing is sure in politics, he senses the country is on the cusp of change. “It’s fair to be sceptical, but I think the Democrats have alternative options, and we’re confident something will get done.” Another key reason for the optimism is the structural changes which have

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Solutions

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Cloud transition drives LiUNA affiliate and national growth

“ It’s that wind in our backs which gives me confidence over the next few years – that the standardisation and modernisation we’ve done internationally, we can do at affiliate level” MATTHEW RICHARD

CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, LiUNA

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accelerated during the pandemic – notably the emphasis on energy, sustainability, and digital transformation. “There is plenty of work in the renewables and green energy sector. From a technology standpoint, I support that, and try to put the tools in place where we can show why these policies are important to our members,” he said. For all its membership size and geographic spread across nine regional offices, LiUNA’s remit is refreshingly steadfast: to advocate good paid jobs for members in safe working environments that help support families. “My job is to look at all the technology initiatives, set the strategy, and set standards for our affiliates to use. We don’t mandate, they have autonomy, but we set some standards on data collection,” he says. “So when the pandemic started, we were able to get our employees to pick up their laptops and work from home. We had training kits which didn’t need too much provision. Google Meet was a big part of keeping the

LiUNA

‘face to face’ and Zoom for some of the more advanced features. I don’t feel as an organisation we really missed a beat.” In terms of its overall digital transformation, Richard says he is happy where we’re at. “I have a strong team of world-class developers – we only have five developers, and that’s why we rely on partners heavily, and we have a support team which manages all the day-to-day tasks – and that’s only four people.” LiUNA was able to retire over 40 legacy applications and build everything into Appian, where it now processes all membership data which connects with 300-plus local affiliates and 40-plus district council affiliates. “That’s empowered our team to build these powerful applications quickly. “Converting the infrastructure to cloudbased AWS was crucial in helping us prepare for the pandemic. There were two stubborn legacy servers – one was moved to a SaaS provider and the other went to hosted infrastructure. “We’ve been moving to a cloud-based modern infrastructure and software platform over the last nine years and finished migrating our last application this year,” he said. “For us, the biggest benefits of the cloud are the adaptability – the ability to modify ‘on the fly’ quickly when information comes

557,999

Number of members (2013)

350+

Number of employees

TITLE: CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER INDUSTRY: CONSTRUCTION LOCATION: VIRGINIA, USA

EXECUTIVE BIO

1903

Company founded

MATTHEW RICHARD

Matt Richard is the Chief Information Officer at the Laborers' International Union of North America (LiUNA), a non-profit Labour Union headquartered in Washington, DC that serves approximately 500,000 members across the United States and Canada. He joined LiUNA after nine years working as a project manager and technology consultant for a number of management consulting firms in the Washington, DC area. During his four year tenure at LiUNA, he has led the effort to modernise legacy systems, reduce infrastructure spending, and standardise the IT resources of the Washington, DC Headquarters and nine regional offices. Mr. Richard received his Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology and Management Information Systems from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He also received his Master’s of Business Administration from the University of Maryland, College Park and a Master's of Science in Project Management from Boston University.

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LiUNA STAFF GO BACK TO OFFICE Interestingly, now that the focus is on how and when staff return after the pandemic, LiUNA has been decisive. It wants everyone back at their desks after the Labor Day holiday.

DID YOU KNOW...

“What we’ve been doing since the start of the summer is allowing those who are vaccinated back in – to give employees the chance to return to routine,” he says. “There will be some challenges on September 7, we’ve changed some of the equipment and docking stations, and video conferencing equipment, and so people will need to get used to the new set-ups. But, overall, it won’t be that difficult – what I would say, subjectively, is it will be a bit of a shock to the system on a human level – whether staff have to deal with childcare, or any other issues.”

“ Our approach is ‘if you’re going to build an application, you’d better build it in Appian unless you have a good reason not to’. That keeps us all on one ecoystem as much as we can” MATTHEW RICHARD

CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, LiUNA

available, and that enables us, constantly, to lower our costs and take advantage of new offerings, and we’re using Snowflake for most of our back end. We’re working remotely all the time, and made secure access easier everywhere.” His focus is primarily international. “We put platforms in place that can handle the ramp-up of thousands of users if needs be, and easily and securely integrate with our international systems,” he adds. “It’s all about better data collection, easier processes for our affiliates, and faster processing times. We’ve brought the timeframes down from months to weeks to hours, and I see it continuing to evolve.” The transition is likely to be a multiyear effort, requiring ‘buy in’ from affiliates at grass roots. “They’re happy sharing information – it’s more a comfort level, demonstrating that we’re here to help and working through technology issues,” he said. www.liuna.org

LiUNA

KEY PARTNERS DRIVE DATA EFFICIENCIES LiUNA has partnered with Cherry Bekaert, the public accounting firm, for many years. “They’ve helped us access data in a visual and easily digestible way, not only in terms of making these migrations possible, but also showing our different departments how powerful this data can be,” he says.

DID YOU KNOW...

“Softchoice has been an advocate for us, in what products we should use, guiding us on what options there are to migrate safely to cloud-based infrastructure. They’ve been hugely helpful.

“On the software application side, Groundswell Consulting Group is our partner which really allows us to get enough out of the platform. They clean up projects and rapidly turn them around, and we’re processing tens of millions of benefits through this system.” Another key partner is Teknion in Dallas, which helped build its data warehouse. “I can’t speak highly enough of Geoff Whitney and his team – we wouldn’t have been able to migrate from the legacy systems without their assistance.”

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“We’re going to continue down this path of expanding our data practice, tracking, and seeing what sources are there – we’re just dipping our toes in OCR and Machine Learning. Our system has decades-worth of documents, and we’re seeing how we can leverage that, and give our departments more insights. “We’ve all worked together on projects. It results in better products and tools, and better cross-department collaboration. Our approach is ‘if you’re going to build an application, you’d better build it in Appian unless you have a good reason not to’. That keeps us all on one ecoystem as much as we can. It’s been a good journey so far, and I suspect there will be more projects with these groups in the next couple of years.” It has also used tools like Alteryx and Tableau, migrating the data to making it accesible, and providing affiliates with the answers they need.

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“ If the Bipartisan Infrastructure deal makes its way through Congress, that’s a lot of work for us, and puts money into the benefit plans of our members. We could be talking multiple decades’ worth of work” MATTHEW RICHARD

CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, LiUNA

He stresses the integral importance of its General President, General SecretaryTreasurer, & General Executive Board, who are huge champions for embracing this technology change and setting the tone that we’re going to collect better data and make processes easier. “It’s that wind in our backs which gives me confidence over the next few years – that the standardisation and modernisation we’ve done internationally, we can do at affiliate level. None of this would be possible without the General President, General Secretary-Treasurer, and General Executive www.liuna.org

LiUNA

“I hope we can find some pilot affiliates and see if we can enhance that connectivity between local and international – that could bear a lot of fruit” MATTHEW RICHARD

CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, LiUNA

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LiUNA

Board – they have been hugely supportive of technology. It’s their advocacy which makes what we do possible.” In terms of next steps, he foresess further integration, oriented around mobile technology. “People live and work on their phones, so if we’re not making it mobile accessible, we’re failing them,” he says. “I would like to see an app that can show your status,

your pension, and other key personal information – that could be within five years. I hope we can find some pilot affiliates and see if we can enhance that connectivity between local and international – that could bear a lot of fruit.”