Empowering Engineers: KBR's Digital Journey with VIKTOR

Digital transformation is a crucial initiative at KBR, focused on using data-driven methods to improve engineering processes and drive innovation. In this article, John Buckley, IT Business Liaison Director for Sustainable Technology Solutions at KBR, and his colleague Andy Webster, Digital Director Integrated Solutions at KBR, discuss the importance of this transformation and their strategic choice to partner with VIKTOR. They share how the VIKTOR platform has played a key role in speeding up their digital journey, providing engineers with advanced tools, and creating a culture of continuous improvement and collaboration across the organization.

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KBRs digital journey

KBR's digital journey has evolved across multiple platforms and systems, utilizing data-driven approaches. “A crucial part of our digital technology development is the codification of our team's extensive domain knowledge. To achieve this, we invested in the creation of automation tools,” says Buckley.

Recognizing that their engineers are best suited for codifying KBR's engineering knowledge, KBR provided them with a Python environment, “which has proven to be an essential enabler in our digital transformation.”

Why VIKTOR

The Python environment they're referring to is the VIKTOR platform. VIKTOR became an ecosystem partner for KBR in late 2022. “The VIKTOR platform enabled KBR to quickly tap into new ideas and empower engineering teams with tools developed in as little as six weeks. Traditionally, such processes could stretch over months or even years of development efforts,” explains Buckley.

“The VIKTOR team’s consultative approach has fostered a highly valued and widely used solution within KBR.” - John Buckley, IT Business Liaison Director for Sustainable Technology Solutions at KBR

Accelerated development

“Beyond speeding up development time, VIKTOR brings applications directly into a project-ready environment. This allows engineer-developers to focus entirely on their engineering challenges without worrying about data management or user interface.”

Consultative approach

According to Buckley, “The VIKTOR team’s consultative approach is a highly valued and widely used solution within KBR. They enable us to create our own tools by teaching our engineers the skills needed to become application developers as well.”

Strategic partner

“KBR selected VIKTOR as a partner to strategically create a ramp-up program for aspiring engineer-developers. This initiative allows us to onboard more developers, scaling up the educational process and enhancing results in engineering automation and codification.”, Buckley elaborates.

This approach has proven very successful: KBR’s developers can now create their own applications from scratch after as little as eight weeks of enablement. “And the greatest part is that these developers will, in turn, onboard a peer, which has a ripple effect across the organisation,” says Buckley.

“The platform reduces the cost, risk and resource required to develop and encourages the business to learn-fast and truly innovate.” - John Buckley, IT Business Liaison Director for Sustainable Technology at KBR

Current developments

What kind of automations are being done with VIKTOR at KBR right now?

“Our shared philosophy is focused on pursuing innovation regardless of size, scale or impact. The VIKTOR platform lowers the cost, risk and resources needed for development while encouraging our engineers to learn fast and truly innovate. This is further supported by their efforts to teach engineer-developers the basics of Agile methodology and product- or problem-based thinking,” states Buckley.

Sense of community

“This Agile approach fosters a strong sense of community within KBR, promoting learning and development across various teams. VIKTOR plays an invaluable role in supporting and nurturing this community, helping it thrive while bridging global boundaries,” Buckley notes.

Change management support

“Lastly, VIKTOR assists organisations with tackling change management. Creating awareness about new developments is challenging in an engineering world accustomed to proven methods. Advantages clear to technology providers may not easily translate to users. VIKTOR's Success Management program addresses this by promoting early communication, team cohesion, and coordination of application onboarding and training events for new users,” explains Buckley.

Conclusion

For KBR, the question isn't whether to build a new generation of smarter engineers, but how to do it rapidly and effectively to achieve real business results.

“The VIKTOR platform and its comprehensive services foster a culture of innovation that aligns seamlessly with KBR’s focus on technology and people,” concludes Buckley.

“Experiencing VIKTOR consultancy and change management services has elevated our partnership, and we are very excited about this choice for our digital transformation journey.” - John Buckley, IT Business Liaison Director for Sustainable Technology Solutions at KBR.