The Digital-Ready Workforce of the Future

How KBR is becoming a market leader in digitalization solutions and creating a culture of innovation and knowledge sharing.

Established last July, KBR’s Digitalization Center of Excellence (DCOE) connects employees, capabilities and solutions globally. The DCOE, the newest forum created by the Strategic Solutions Group, complements other recent initiatives, including the establishment of KBR Communities of Interest (COIs) — virtual forums for subject matter experts (SMEs) that foster knowledge sharing and talent development — and the KBR Intelligence Network, an internal, email-based effort that streamlines access to information about KBR capabilities and expertise.

Where COIs connect people and solutions, a Center of Excellence (COE) typically develops solutions through working groups. These working groups then use COIs as a channel to share information and build awareness on solutions developed. So, why create a digital-focused COE?

First, let’s break down digitalization.

Digitalization

At its core, digitalization is the employment of digital technologies to enhance and transform business models and create value-producing opportunities. KBR’s digitalization strategy seeks to harness new and emerging digital technologies that create value for our customers and their missions. Digitalization is a significant market that is relevant to almost all current and new KBR customers. Some examples of this include the use of digital twins — virtual models — and digital engineering.

Transforming KBR into a trusted, technology solutions provider.

Digitalization drives fundamentals in autonomy, cloud services, cyber security, artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning (ML), augmented reality/virtual reality, and more. This falls directly in line with KBR’s focus on delivering sustainable solutions and using cutting-edge technology and expertise to enable advancements in all ten of KBR’s sustainability pillars. The DCOE’s goal is to promote consistency in digital development, solutions and practice throughout the business, enabling the transition of ideas to solutions at scale to better solve customer problems and differentiate ourselves from our competitors. As a global company with more than 29,000 employees, the DCOE connects geographically or structurally separated pockets of expertise across KBR with digital collaboration tools and brings ONE KBR scalability in delivering technology-led solutions to our customers.

The DCOE is set up as a collection of solution-specific agile working groups whose participants include SMEs from across KBR’s business units. Some high-level outcomes include:

Capturing successes and lessons learned from large-scale, digitalization-based implementations as ONE KBR Intellectual Property (IP).
Using ONE KBR IP to bring thought leadership in customer engagements.
Leveraging capabilities in targeted utilization of partners and contractors on opportunities.

KBR’s established working groups, which include Data Analytics/AI; KBR as a Service (KAS); Development Security Operations (DevSecOps) and Solutions Repository, have produced successes. For example, the Data Analytics/AI working group developed a framework and whitepaper to guide customers with AI-based solution development. This working group also established an inventory of KBR AI/ML capabilities backed by case studies, as well as an opportunity pipeline using Salesforce. The KAS working group has aided KBR in similar ways by developing reusable templates and processes. These have reduced costs by 70% and timelines by 50% by deploying accredited applications such as Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure cloud. The latest addition is the DevSecOps working group, which kicked off its first meeting this year and is actively seeking participants in development of KBR DevSecOps framework. In addition, the Solution Repository working group recently launched KBR’s DCOE SharePoint site to host all working group deliverables.

Engaging the KBR digital workforce.

There are two ways for KBR business leaders to best participate with the DCOE. First is by reaching out and articulating their customers’ challenges, needs and requirements. Second is enabling their digitalization SMEs to participate in DCOE working groups. Business leaders should consider the DCOE as a “force multiplier,” allowing their customers to benefit from the best of the combined resources across KBR. At a tactical level, business leaders can take advantage of the DCOE to gain access to SMEs and an inventory of capabilities in different digitalization domains. The DCOE also offers reusable ONE KBR frameworks and methodologies developed using best practices from KBR projects and experts across the globe. The DCOE can also assist with contract bids by providing an integrated view of applicable digitalization solutions, such as determining the availability of an accredited cloud environment to deploy KBR applications, or offering access to labs for training and educating customers. At a strategic level, business leaders can integrate the DCOE’s digital solutions into their current programs, as well as progressively engage with current and future customers on their digitalization journeys. KBR’s DCOE is working towards establishing the company as a technology-enabled market leader that helps customers adopt digital solutions and continues to cultivate a culture of innovation and knowledge sharing. These goals will showcase KBR as an agile, adaptive organization that adopts digitalization to enhance and transform business models and create value-producing opportunities.

How digital-ready is your team?

Interested employees should visit the Strategic Solutions Intranet to learn more and submit ideas.