Bolts to bytes: transferring digital transformation principles across industries

Scott Virtue began his career in the United States Air Force before moving into engineering leadership at the forefront of immersive design. As Director of Engineering at Foth, a firm working across infrastructure, environmental services, and production, he oversees what the company delivers to clients, and has been a driving force behind its adoption of VR and augmented reality as decision-making tools. In this episode, Scott explains why the gap between what engineers understand and what clients can meaningfully approve is one of the most underestimated risks in any design project, and how immersive technology bridges it in ways that 2D drawings, and even 3D renders, simply can’t.

Starline Windows makes over 10,000 entirely custom windows every month, no two the same. As Chief Operating Officer, Lesley Noland has spent more than two decades turning that complexity into an advantage, driving a run of industry-first moves in materials, automation, and digital design. In this episode, she traces Starline’s path from early powder-coat adoption to Autodesk-based BIM workflows and AI-driven automation, and reflects on the culture beneath it all: stay ahead of the curve, empower your people, celebrate failure, and never mistake a crazy idea for a bad one.

Tom Loader joined Multiplex in 2018 as an architect by background. Today, he leads the global contractor’s digital transformation across technology, data, AI, and digital skills. In this episode of The Art of the Impossible, he argues that the grand phrase ‘digital transformation’ hides what’s really a slow, incremental, never-finished process, and that setting that expectation early is one of the most important things any transformation leader can do. From the early work of rationalising shadow IT to a Microsoft Copilot rollout now running at 92% utilisation, Tom traces a journey that’s fundamentally about people and helping them become the most effective version of themselves, not simply making them faster.

What does play have to do with design and manufacturing? Everything. In this episode Michelle Lee, Partner and Executive Managing Director at IDEO, reframes play not as a fun distraction but as a discipline: a deliberate practice of curiosity, creativity, and experimentation that has helped global brands crack their hardest problems. Drawing on a career spanning aerospace engineering, the toy industry, and the world’s most influential design consultancy, she makes a compelling case: the leaders willing to ask the dumb question and prototype the bold idea are the ones who land on genuinely transformative answers. Technology, she argues, is only ever as powerful as the human curiosity behind it.

In December 2024, Joe Zak acquired Fonda Flexible Manufacturing, a precision sheet-metal fabrication and component manufacturing company. Now leading both Fonda and Zentrypoint, he’s driving both businesses to stay at the cutting edge of design and manufacturing technology.