Collaborate to Innovate in engineering with Harry Hubbert

Harry graduated from the University of Tasmania with a Bachelor of Naval Engineering and went straight into the Navy. 

He’s worked in numerous roles and is now the Robotic & Autonomous Systems (RAS) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) Project Manager, working within the Directorate of Warfare Innovation NAVY, helping to bring RAS and AI capability to the RAN. 

This is a “close” copy of the words that were spoken during the Podcast, Season 3 Episode 26

It is not 100% accurate.
The guest was Harry Hubbert

Mel 

Welcome to Season 3, Episode 26 of Engineering Heroes. A podcast that presents the incredible engineers that are shaping our society and battling our challenging issues. 

My name is Melanie. My co-host and our podcast’s resident engineer, speaking to us from the trenches, is Dominic.  

Dominic 

Joining us is Harry Hubbert. 

Harry graduated from the University of Tasmania with a Bachelor of Naval Engineering and went straight into the Navy. 

He’s worked in numerous roles and is now the Robotic & Autonomous Systems (RAS) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) Project Manager, working within the Directorate of Warfare Innovation NAVY, helping to bring RAS and AI capability to the RAN. 

Mel 

Harry’s dad was an aluminium boat builder and Harry was always helping out in the shed while growing up.  His dad recognised Harry’s passion and suggested he look into being a naval architect.  He even took him to a visit a naval architect for a day who was building a fleet of ferries… when Harry was in Year 6, so maybe around 12.  And from that age on, he knew he wanted to become a naval architect. 

Mel  

What’s the difference between a naval architect and naval engineer?   

Guest  0:33   

I guess they’re same thing. I think the naval architect comes back from the where the name came from. So I guess architects were back in the day Victorian Ages without they were also engineers doing structural stuff. So when both came along, there was no real method or way to do it. So the architects that’s helped out and stuff. So I think that’s where the name sort of got brought along from. But essentially were mechanical structural engineers with hydro dynamics as well. So that’s sort of the core of our studies.  

Dom  0:59   

So what was your first project as an engineer?  

Guest  1:02   

Yes. So the first one was actually in my third year of university. We had, on a break I decided to do a piece of work experience with the same company that I went to in year six that I got the inspiration from, and I went then helped out the naval architects to do a few things. And they’re all still drafting by hand. So I had all the CAD skills now. So they were battling with a problem. They were designing a whale fin for the back of the SeaWorld boat in the Gold Coast. And they couldn’t quite get it on their hand drafting, so I said fuck it I’ll make one on the 3D modelling. So I made one for them. And then that was built and it’s now still running around the Gold Coast. Every time we go, that’s pretty cool to see. I was in third year and built the whale fin so it’s pretty fun.  

Dom  1:43   

See, it’s not just me that points stuff out.  

Mel De Gioia  1:46   

That’s right. I imagine it’s a little bit harder when you’re on the water though. Yeah. So that was your third year, and what is it? It’s a four year?  

Guest  1:57   

Oh, yeah. four years. Yeah.  

Mel De Gioia  1:58   

And then you joined the Navy straight out of uni?  

Guest  2:02   

Yeah, the Navy. I think they’re still running it now but also strange thing where after my first year I expressed interest and I went through the whole Navy process to get accepted since my first year results came in and they were like, oh, well, you can finish your first year you can finish all four. So they paid for the rest of my degree and I was signed as a midshipman at that point. And then when I graduated the University I was promoted to sublieutenant and went and did when did my Navy training. So for most of my time in three years, I was a midshipman with absolutely no training whatsoever but I was still on the books so I got paid and I got my free degrees route. So it was a pretty good deal.   

Mel De Gioia  2:37   

Did you start university with the idea that you would hopefully progress into the Navy?   

Guest  2:43   

No, I didn’t actually. Initially I wanted to design white boats, like luxury yachts and stuff likebecause I thought that would be pretty cool and a lot of freedom and stuff like that. But when I got into, when I started my studies, I started really getting interested in the underwater space. So submarines and stuff like that, like I’ll take it really cool design subsea systems for submarines. So that was quite a niche area of naval architecture. My dad always told me that if you’re going to be successful, you have to be the only person that will it does what you do will be the best what you can do so I thought I tried to do both and be a submarine engineer. I thought, well, no one really has submarines apart from the Navy.  

Mel De Gioia  3:16   

So what’s the most interesting job that you’ve been involved in so far?   

Guest  3:19   

The project I’m on, the job I’m in right now. It’s probably the best job. The project highlight was last year, we did a autonomous spoke. So autonomous catamaran that was 16 feet long. And there was a naval exercise in Jarvis Bay, and it was being run by the Navy. It was not a single Navy team involved. But there’s no one from the Navy, all industry. And I was like, well, this isn’t right. We need to do something about it. I wasn’t actually in job at the moment, but my boss gave me time off to go do it. And I had three months from scratch, get off the boat and design it and programme it and get into this autonomy exercise. And I reached out to a bunch of companies and everyone sort of said, Yep, everyone got the time and stuff for three months. We managed to get there and compete. And we were one of the most successful boats there. It cost under a grand. Everything was donated. The mounting plate for our antennas was my chopping boards from home. I chopped holes in it and that was a mounting plate sort of thing. So it was a really where I really saw the power of engineers collaborating and people sort of put aside the financial or the intellectual property sort of issues that really great things can be done very quickly, if everyone really wants to do it.  

Dom  4:27   

Did you tell your fiance before you nicked it or was aware of those.. where’s the chopping board?  

Guest  4:32   

She was deployed for six months.  

Dom  4:37   

So they were there a lot of other boats involved? Like is this a fairly?  

Guest  4:42   

Yes. So Tallis Australia, L3 is a company from the UK. Norfolk Grumman from the US had a boat there. Boeing had one. So it’s a lot of big drones brought their kit like their new toy. Yeah, essentially that so, but I thought as a Naval exercise you need to have Navy stuff there , so, yeah.   

Dom  5:03   

Wow, that’s awesome.   

Guest  5:05   

Yeah, it was really great fun and it was really, really rewarding So, and then from that sort of another bunch of opportunities have now opened up and now that’s my full time job is doing stuff like that. So it’s really, really great.   

Mel De Gioia  5:15   

That’s excellent. So can you tell us a little bit about working for the Directorate of Warfare Innovation within the Navy? What’s that like?  

Guest  

Yeah, so it’s very new. The Navy’s seeing the need to be more agile and innovative in the way we do things. We found there’s a lot of people out there at the coalface doing the work and have really great ideas, but there’s no way for them to get those ideas into fruition and actually out there doing stuff. So the whole point of the Directorate now is we’ve opened up innovation centres, we’ve given ships 3D printers, and we’ve got processes in place where people can submit ideas to us, depending on the sort of scale of the cost or the benefit they’ve got to get, they can be rushed through. And so essentially, some of the big projects is what I get given and then we get a fixed budget and it can’t be more than three to six months implementation to full scale. So it’s really quick, get in, get in there, get into the fleet, get it done now sort of work, which I really like. I quite like a sprint work, I’m not really a long like five year project person. I am a get it done in six months, and let’s see what happens sort of thing so really suits me.  

Dom  6:16   

It’s always nice to see something implemented quickly and you can, so it becomes tangible in a really short period of time. It’s wonderful when you those large projects are finally finished. And you can stand back but spending five years working on a project is a very, very long time.  

Mel De Gioia  6:32   

I think it’s important in the innovation space to be able to be reactive like that and to turn things around quickly. And what is it? Fail fast, fail fast, fail often, fail often fail fast. But yeah, and so I find that six months turn around, I’m just so jealous, because my projects go a little bit longer than that. I’d be nice to have quick things and you can see the results now. You can see them implemented and yeah, that’s not that’s amazing.   

Guest  7:03   

So yeah, so then we had a lot of success at the moment. So we are getting bigger and budget is getting bigger, bigger which is great. This is really great to see the Navy supporting it as well not being so down the line, it must work it must work now. It is just straight up and honest and say look it’s not gonna happen or blah blah blah and they’re happy with it. But I think they just want an answer. So it’s really, really good to see that the Navy is sort of taking that step and really taking on board.   

Mel De Gioia  7:25   

Yeah, that’s such an old company. Sometimes they can be stuck in their processes. Whereas it sounds like they’re being really quite proactive and innovative.   

Guest  7:36   

So yeah, they definitely are, I think makes it a little bit easier. I think I’ve talked a lot of friends that like other people that I graduated with, or other engineers and big companies, and they said, Yeah, that’s great, but I don’t think you’d really work in our organisation and stuff like that. And I was like, yeah, maybe not exactly in this exact way. But I think there’s other ways you could do it. I get that the Navy is not profit focused, never gonna make money with it. We’re there to put capability out like we don’t really care much it costs as long as we achieving the goal the government wants us to do. But I think there’s that big twisted, I think that this could have economic benefits. It was for big companies giving it a shot sort of thing.  

Dom  8:08   

Yeah. Well, I suppose it’s always that innovation that comes through to, that then finds its way into private industry, as well. So kind of runs both both ways. Yeah.   

Mel De Gioia  8:17   

You’ve seen it in the space races and stuff like that. So many innovations came out of that sort of development. And I imagine things will be trickling out through the military just is the hub in a way of innovation. So it’s great to see that Navy’s actually doing that.   

Guest  8:32   

Yeah, that’s exciting. 

MIDROLL 

Now… do you recall Harry’s project that he just had to do.  The naval competition where he pulled people together to participate as a team.  Well, that sort of work is just the tip of the iceberg for Harry. 

You see, when people come together to work on a shared goal.. It truly has the potential for greatness. 

But you need to be strategic with who you collaborate with.  you need to make sure you’re both moving in the same direction and that you’re complimenting each other as to what you each bring to the project. 

 

Guest  

So we are at the end of the era, where companies lock up the intellectual property, and don’t let anyone else know how they’re doing it. I think what we’re into now, I think the biggest thing is collaborating. I think everyone’s going in the same direction, just pulling in different directions. So everyone’s like pulling the same rope on different bits of string, but if everyone sort of pooled their resources, we could get places a lot quicker, a lot cheaper. Like I said, there’s projects that we’ve worked on where people, a bunch of people come together, use the skills that they’re good at, without any issue that to work and do what they like. And it’s done amazing things. I think that the collaborations are the next thing you really need to sort out and I think people are getting on board. See Google’s releasing open sourcing all their software now. Even other big companies are releasing this really incredible, really powerful software for anyone to use or modify. I think that’s a great thing and a scary thing. I guess you could look at it two ways. But I think it’s a big thing now trying to promote their collaboration and get everyone working together and do some pretty cool stuff.  

Dom  9:38   

Is it becoming more of a part of the jobs that you’re doing where almost back at the start of the project, you almost have to have a look at who you can potentially collaborate with. Or if there are other ideas in the same line, you can potentially dragging mid early days rather than sort of getting halfway through and having someone go Oh, hi, by the way. Yeah, I’ve been doing it for the last four years.  

Guest  10:00   

Yeah, it’s a mandate really, in my business case, I have to, every time I put anything up to get funded, or it’s sort of like a mini pitch really, I collate all the ideas, and I sort of put a pitch up saying this is that, like, everything you look at if it’s been done before? Like how would it suit your needs right now? Yeah, there’s, I guess that a lot of that comes to me is things that don’t exist right now. And I think defence has some really unique situations that innovations haven’t really got to yet, because it’s like, it’s like submarine innovations are quite specialised to us sort of thing. Pretty much I have to involve at least, I have to, and I do I like it involving at least one small Australian company, every project I do. So not a prime. So I’ve worked with some startups around Australia, got their help into it and put them as a prime supporter of it and and we’ve again, and then they can keep their intellectual property at the end or ours, we don’t really care as long as it gets done. And that’s led on to some bigger projects for them and some trust and sort of a foot hole. So the big primes VA and Tallis don’t have a complete monopoly over the defence market. So it has been really exciting as well, working with all these young companies that are trying to sort of get their foot in the door. It’s quite exciting space. And it’s quite hard to get into obviously, high cost.   

Dom  11:07   

Yeah. And it was always seemed to be one of those spaces where you needed to be one of those big companies otherwise, no one would entertain you.  

Guest  11:14   

Yeah.   

Mel De Gioia  11:15   

How are you finding working with people that are outside the Navy, though? Is it difficult to come together as a team each time like you’re talking six months projects. So you’re potentially doing this twice a year. And I know with any project team, you’ve got that forming, storming, norming kind of process. So every time you’re going through the whole, you’ve got contractual things to start with, but you’ve also got How do they work? How do you communicate? How do you link the work they’re doing with what you’re doing? How is all that going? I see that as a..  

Guest  11:47   

It’s hard. Yeah. I have five projects at the moment that I’m involved in. So it’s not one of the types of things. I’ve got one that’s nearing completion, a few more that is starting up so yeah, that is that is a hard part. I think the good part is that a lot of the time it’s, we are not starting from a standstill, where like they’re going towards something. And we’re involving them because they’re doing that work. Blueprint Labs, which is a robotic arm startup in Sydney. They do really incredible underwater robotic arms that have like feedback, like touch underwater. It’s really incredible. And they’re doing that, but we need that stuff. So they’re already working towards that. We sort of said look, we’re looking at doing this, this and integrating to this, and we will write this bit of software, blah, blah. And because they’re already nearly there, and they’re a start up, they’re quite agile, they’ve been really happy to sort of get it on. So most of the time it comes to face to face meeting but it’s best best way to start off that sort of things. I find as well that Scott’s great and stuff. But if he can get in the same room, walk around, touch things, do things, talk to each other, have a coffee, I think that’s the best way to sort of break down those barriers as fast as possible. But I think as well that we’re not impacting them or stopping them from doing their stuff. We are sort of going in the same sort of path and same direction and sort of pulling the same direction. So it’s not like a standstill. Let’s go sort of thing or people getting forced together.   

Mel De Gioia  11:48   

Yeah, it’s very much like what you were saying at the beginning in that before people would be doing it individually and pulling the rope in different directions. What you’re trying to do is you are finding ropes that are going in your direction, and you’re jumping on board with them and you can pull all together. Yeah, that’s visual I’m and I’m seeing a picture with that. That’s good.   

Dom  13:16   

So do you think there’s some solutions around these in a grander scheme of thing in regards to getting that collaboration going?  

Guest  13:23   

I think there is. I think  it’s like only a few isolated cells doing this not really talking very well about what’s sort of going on. I think everyone needs to get more integrated. Defence has always been an innovator. It’s big things have happened. Jet Engine, stuff like that. Things have happened because the Defence Forces wanting better capability and stuff like that. But Defence has always been a bad customer. We’ve been a big organisation that wants stuff, but then typically we’re like too much contracts, not very well written contracts. The money’s slow to come through, stuff like that. So I think that’s changing now, which is really great. So the Chief of Navy at the Pacific 2019 conference last year, he announced The Navy industry engagement strategy that he wants the Navy to do. So essentially, it’s made up of four things about an aligned direction. So making sure we know what we need, what we want and articulating that so people know what we’re actually… because there’s such an enigma. You go to small companies and like, well, what do you guys actually want? Like, what can’t you do properly? Because we don’t tell anyone anything. We don’t know how to innovate for you, because we don’t know what you want. So, so yeah, that’s the thing. And the second point was effective dialogue. So Defence being better at talking to people, sort of breaking down the core points. That’s not a classified thing, but with the core outcomes still there. So you can explain a capability without giving away secrets if that makes any sense. So if you can, I need to pick up something underwater. It could be anything, but for us, it’s something. Focusing on delivery was a third point they wanted to do. So focusing on like I said, short timeframes, but having these 20, 50 year projects. Let’s reduce it down, let people come in earlier or later and sort of have small development. So have a project and not be locked into anyone. So we’re very big at the moment saying that have an open architecture for a lot of our stuff. So we’ll have our control system. So our system will say we need that. Like for autonomous systems, where I do a lot of work in is, if there’s, we have a control system that says, okay, robot, we needed to do this. And we don’t care how it does that we just need it to accept what are we telling it to do. So traditionally, what you do you is Tallis will sell you a thing and has to work with Tallis software and nothing else, because they want to keep you coming back. But we’re stopping that and saying, no. It’s our gear now, and we’re gonna…. so then in a year’s time, if there’s something better out there or something different, something cheaper, we can swap it straight out without having to retrain our people, without having to redo our maintenance structure, we can switch swap it in. So that’s a big one. And then this is also promoting innovation as well. So its four main points is consistency, dialogue, focusing on delivery and essentially innovating. So he wants to think that’s going to be a great start. It’s going to help this process and allow for smaller companies to get involved not just have a big monopoly and I think they’ll have a lot of flow on effects, for Australian industry which will be really great.   

Mel De Gioia  16:01   

They sound like amazing points like. They tick the box what you were saying about this topic about collaboration within engineering, the chief of Navy, what he said is just it’s ticks the box for how that’s going to look, how that’s all going to be structured.   

Guest  16:19   

So it’s all common sense but it’s never been put down on paper. Everyone would like to think that’s the best way to do it. But no one’s actually said this is you will do this now. So I think that’s given us a lot of people a mandate to say, Okay, let’s crack on, do it.   

Dom  16:30   

I think it’s the same. The Navy is the same as any big organisation that they sort of go through a process and you get to the end of it, and it becomes so large that you don’t even realise what you’re doing. But you need to sort of stop and take stock and say, oh, hold on a second. We’re really not doing a very good job here in relation to these things. And having worked on the other side of the fence with Defence previously, it’s, I understand it’s awesome to hear those things because I understand where he’s coming from because there have been projects where you sort of sit there and go, but what do you really want? And then you get halfway through the project and go, but that’s not what you asked for at the beginning. But I suppose in with all the technology thats available, as you were saying, with open source readily available, and it changes in the way things are done and changes in collaboration as well just in regards to the ability to work on the same project for different angles. So I think it’s great that not only the Navy, but any businesses embrace this because it’s only going to speed up the process and make things run faster and smoother, too.  

Guest  17:27   

Yeah, I think they are willing as well. I think the big companies are getting more on board with Tallis and BA. So, next year, I’ve started a competition for university students around Australia. So there was Underwater Maritime Robotics Challenge and the big primes are sponsoring it for me. So they are putting up all the money so the students don’t have to pay anything, stuff like that. So that’s sort of my first step. And part of it was that industry interns can participate and Tallis can send a team of their interns down to university students, and I’m hoping for is going to sort of start building down those barriers that people have built up between everyone else and sort of start talking and get universities students seeing what Navy’s doing but also what Defence industry is doing and maybe get them more excited and motivated about moving into the maritime space because it is quite a.. I guess people don’t really think of it like when I tell them I’m a Naval Architect, explain it like, oh, I wish I knew that existed because that sounds really cool. It’s just crazy, because nobody knows what we do. A lot of people don’t really I don’t know why but this is like it’s aeronautical and mechanical are the two ones that just get pushed out there. So well, they do well, their marketing, I think, I think down there, they need to be better at marketing, about what we actually do. But I think it’s pretty exciting like anything from well I’m also a mechanical and structural engineer as well. So you can do the same sort of jobs. A lot of my friends are now working on oil and gas and mining and stuff like that, but they never liked it.  

Dom  18:42   

That’s the point of this podcast, I suppose is to try and get out there all the various facets of engineering that are out there that no one ever knew about.  

Mel De Gioia  18:50   

And so what are your thoughts on the future of engineering?   

Guest  18:55   

I think I’m quite excited for it.  I get told a lot that are you so lucky for how old you are. What’s going on the world right now. But I think no matter what time in human history since industrial revolution there has been exciting things happening, I think there’s a lot of digital stuff going on. So I think if people aren’t really ready to get on board with the programming robotics automation, then it’s gonna it might be get to, I think there’s always going to be big structures is always gonna be stuff for people to do. But I think the boom is really going to come in those automation specialist, stuff like that. They’re going to really be the, the sought out engineers of the future. But I think it’s exciting. There’s a lot of stuff coming down the line, I’ll get rid of the boring, mundane, repetitive tasks is my goal.  

Dom  19:31   

There was something at WEC, the lady who was from Tesla, and she was saying that people are sort of complaining about automation coming through, which is saying, we’re just getting rid of the boring tasks, so it’s not like we are trying to take people’s jobs. We’re taking the really crappy jobs away the dangerous crappy jobs. And that’s the whole reason that we’re doing it in the first place, I think.   

Guest  19:51   

Yeah, like I said, people keep saying that, when the biggest, like, changing technology in our history, but we’re not at all. Like the Industrial Revolution was twice as much innovation as what we’re doing right now, and like there’s those stories about the people walking through the shipbuilding factories with the rivet makers and they’re like are so scared. There’s five of us making rivets here, but the machine can take a lot of jobs and stuff. But those rivet makers went on to be Boilermakers and went on to maintain the machines like that. I think people like things still break regardless. So it’s still going to be engineers to be maintainers, there is still going to be mechanics and stuff like that, because things still break down. Like we’re trying to automate these massive ships that we’ve got 20,000 sensors and 8,000 valves. Statistics say that a few are gonna break today. So unless you have a humanoid, Star Wars robot to go around and fix.  

Dom  20:38   

So what would you say to people just starting out and engineering?  

Guest  20:41   

I’ll say, look, let’s sort of look at what your interests are, and what you really want to do. If you’ve got your degree you can do anything. Don’t feel like if you’re a aeronautical engineer you have to design planes, or if you’re a structural engineer to do structural stuff, you can go wherever you want. It’s easy to skill up and easy to move around and jump around and follow your interests. It’s amazing like I never thought I would would have been doing this sort of stuff automation at all, or robotics back in when I was studying, but here I am. So I think just keep your eyes open and just keep doing things you like.  

Mel De Gioia  21:09   

We are just going to wrap up with a few little short, sharp questions because I’m curious about this. What’s the piece of engineering that has impressed you?  

Guest  

So Project Azorian. Have you heard of that?  It’s from the CIA in the Cold War. So the Cold War a Russian submarine sank in the middle of Pacific Ocean about five kilometres down and the CIA wanted to get it back but they didn’t want the Russians to figure out that they are doing it so they got an oil mining guide to put one of his ships up and they built a huge big moon pool underneath on this huge ships and they went over the top of it. And they had a claw that dropped down five kilometres using steel rods and picked up the submarine and winched it up underneath and inside another ship and then drove away and without anyone knowing about it. There is a documentary about it. And if you haven’t seen it, it’s incredible. Like it is still to this day, what they reckon, people say it’s one of the biggest feats of engineering ever done. At the time, it cost something like 800 million US at the time, which I don’t know, four or 5 billion these days. So to do it and all they wanted was the launch codes.  

Dom  22:13   

It is incredible. So it’s like a Netflix or…  

Guest  22:17   

On the last day of university, a professor showed it to us. And then from then on, I’ve just been fascinated by it. That’s incredible. I still don’t know how they did it.  

Dom  22:31   

Definitely. Awesome. Finally, do you have an engineer that you admire?  

Guest  22:36   

I think from the Navy Sir Real Admiral William Clarkson. He was one of the first ever Navy senior officers and he was an engineer. So he came over from the UK,  he was promoted all the way to Vice Admiral so pretty much ran the Navy and as an engineer. He was responsible for the modernization of the Australian Defence Force. He set up all our shipbuilding, set up the Australian Navy for the wars and stuff and then no one really knows what he did and the work he did pretty much established the nation. Like it could have gone much differently. If we didn’t do what we did in the wars, if we didn’t have an engineer running, running the show it would have been much different. So he has always been a good inspiration.  

Mel De Gioia  23:10   

What era is that about?  

Guest  23:12   

1919 1922? I think he was an Admiral.  

Mel De Gioia  23:15   

Okay, cool.   

Guest  23:16   

It was clear from the formation of the Australian Navy he was the lead engineer.  

Mel De Gioia  23:20   

I have to thank you for that one.  

Dom  23:22   

So it’s always nice for me. When we get when we learn about engineers that we didn’t even know about.   

Guest  23:27   

Yeah, not many people know about him.  

Dom  23:29   

That’s awesome.  

Mel De Gioia  23:31   

Yeah. Thank you so much for joining us tonight. It’s really been great talking to you.  

Dom  23:35   

Yes it has. Thank you so much.  

Guest  23:36   

Thank you so much for having me.   

Mel De Gioia  23:37   

That’s an excellent, thank you so much.  

  

And thank you for tuning in to another episode of Engineering Heroes. If you want to know more about our podcast or the episode you just heard, visit our website, www.engineeringheroes.com.au. The best way to show your support is to tell people either in person or in a review. It’s that easy. Just spread the word. Seriously it is that easy. We look forward to you and your friends joining us next week when we bring you another interview with one of our engineering champions. 

  

Transcribed by https://otter.ai