Videos/Podcasts
Where Experience Meets Innovation: The Breakout Moment Podcast
Most of what we rely on every day, from the vaccine in a syringe to the jar of peanut butter in the pantry, is the tip of an iceberg. Beneath the surface is a long chain of engineering, architecture, construction, and quality decisions that make the finished product feel simple. That iceberg is where Genesis AEC works.
Our Senior Process Engineer Denny Woolley recently sat down with host Christina May on The Breakout Moment podcast (Episode 22, “Where Experience Meets Innovation”) to talk about what happens below the waterline: how process engineering actually works, why Genesis AEC keeps expanding its capabilities, how digital twin modeling is changing facility design, and what 40 years in the industry teaches you about being wrong.
Watch the full conversation below, or read on for the highlights.
Growing by listening
Genesis started as an engineering firm. The move into a full architecture, engineering, and construction offering, with CQV and asset management on the back end, was not the result of a master plan. It came from clients asking questions the team could not yet answer in-house.
As Denny describes it, a client working with Genesis on mechanical engineering would ask a process engineering question. Then they would ask how to fit a piece of equipment into a space, which is an architecture question. Because the client trusted Genesis, they asked Genesis to find the answer. After enough of those conversations, the obvious next step was to bring architects onto staff, then commissioning and qualification specialists, and eventually process engineering itself, which joined Genesis about 10 years ago.
The common thread is listening. Every client has a story that looks similar to someone else’s on the surface but is different in the details, and those details matter. Denny’s goal is not to make a design “overly perfect” in the abstract, but perfect for that specific client. He points to a recent new engagement that came about because a key contact at a former client company moved to a new organization and brought Genesis with him. He remembered being heard.
What process engineering actually is
It is a question Denny gets at back-to-school night, so he has a good answer ready.
Process engineering is the study of liquid and air transfer. If you want to make peanut butter, you mix ingredients in a tank, transfer the product through a heat exchanger, and deliver it to a filling machine that loads sterilized jars and screws on the lids, all while keeping contaminants out of the air. Swap peanut butter for a vaccine, an API, or a silicon wafer, and the fundamentals hold. The stakes just go up.
Genesis draws a line between two disciplines that outsiders tend to lump together:
- Process engineering covers the heart of the product process itself.
- Process utilities engineering covers the utilities dedicated to how the product is manufactured. Building chilled water cools the offices; process chilled water serves the production space, built from cleaner materials in a system that can be qualified so regulators like the FDA can verify contamination risks have been mitigated.
Either way, the goal of any manufacturing line is the same: one widget looks exactly like the next, and a quality process confirms it before it reaches the customer.
Digital twins and the engineer’s crystal ball
Asked where Genesis is breaking out next, Denny points to predictive analysis and digital twin modeling. Engineers have always run the equations; the problem is that reality does not always agree with the math. Digital twins narrow that gap, and Denny frames them as a progression rather than a single tool:
- Simulation in Excel. Fast, inexpensive, and good enough to get a project off the ground with reasonable assumptions. A static, two-dimensional picture.
- Dedicated simulation software. A “shadowing” environment where you can watch a tank fill and empty, see liquid move from point to point, and measure the time factor in something closer to real time. The picture becomes three-dimensional, and the feedback becomes precise enough to check whether the projection is holding up.
Genesis has already delivered this kind of modeling for clients in the region who needed confidence before committing capital. For projects where the investment runs into serious money, a more accurate crystal ball that costs less than a physical mistake is worth building.
Two caveats from Denny. First, start with the end in mind: clients usually know what they want to build, but modeling is most useful when it helps rank where the cost and revenue are concentrated, so the design effort goes where the dollars are. Second, the same thinking extends into asset management. An idle asset is not making money. Modeling helps identify which assets a facility needs and how to bring the idle ones back into the manufacturing process.
AI, context, and spirited debate
Denny is candid that accuracy and AI do not always belong in the same sentence, especially in regulated environments. His answer is experience. Genesis has staff who have worked across many companies and environments, and the firm can draw on a portfolio of roughly 30,000 projects. When a question goes out on Teams, someone almost always responds with “we did that back in 20-something, here is the link.”
Internally, that leads to what the team calls spirited debate. Denny sees it as a strength. A room full of people who only say yes is a red flag; friction is what sharpens a knife. AI can be a powerful tool, but only when someone with context and creativity is looking at the output and knows when to say “in this situation, that is not right.”
He shared one example from the field. Team members disagreed about how a purified water system would behave and whether a vendor-specified instrument was the wrong type in the wrong location. Denny was the engineer on site, so the team tested the competing theories by installing a second instrument where they believed it belonged. Some people were right, some were wrong, and everyone learned from the result.
It’s okay to be wrong
After four decades, Denny says one of the biggest advantages of experience is a willingness to be vulnerable. Being wrong means you learned something, and you can pass it along. His wife keeps asking whether he is ready to retire. His answer: he loves what he does, and he plans to keep doing it as long as he can.
Listen to the full episode of The Breakout Moment to hear the entire conversation.
About Genesis AEC
Genesis AEC is where science meets the built environment. We provide a single point of accountability for life sciences and advanced manufacturing, integrating architecture, engineering, and construction with specialized CQV, asset management, and sustainability services to deliver high-performance facilities nationwide. Contact us to talk about your next project.