The construction industry is rapidly transitioning from old-school legacy and ad-hoc tools to modern, forward-looking solutions. With this industry shift in mind, which would you prefer: getting the license plate of the bus that just hit you or being warned that a bus is coming toward you?

In other words, would you prefer to stick with the status quo, spending valuable team resources searching and tracking, or would you prefer using modern technology to provide timely reporting and forward looking insights so your team can plan, analyze and execute effectively?

Leading construction projects and organizations are choosing the latter – and are reaping the benefits of timely and impactful information.  Those who don’t make the move to updated technology will simply be left behind.

This warning is one of several key messages delivered by AECOM and FTI Consulting during our Aconex webinar, “Modernizing Project Controls to ensure Project Success.”

“Failing to plan is planning to fail”

This phrase is fitting for those who elect not to use modern technology to manage processes and deliver projects. Even within the past five years, the construction industry has matured. Adopting new technology is no longer risky; not adopting it is.

Project size and complexity are growing, driven both by demand and engineering technology.  New contract models are being put in place to respond to this complexity, but bring with them other challenges, including cross organization collaboration, reporting requirements and distributed project risk. Cutting-edge industry leaders are shifting from cost reporting to cost management, moving away from the pack and reinforcing their position as leaders.

3 golden rules to modernize project controls

During the Aconex webinar, FTI Consulting talks about the importance of empowering project professionals to tackle high-value work. Projects will be more successful when teams plan ahead (analyze, plan and execute) instead of spending their time looking for and tracking information (searching and tracking to create reports which ironically are outdated upon completion).

• Rule #1: Automate as much as you can.
• Rule #2: Use configurable systems to manage your processes and information across the project lifecycle.
• Rule #3: Implement open solutions that connect to other systems for project-wide insights.

Today’s solutions are more complete and user-friendly

If you’ve assessed project controls solutions over the past five years and felt daunted by the cost and effort of implementing a new system, you’re not alone. Fortunately, times have changed. These days, implementation happens in days and weeks; not months. We’ve graduated from numerous stand-alone systems that don’t communicate with each other – leading to error-prone double entry – to consolidated solutions that store information in one place, greatly minimizing errors.

Cloud-based systems provide easy, secure access from anywhere. Configurable solutions adapt to how you manage your processes and business.  A modern system provides forward looking insights and connects cost, schedule and scope. Less time is spent in training and implementation and more time is spent making good decisions and executing your projects successfully. Since many of the old-school  systems are rigid, teams end up relying on non integrated side-solutions to help manage their processes, but modern systems are integrated, flexible and have the functionality to manage all of your project processes.

What should you expect from modern project controls systems?

Raise your expectations! Modern project controls systems were designed to be easily configurable, to interface with your other project solutions and to be forward looking.

You can expect:

• Instant visibility into project status and health
• Project-wide access to the right information by the right people at the right time
• An integrated system on a single platform to understand how scope and schedule changes impact project cost

3 reasons why the moment is ripe for digital disruption

1. The market size opportunity is huge and global. The global engineering and construction (E&C) industry is overflowing with revenue potential. In fact, E&C is slated to become a $17.5 trillion business by 2030. However, through their failure to optimize project portfolios and streamline delivery techniques, global firms leave more than $1 trillion on the table each year, according to McKinsey.
2. Project delivery is becoming increasingly complex. Projects are either mega, distributed globally, compressed, or involve a growing number of parties. This requires us to manage projects in new and innovative ways. That said, according to a recent McKinsey study, the IT spend in construction is less than 1%; second to only hunting and fishing.
3. We’ve reached the perfect storm in tech disruption. We can leverage cloud, mobility, artificial intelligence (AI), building information modelling (BIM), virtual reality (VR), machine learning, etc., to solve these problems. We have a global opportunity to change the face of construction.

Now is the time for bold changes in construction

Traditionally, construction has lagged behind the manufacturing industry in terms of innovation. Manufacturing have distinguished themselves from other industries by digitizing and standardizing their processes, reducing waste, and controlling their environment to ensure increases in quality and safety. Because of these technological advances, manufacturing growth and opportunity have jumped ahead of the global economy, while the construction market trails behind.

Many people think standardization equates to lower quality goods, such as prefab, or less options to choose from. However, process standardizations does not mean less choice for consumers or less product output. Because manufacturing has invested in technology and processes, there are more options in consumer goods than ever before. The industry has relied on standardization to progressively become better. This “continual improvement loop” is a key component to standardization.

Moving ahead: Machine learning, standardization, and continuous improvement

Many people in the industry are leaders in their profession. For example, experienced project managers at the top of their game know how to avoid certain pitfalls. However, they’re relying on their intuition – another word for “experience”—that you can’t quite put your finger on. Historically, the next generation of project managers will make the same mistakes on their path to developing the same level of experience as their predecessors. The industry has come to accept that errors will continue to happen, but, that shouldn’t be the case. We should be leveraging all of this learning, so that when new people enter the industry, they aren’t making the same mistakes.

We must leverage new technologies – AI, BIM, VR, machine learning, etc. – to continually innovate and boost humans’ effectiveness. These technologies will help us standardize, improve quality, build safer environments, and develop repeatable processes. We rely on these machines to help us comprehend the streams of information flowing from projects and systems. If we can’t digest this influx of data, we can’t improve our processes.

In addition, humans should be doing the higher-level jobs and focus on safety and quality instead of focusing on administration and mundane tasks. We should be looking for ways to improve instead of grappling to make sense of information and data entry. Machines should be doing this for us –the number crunching and hard work – so that we can lift ourselves up and focus on innovation and change management.

Project Overview: Using BIM to improve efficiencies and lower costs

The open cycle power plant is surprisingly efficient, combining both gas and steam turbines to produce up to 50 percent more electricity from the same fuel than a traditional simple-cycle plant.
Enprode claimed their project wouldn’t be managed nearly as well without the help of a digital project delivery platform to keep them on track.

The high-profile Sudanese public project wasn’t without its hurdles, however. Enprode and other key players—Siemens, Lahmeyer, and the Sudanese Electricity Transmission Company (SETCO)— ensured the public had consistent access to power, regardless of project challenges. For example, Enprode BIM Manager Deniz Asar mentioned how difficult it was working with a geographically dispersed project team on BIM models. Collaborating across a range of time zones and varying languages within the team was no easy task. Enprode also had to meet a series of regulatory requirements mandated by the government owner, STPG.

Four ways Enprode stayed within budget by using a secure, cloud-based central platform:

1. Deniz’s team found the platform easy to use and deploy, thanks to intuitive dashboards and configurable workflows. The ability to view dashboards and easily export reports is a huge time saver.”
2. Aconex Connected BIM improved access to information and input from reviewers, resulting in better project decisions with fewer errors. Deniz claimed managing the sheer volume of information on the Sudan project would have been much more difficult, and not nearly as efficient, without a system like Aconex.
3. The Connected BIM models will make ongoing operations and maintenance more efficient over the 25-year projected life of the power plant. “We wish we had this functionality 10 years ago,” said Sudan’s Ministry of Energy.
4. Enprode also eliminated the wasteful tedium of printing and mailing copies of drawings to Sudan, Germany, and Turkey; an added paper-saving bonus—in addition to budget savings—for the environmentally progressive, sustainable company.

The power of BIM

Deniz’s team leveraged Aconex Connected BIM to share their models – and the valuable data associated with the model—amongst their group. Connected BIM includes project-wide access to models and data, clash detection, and the ability to view, rotate, and create mark-ups without authoring software. “The BIM grouping functionality within Aconex helps efficiently resolve clashes. We can quickly rotate the model to view the associated information thanks to the existing meta data structure,” Deniz said.

“Thanks to Aconex, we’re working in a digital office rather than an actual physical one,” said Deniz.