Constructioneering the digital future on site

The need to go digital

Construction productivity has advanced at a glacial pace over the last few decades. The industry was recently ranked in 21st out of 22 for digitisation and the average project finishes 20 months late and 80% over budget. To put that in context, if construction were a school kid in geometry class then he’d be the slow one sat at the back colouring-in shapes with a crayon rather than putting Pythagoras to use. Construction is a fertile ground for improvement but has resisted the adoption of new materials, methods, and technology despite considerable evidence showing significant, attainable benefits. The need to improve was highlighted in a recent study that found the average pre-tax margin for the ten largest UK contractors has fallen to minus 0.9% and the margin of the 25 largest is just 0.2%. Digital tools and processes can help to kick-start big improvements in project performance, and other industries have shown that companies that are quick to embrace emerging technologies will gain a strong competitive advantage. Constructioneering is one such technology.

Digital trends

Construction participants do have access to technology but, where it’s used, they usually operate independently rather than collectively.

Cloud services now offer the capability to transform construction workflows by allowing participants to create, manage and share data – in real time – from activities such as inspection, surveying and equipment operation.

Here are some of the digital trends that will, according to McKinsey, enable the industry to make a jump in productivity. They’re highly relevant to constructioneering.

Trend 1: Next-generation 5D BIM

What McKinsey calls 5D BIM takes a 3D digital representation of the physical and spatial dimensions of a project and adds scheduling and cost layers - usually referred to as 4D and 5D. Much of the industry is still only working in a BIM Level 1 environment by creating and sharing individual discipline 3D models and 2D drawings, without using a collaboration process such as PAS1192. Crossrail, rightly held up as an exemplar BIM project, says it will have achieved BIM Level 2 so there is considerable scope to upskill industry to take advantage of BIM technologies.

 [I recently attended a BIM event where someone talked about his company’s ability to deliver BIM Levels 3, 4 and 5. Considering the UK recently launched its ten-year Digital Built Britain strategy, which includes BIM Level 3, is anyone really doing BIM Level 3 yet? Any suggestions for what Level 5 is?]

Trend 2. Digital collaboration and mobility

This is the fastest-growing and most penetrated area for digital technology in construction. Companies are gradually replacing paper-centric processes with digital workflows, using discrete apps to manage communication and collaboration between crews. Two of the biggest advantages of digital collaboration are improving real-time communication and large-scale data mining. The apps are easily connected to sensors on site, wearable devices and desktop machines, and they can be used for document management, productivity tracking and report generation. Common data environments are transforming project collaboration and data management and, as a major contractor told me recently, “CDEs drastically reduce the OTFU” [Opportunity To Mess Up].

[At another industry event members of an ‘expert’ panel were asked how their projects were using collaboration standards, PAS 1192 in particular. The panel laughed and said that there was no need because the designer was sending 3D models to the contractor without needing a standard, and that the contractor would package up a set of as-built models for handover to the client at completion. BIM Level (not even) 1. But the panel had a nice fuzzy feeling that they were “doing BIM” and didn’t need the expense of “buying” collaboration too. Wowza!]

Trend 3: Near-perfect surveying and geolocation

Surveying has traditionally been performed using electronic distance measurement. Now, satellite positioning systems, photogrammetry and LiDAR can be used in conjunction with cloud processing to produce high-resolution images and 3D models in near real-time. Drones and handheld scanners are further enhancing the accuracy and quality of surveys whilst reducing the time needed to capture the source data, which can be used to dynamically update BIM models, track construction progress and manage site logistics.

Trend 4: Internet of Things (IoT) and advanced analytics

Sensors can track and analyse real-time data from equipment, crews and materials to enable contractors to streamline their supply chains, match materials to activities and analyse productivity. Acquired data can be used for trend- and pattern-based analytics to support decision-making through the construction process. Gathering and exploiting an ever-increasing amount of higher-quality data, and combining it with design data and analytics, will improve contractors’ ability to control costs, improve decision-making, help to manage project risk and improve safety.

Trend 5: Autonomous navigation technology for construction machinery

Autonomous heavy machinery provides higher utilisation rates and lower operator costs, and the full potential will be reached when a project’s whole fleet possesses the technology. When combined with IoT technology and advanced analytics, the operation and management of equipment could be fully optimised through the entire construction process – as well as improving site safety.

Exploiting the trends for construction

Constructioneering makes full use of these five digital trends, combining surveying, engineering and construction workflows to provide new efficiencies in creating affordable, smart, sustainable infrastructure. It allows users to start from a reality-captured surveys and leverage and update their digital engineering models throughout the construction process in real time. Compared with traditional workflows, where survey data and digital engineering models can be lost and inefficiently recreated, constructioneering provides seamless integration for constructible models that offer real-time updates and data exchange for improved efficiency and cost reduction.

Reskilling the construction workforce

One of the big challenges of going digital is to motivate the traditionally conservative construction firms so that people and work processes can catch up with constructioneering technology. Academy programs on major projects have already proven their worth in educating, training and supporting teams to achieve better outcomes and creating transferable learning legacies. Constructioneering academies combine classroom training with practical field work, which is a proven method of enabling attendees to internalise the learning into effective habits. Academies also provide an effective means of capturing client-contractor-designer feedback, benchmarking project performance and driving research and development.

The best time to go digital is now

No single digital innovation will generate a stellar improvement in construction productivity but constructioneering has an important part to play in setting the industry on the right track. To quote Jackie Brown in the 1973 film The Friends of Eddie Coyle, “This life's hard man, but it's harder if you're stupid.” Constructioneering gives the construction industry one less reason for staying stupid.

Now where did I leave my crayon . . ?

#GetTimeOnYourSide