Analysing longer term data critical to driving sector-wide construction efficiency

Construction projects are highly complex undertakings and the success of a project is determined by thousands of interconnected decisions made every day, at every level, across multiple organisations. Each of those decisions has the potential to add inefficiency and risk, which can inevitably lead to additional project costs and delays that can grow exponentially along with the size of the project.

Roz Buick is senior vice president product, strategy and development with Oracle Construction and Engineering

Over the last two decades, the industry has adopted technology in the form of point solutions to solve specific issues and embraced first-generation platforms. These have helped improve efficiency and connect teams, but the data from these solutions too often continue to be locked away in specific applications and proprietary formats. This makes it difficult to use the massive and fast-growing volumes of data to get a holistic view of performance across processes, projects, or portfolios.

With hundreds of decisions all happening at once on a project, how can construction technology platforms better keep everyone synchronised and provide the project team the visibility, tracking, and reporting they need to keep a project on target? Improving how data is managed – and how it is used to inform decision-making – is key to solving this challenge.

As many engineering and construction (E&C) organisations have accelerated their digital transformation and automation efforts to connect teams and maximize mobility, a true common data environment (CDE) is critical to driving trust and collaboration between members of the project team.

A CDE is a cloud-based space where information from construction projects is stored and accessible to project participants. Operating within a CDE greatly improves project collaboration and information management by connecting teams, models, and all other project data in one shared environment ― and ultimately producing a complete digital project record.

Using a CDE can also help solve challenges with ever-changing teams or even major project changes. As new individuals, sub-contractors, or other organisations join the project, they can immediately be granted access to the needed project information that already resides in the CDE. Nothing has to be packaged and “sent” to new participants, nor is anything locked in the inbox of departed team members. Further, should a project ever be stopped, the CDE contains the full project record to that date. When the project re-starts, the CDE will be ready to support the team with everything that has occurred on the project in the past – nothing has been lost or needs to be re-created.

When teams are connected with a CDE, each project team member has accessibility to the data they need to make informed, proactive decisions – the key to driving continuous improvement.

To date, business intelligence technologies have generally provided only a backward-looking view into project data, ie what has happened on projects. While these insights are valuable, what if you could improve your chances of delivering a project on time and on budget by using data to predict what is likely to happen throughout the construction process?

New developments in artificial intelligence (AI) have unlocked another level of project intelligence, enabling predictive insights to drive better decision-making to improve project outcomes. This transformative change in data science for the industry yields a dynamic view into such variables as:

The factors which might delay a project
The probability of delay on a project
Amount of predicted delay
Likelihood – and severity – of a cost overrun
Hidden risks around safety, design, rework and litigation

These AI technologies are powering active intelligence, helping organisations learn from the past while continually assessing the present. Active intelligence yields predictive insights that add value to nearly every aspect of construction project management, including critical areas such as schedule, cost/budget, quality, safety, risk and collaboration.

This enables organisations to regularly monitor developments and adjust plans using up-to-date predictive insights. Such a system produces dynamic intelligence, learning from its re-trainable machine learning models, and grow smarter and more accurate over time. With the insights this process yields, organisations are much better enabled to empower their project teams with the right intelligence to make timely decisions.

There has never been more pressure to change as the industry confronts disruptions stemming from Covid-19, shifting project types, increased competition, and a retiring labour force. These pressures, combined with continued increases in complexity, have the industry rethinking every aspect of project delivery.

As the resultant adoption of technology grows and data proliferates, a new breed of intelligent technology platforms, powered by AI and machine learning “data backbone”, can help organisations liberate their data and convert it into the intelligence needed to accelerate performance. In essence, these platforms finally can help E&C organisations succeed in the present and learn from the past to improve the future.

The industry has a tremendous opportunity to improve project outcomes by taking advantage of these new capabilities. Rather than going back to the old way, we have an opportunity to use this momentum to move our industry forward.