Engineering
Success Story: Digital transformation in the construction industry
Oct 22, 2023
Simplify reporting, data entry, and enable real-time identification of delays on projects.
IT matters
Utilising cloud technology, enabling a zero cap-ex cost for infrastructure.
Provided a resilient solution, enabling project teams to utilise the application with and without data connectivity on site.
Business matters
Increased flexibility and scalability, ensuring future user demands can be met.
Delivered a simple-to-deploy solution, enabling users to benefit from a stand-alone iOS and Android App without experiencing problems from downtime.
Allowed the simplification of project management administration, reducing project management costs and enabling new business through marketing of the proprietary App.
Overview
With 72% of construction professionals now owning a smartphone, and 64% of construction professionals using a laptop—the timing for digital transformation within an organisation has already begun.
The construction industry in Australia as a whole lags behind most other industries in adopting technology into their processes and business models, due in part to a resistance from the “old guard”—or the “this is how it’s always been done” mindset of directors and business leaders. An older generation of leadership is now feeling pressure to adopt tech into their businesses.
This pressure is being applied by:
The maturity of smartphones and their adoption within their workforce,
Quality mobile app experiences in banking, travel, and social media, and;
Greater expectations in terms of visibility to information from clients.
These pressures have given rise to a suite of cloud-based applications, and larger construction firms are investing in proprietary, custom solutions. Due to the maturity of technology today, Tier 2 Builders such as Alliance Project Group are also identifying an opportunity to invest in proprietary solutions.
“Worldteam was engaged to discuss the benefits of Digital Transformation and how construction processes could be optimised and how this would provide an advantage.”
Tier 1 and 2 Builders acknowledge the importance of mobility for Construction
APG is a Sydney-based construction firm providing turnkey construction project management to offshore and local investors and developers. APG predominately builds multi-residential buildings throughout NSW, and has recently completed projects in Lane Cove, Homebush, and Lidcombe. APG takes pride in their provision of turnkey project services, which draw upon a diverse and thorough understanding of various development models, construction methods, and project deliverables for a wide range of residential, commercial, industrial, civil, and fit-out projects.
As a dynamic client-focused organisation, Alliance Project Group is committed to delivering a comprehensive range of construction and project management services, to deliver complete and innovative project solutions.
APG’s considerable industry experience and associated knowledge allow them to immediately deliver effective solutions to design, construction, project management, and cost planning for a diverse range of projects.
Today, 65% of organisations use cloud-based software for project management and project scheduling processes. With key personnel shifting between office and site on a frequent basis, fewer and fewer construction professionals can deny the importance of a mobile strategy.
Leading Digital transformation from the top
Rouad Elayoubi led the charge for Alliance Project Group’s mobile strategy. Understanding the efficiency gains, productivity, and deeper level of insights available to Directors at APG, Worldteam was engaged to discuss the benefits of Digital Transformation and how construction processes could be optimised and how these technologies would form a strong advantage over the competition.
Being a traditional organisation, most processes were paper-based forms and registers, meaning this transition also required a culture shift.
Problem
During workshops with Worldteam, the opportunity to digitalise internal processes such as Excel spreadsheets to manage and report on the completion of hundreds of tasks for each apartment within a building, within a project was identified. Other processes such as client communication processes in the form of RFIs (Requests for Information), Quality Assurance forms such as ITPs (Inspection Test Plans), and Safety forms such as SWEMS (Safe Work and Environmental Method Statements) were also identified as opportunities to increase productivity, reduce overheads and manual handling of data, and improve the efficiency of project teams.
Legacy software usually hides interesting data and important insights
Alliance Project Group’s existing process involved on-site inspections of apartments, and entering the completion status of each task onto an Excel spreadsheet. Spreadsheets would be duplicated in the attempt to provide snapshots at regular intervals. The desktop-based solution prevented management from analysing trends and delays, crucial information required to successfully deliver projects and identify issues which would affect milestone dates. Understanding the information contained within the data of these spreadsheets was also unclear. They used a colour system to mark tasks as complete or incomplete.
KPIs such as Apartment, Building Level, Building, and even project completion percentages were hidden away. Allowing business and project leaders to instantly know the status of each project down to the nearest percent is valuable and critical information.
Information handled and stored in this format is by its very nature outdated. The idea of real-time data is something most construction companies are now identifying as a requirement on projects. When data is created in Excel, synchronising with physical servers at Alliance Project Group’s head office is hours, if not days, behind.
Issues that could be identified early on are missed, and delays aren’t reversible once they’re days behind. Ensuring the data stored in this format was secure, with in-built permissions to ensure the accuracy and reliability of this information, was a problem for Alliance Project Group. With Microsoft Excel, data is open to all parties who can access this document, meaning delays and deadlines can be manipulated, and with no other form of policy than a trust policy, these delays can be hidden from Directors and business leaders.
The need to ensure a consistent approach to each project relies on manual processes. Creating the required tasks and assigning them to each apartment within a building on a project means each Project Manager and Management Team have the ability to move away from templates and into customised versioning—which becomes confusing and impossible to police.
Solution
Worldteam set about transforming these problems using Enterprise Mobility as the core technology to rectify these problems. Creating proprietary app-based solutions which were available to Alliance Project Group’s management teams, this solution is now available to download directly to smartphones.
Projects and Project tasks are now consistent, due to the solution delivered on APG sites across NSW. Directors and business leaders were provided the appropriate permissions to create company-wide tasks, which were then available for project teams to utilise on projects where they suited.
By using mobile technology, data was now available in real-time back to head office. In many places on a multi-residential construction site, internet access is at best weak and generally unavailable.
Using Worldteam’s Enterprise Mobility solutions, data would be stored on smart devices while out of 4G range, then synchronised immediately upon the device receiving a signal—ensuring a solution that delivered real-time information based on network connectivity.
The mobile technology would synchronise this information to Alliance Project Group’s cloud environment, hosted on AWS (Amazon Web Services) infrastructure.
The benefits of cloud technology are well known, and Alliance Project Group was able to capitalise on the scalability, security, and robust nature of AWS’s infrastructure.
By delivering Enterprise Mobility and Cloud technologies into APG, the database of information and data was now begging to be analysed and transformed into insights that assisted business decisions. Real-time progress of projects was now beautifully presented to allow Project Managers to instantly understand the health and progress of a project—along with trends and forecasting, telling project managers the likely completion dates based on actual data gathered on a project. This can change priorities of projects and project teams and is now easily accessible from their pockets.
