Emerging Construction Tech - The missing link...
Ricardo Khan
Industry thought leader | Innovation and culture | Emerging technology | BIM/VDC | People First
My objective in writing this article is to solicit feedback from the construction industry and the vendors that support our industry. We are facing some fundamental challenges on project sites around the country which creates a bit of a chicken before the egg scenario. Your feedback, is very much appreciated.
Every month there is a new study on the rapidly changing landscape of construction tech software and some hardware tech that promises to use digital methodologies, Saas, AI, robotics, cloud computing processing, edge computing, etc. to solve for the key concerns of the construction industry. All of which stated in these reports are valid priorities and concerns. No question there.
Top concerns of construction industry (per various market case studies)
- Safety of our people / job sites
- Cost / budget
- Schedule
- Quality / Productivity
- Environmental
From a glance, we are enamored by all of the startups in our space and excited for the digital transformation in the construction industry. Here's my concern...
In order to reap the benefits of the promise of new methodologies, we have a few key root causes that plague our industry. One major item is something that technology vendors can focus to help us solve. We all know we have a fragmented supply chain challenge in our industry, that's not what I'm getting at.
As we talk to our peers, gather input from our own teams, and generate innovation ideas, there has been one consistent theme from project team members who work in the field - Improve Communication. As we investigate the ideas to find the core problem, we returned to the three fundamental key performance indicators that help drive toward the outcomes we want.
- Field Communication - Are we effectively communicating to and from the field teams AND with our external partners (Trades, vendors, suppliers)? Can we connect with people to get to the latest information to execute the plan? Voice / Data data / power connectivity? We are a 'people' business...
- Stakeholder Collaboration - As we work with our internal and external stakeholders from the field, are we able to solve problems together as they arise in an efficient way? We need solutions that help us share visual project data and information so our people have the latest information in the field to build right the first time.
- Decision Latency - The most important KPI based on items one and two. How quickly can we get to an informed decision by connecting people, information and process as it relates to the plan? This is a key challenge due to our traditional and manual workflows that exist in the industry.
These points hold true for both large commercial and infrastructure/energy work which we face on a daily basis within our firm. Although, the challenge is exaggerated on projects in rural environments with little to no access to data connectivity. hmm...
Another Perspective from other industries
Outside of industries like ours, construction, where we are literally building the infrastructure, structures and facilities for people to work in. We are faced with a major lack of infrastructure that solves for our basic communication needs so we can collaborate and solve problems together. Right?
You may work in an office, warehouse, factory, etc. and are able take advantage of reliable systems that provide power, voice, data connectivity almost anywhere at work. Even the stores we purchase our food and goods have free WiFi. While in construction, we are experience change to the infrastructure/facility on a daily basis, so connecting people at various locations on the project is difficult at times through technology. As an example, we had scenarios where we put up a job site WiFi mesh using some of the latest technologies, and during the process, our team erected a core/shaft wall that blocked the signal which broke the connection. Or even better, the power to the job site WiFi access point/repeater was unplugged, so there was no connectivity in the lower levels. Better call ITS and the vendor, again.
Most large/complex construction projects around the country may have solved the job site office connectivity challenge, but still lack a reliable set of solutions that are cost effective to provide connectivity to our people in the field. It's not about picking up the phone and calling someone, but getting the latest information in the field when someone calls and says, there is a change to today's plan...
So How is this relevant to Emerging Construction Tech?
If we can't solve for basic communication and collaboration challenges in the field, we should take a moment ask the question, how will we truly leverage some of these emerging technologies in the market that require connectivity in order to work?
We are constantly learning about new software tech startups and the promise of IoT, business intelligence and using AI to better understand risk on projects.
What we rarely hear about is the latest construction connectivity startups or the big networking companies sharing their reliable, affordable, scale-able solutions to establish a communication/collaboration infrastructure that enables the full potential of the plethora of 'mobile-first' construction solutions.
The missing link?
A reliable infrastructure for voice/data/power connectivity on construction sites should be addressed first. Chicken and egg thing.
This is potentially the key requirement that will truly enable a digital transformation in the construction industry. If our people in the field have reliable connectivity solutions, we can better communicate, collaborate across party lines and get to faster informed decisions 'in the field'.
Are we all relying on the promise of 5G to change how we work? If so, it will be 5-10 years before that technology is at scale across this country... Does 5G solve for our rural projects? If so, it doesn't equate with the pace of new startups creating Saas solutions that will solve for the outcomes our field teams are working toward.
Question to Audience:
- Is this a problem or not?
- Does this subject resonate with you or have impacted your field teams?
- What organizations out are working on targeting this problem?
Looking forward to your positive and collaborative input and thoughts? "Be hard on the problem, easy on the people".
Rick
Founder at Buildout.ai | Digital assistant in a construction project that helps you do tasks easier and faster.
5 年In my expirience the main way of communucation on construction site is still phone calls.?The phone bills that I saw will not let me lie. But the situation is chanching rapidly.?Now even the workers are actively communicating in messengers, which was difficult to imagine 3-4 years ago. This became possible, since the mobile Internet and Wi-Fi covered most sites, not all, but most. And the situation will continue to improve.
Building XR experiences and products.
5 年It's not only that we lack effective tools to bridge office-jobsite communications, but it is also *what we communicate* that is hard to describe over the phone/emails. I see construction as a tacit-knowledge industry, it's about showing, not explaining, and that makes communication even a bigger challenge. I strongly agree that the key to solving scheduling, budgets, quality, and safety is about streamlining communication, which I refer to as *making knowledge accessible whenever it is needed to whoever needs it*, and when this type of knowledge is almost in-transferrable, improving productivity is indeed a huge challenge. Some good food-for-thoughts: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/46388136_The_role_of_tacit_knowledge_in_the_construction_industry_towards_a_definition
Town of New Hampton, New Hampshire
5 年A few marginal thoughts: 1. There are six key focus areas of interest to construction leaders: HSE, Quality, Cost, Schedule, People and Customer. A customer is anybody whose success is dependent on your performance. 2. Every decision will have some impact/influence on each of the six key focus areas. 3. A construction leader must "look around corners" to anticipate the magnitude of the influence/ impact to each of the six key focus areas. 4. Managing construction is managing behaviors, whether human or tech. 5. Tech is the sizzle. What you know (content), when you know it and what you do with it is the steak. 6. Tools are dumb until they are placed in the hands of a skilled crafts-person - whether its a hammer or a smartphone/ tablet. 7. Without a solid understanding of the basic "blocking and tackling"? C/ CM skills you are probably doing the wrong things faster. 8. My favorite - Construction is like war - once the first shot is fired, all the war plans will end up in the waste basket.... :)
Empowering people ??♂? and organisations to build ??? with data. ??
5 年Yes this is a common problem, but I don't think it's got to do with connectivity or access to 5g networks it's trying to communicate and share data between all the software solutions and data formats and capture process and analyse the data in a central place and share with project teams and decision makers so they can react dynamically to the ever changing environment of construction sites. Usually the information / data is delayed due to manual processing requirements that inhibit fast efficient decision making required to manage construction projects.
AECO Tech | Strategy | Business Outcomes
5 年1. Yes 2. Everyday 3. Most of the available (popular) collaboration solutions available in the market, sooner or later focus their product path resonating in terms of contract documents i.e. RFI, Submittals, Issues, Punchlist etc. In this typical product map we divert our focus from 55% of the untapped form of communication on varied platforms like email, phone call, text, meeting notes or field huddles. As a result, a few of the outcomes that impact team productivity are: more meeting hours, communication flow breakdown, loss of critical information/decision, and in the hindsight if we can organize the communication between stakeholders and project teams on a single source of truth, eventually we can reduce the generation of contract documents pertaining to communication gap. Communication focused platform would have its own challenges given to end user preference, team dynamics, existing processes in place etc but nevertheless following the adaptation curve, it would be a bliss to the industry! Great article Ricardo Khan. The defined KPI’s are spot on!