The construction industry is often characterised as being
slow to adopt modern technology – but to anyone familiar with the industry this
is clearly not the case. If anything construction is better characterised as
creative, innovative and quick to adopt any technology that reduces cost –
including information technology and new forms of communication. Construction was an early adopter of the
Computer Bureaux services that appeared in the 1960’s, of telex and then fax
machines, of two-way radios, computer aided design, mobile telephones and
email.
Early problems with using IT on construction sites
There is one area of technology that made great
inroads into other industries such as manufacturing, logistics and retail, but until
recently has failed to gain a foothold in construction – which probably
accounts for the industry’s unfair reputation – and that is the use of
information technology for process control.
By “process control” I mean everything that is used to
manage and control a production process. That includes things like measuring
progress and the conformance of products to the specification as well as giving
instructions to workers and managing the supply and storage of raw materials. Those
functions apply just as much to a construction process as they do to a
manufacturing one. However, while manufacturing rapidly moved away from
paper-based process control from the 1970’s onwards, construction did not.
Process control takes place on the shop floor and the shop floor for construction
is the construction site. Therein lies the problem.
Early forms of IT used for process control required a fixed
infrastructure (i.e. cables) which in turn required a structured environment.
Most construction sites are constantly in flux with what structure there is
developing slowly during the lifetime of the project. For most of the hundreds
of companies that come together to work on a construction project the nature of
the physical environment they are working in constantly changes. Few other industries
have the problem of spoil heaps suddenly appearing in the middle of the shop
floor. Consequently IT in construction used
to stop at the site gates and even years later it was confined to the site
office.
Then came mobile IT - first in the form of wireless local
area networks and then increasingly in the form of mobile data services like
GPRS and 3G (prior to GPRS the data services were too slow to have much of an
impact). These technologies promised to solve the infrastructure problem by
removing the need for wired networks. However, they required an investment in
hardware which in the early days was very expensive. It was also difficult to
maintain adequate coverage. At the time most useful applications that ran on
mobile devices required constant connectivity – partly because off-line storage
on the devices was very limited. Mobile phone bandwidth was low and maintaining
coverage on site using wireless LAN’s was notoriously difficult (remember the
moving spoil heaps).
The problem with "projects"
Being project-centric on its own would not be a problem – however construction is also prone to the dramatic variations in demand caused by economic cycles. During lean times construction work dries up and is slow to recover as an economy comes out of recession – “first in, last out” as those in construction put it. What this means is that successful construction companies keep their overheads to an absolute minimum. As far as possible everything is financed on a project-by-project basis. That way when the order book starts to dwindle they do fewer projects, but stay in business. Those construction companies that let their overheads grow during the good times go to the wall during the bad.
Occasionally even some established names make this mistake.
Periods of prolonged economic growth like the one before the most recent
recession can lead to complacency. When recession does hit there is then a
desperate scramble to reduce overheads by shedding salaried staff, disposing of
injudiciously acquired assets (typically the offices that came along with small
mergers or acquisitions) and “restructuring” to streamline those overheads
which are essential – mainly accounting, office IT and human resources. The pain for those construction companies
that survive this process (many do not) only serves to reinforce their need to
take a project-centric approach.
The result is a kind of Darwinian selection. The successful construction
companies that stay around are companies that are structured in a way that
avoids overhead. What this means is that the adoption of site-based IT happens
piece-meal. There is a preference for off-the-shelf or hired solutions and any
investment has to be justified on a project-by-project basis. The first time
that PC’s started to appear in construction site offices was when their cost
fell to the point that they were no longer classed as a capital item. This gave
project managers the freedom to buy them directly out of their individual project
budgets.
This situation is frustrating for technology vendors. Instead
of being able to sell their product or service once to a single construction
company they effectively have to sell it again and again to individual
projects. Construction companies often have no mechanism or budget for
investing in a solution that would need to be recouped across multiple
projects. Even when there is a desire to do so they will often face internal
opposition from their own project managers.
This is because most construction companies charge projects
for the provision of any internally managed resource, such as plant and
equipment or IT. If a project manager is not convinced about the value of an IT
solution – or if the benefit is to the company as a whole rather than to his individual
project – then he will see it as an unnecessary cost. This can prevent companies benefiting from
economies of scale or volume licensing without a great deal of internal
wrangling.
The irony is that this project-centric structure leads to
problems that IT based process control could actually help to alleviate.
Because projects are treated as self-contained ventures construction companies
often have trouble spreading best practice and learning from past mistakes. It
is widely recognised that projects often end up “re-inventing the wheel”
because of a failure to recognise and communicate innovations from one project
to another. In the past construction has often claimed that all projects are “one
off” – and to a large extent they are. Not due to any inherent characteristic
but because of the way that they are managed.
Falling mobile device costs
Consumerization has dramatically reduced the cost of mobile devices. For construction this has a really important effect – it puts them in the hands of site engineers. Once a device is seen as a standard site engineer’s tool then the problem of purchasing it for a specific project disappears. This has already happened with the use of mobile phones and laptop computers.
Site engineers play a vital role in developing the use of
mobile IT in construction. They are well trained enough to understand the
commercial realities of the industry, but are close enough to the site process to
recognise the potential value of new technology. They also tend to be young enough and perhaps
inexperienced enough, to assume that things can be changed.
I remember a time when site engineers were pushing for
laptops in the company I worked for because of the time saving they offered and
the ability to do more work away from the office. The chairman of the company described this as
“laptopitis” and dismissed it as a desire for gadgets – insisting that he personally
approve all laptop purchases. He was wrong to dismiss their value – but
probably right at the time about the cost-benefit. Today, in most parts of the
industry, a laptop is seen as an essential tool for a site engineer.
The same thing is now happening with smartphones and tablet
computers. The first place that Apple iPads appeared in construction was at
board meetings in the hands of directors as a status symbol. The second place
they appeared was on site in the hands of site engineers as a tool. The difference this time around is that the
price has dropped so far that engineers are circumventing company purchase
restrictions by bringing their own devices (BYOD) to work. They are also buying
and even writing their own apps.
However, getting mobile IT hardware onto site is one thing,
integrating its use into the construction process in a way that enhances
productivity and performance across the company is quite another. Most consumer applications are not specific
to construction and do not provide for back-office integration. Truly useful
applications need to be tailored to the construction process and able to
exchange data with other company systems – such as document management, cost
and design.
Cloud application development platforms
Application platforms simplify the development of new applications (and thus greatly reduce the cost) by providing pre-baked functionality – common building blocks that can be re-used to create new solutions. They vary from simplistic drag-and-drop form builders to sophisticated platforms that are fully-fledged development environments that can support back-office integration and bespoke code. Typically they also provide a way to deploy and update applications onto mobile devices – in essence allowing the creation of a corporate app store with little IT or administrative overhead. The MobiCloud platform developed as part of the EU project that COMIT is a partner of is an example of just such a platform – but there are others.
Some platforms, such as AppearIQ which is used as the basis
for MobiCloud, use a “container” approach. This is particularly useful in a
BYOD scenario. The platform creates a container on the mobile device within
which multiple applications can be installed and run. Those applications all
share the capability provided by the container. This can include access to
device specific resources (such as a camera) or to solution specific
functionality such as back-office integration.
The container isolates the applications from the specifics
of the device, including the operating system, which means that exactly the
same applications can run on any device for which a container has been
developed. This is a major benefit with the current fragmentation of the mobile
device market, with iOS, Android, Windows and now even Firefox all potentially competing
in the same space. The container also
provides a degree of isolation for corporate applications if they are running
on a personal device – again essential for BYOD.
Flexible Cost Models
The final piece of the puzzle is the increasing prevalence of “as-a-service” cost models. Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS) essentially come down to paying for what you use. Instead of paying a one-off licence fee to give a user access to a piece of software for ever as you might do for a CAD package or an operating system (and in the case of CAD software that might be thousands of pounds), you pay a monthly fee.
This form of charging is increasingly being used by software
vendors, such as Microsoft or Adobe, to attract “casual” users – those people
who only have an occasional or short-term need for their products and who do
not want to buy a permanent licence. However, it is also ideally suited to the
situation in construction where solutions may be deployed on a
project-by-project basis. It potentially allows project managers to dynamically
scale up or scale down the number of people using a mobile solution on a
monthly basis, without having to commit to a large up-front cost. This will
encourage those project managers that are not entirely convinced of the
benefits to try it out. As one manager put it “Knowing that you will only pay
for what you use suddenly makes the business case a whole lot more compelling”.
Site Safety
There is one final issue that the construction industry
needs to come to terms with in order to maximise the benefit of site-based
mobile technology – safety. At the moment the fear of mobile devices leading to
user distraction and an increased risk of accidents is limiting their use in
many parts of the industry. This is a real and justified concern but one that
can be tackled in a rational, evidence-based way.
Mobile devices are a tool like any other and
carry risks as well as providing benefit. The industry needs to develop a set
of standards for how they can be used on site in a safe manner. COMIT is actively helping to work towards this and it will be the subject of future posts.
For more information about COMIT, what we do and how you can become involved, then please visit our website. You can find out more about the EU supported MobiCloud Project that we are a partner in at www.mobicloudproject.eu.
