Friday, 23 October 2015

Speedy Expo in Telford on Back To The Future Day!


By Gerry Samuelson-Brown, COMIT Director



I've just spent two days at the Speedy Expo in Telford, their largest show ever. The COMIT stand was in the “future’s zone” and given that COMIT is all about embracing emerging technologies and what they can do to enhance the construction workplace, what a great location we had. Even better, it coincided with THE date of 21 October 2015 from the “Back to the Future" film and I got to sit in the DeLorean! 

COMIT gave presentations on the amazing Bloodhound project and one entitled “BIMboozled” that cleverly covered all one ought to know about BIM.  These presentations will be repeated at the COMIT / Fiatech conference on 10 and 11 November in London. Don’t miss out - come and join us!


 COMIT / Fiatech conference

Tuesday, 19 May 2015

Mobile IT – Its Promise and Challenges

Written by Peter Daly, a longstanding & active member of the COMIT Community

Those of us who are involved in COMIT share a common vision – that one day, no one will go in-field without their tablet or smartphone any more than they would without their hard hat.

But we are quite some way today from such a dream and on both sides of the Atlantic.  As a former vendor of such systems, I have seen at first hand the benefits that this technology can bring but also its challenges. This article provides an overview of the promise and pitfalls and some ideas on where it is going.

An early wireless tablet (2005) running Windows CE

This is an industry whose origins go back over a decade and a half to the era of expensive, rugged PDAs and “slate” computers. It has been emerging slowly, notwithstanding the invention of the iPad in 2010.  In the US the two pioneer vendors were Latista and Vela, both now acquired and Priority1 in the UK, also now acquired.  Progress in the US has been more rapid but is still at a relatively early stage - only 26% of firms track the flow of project information to other firms although 37% have access to data outside the trailer (site office) according to a 2013 report from McGraw Hill Construction (“Information Mobility – improving team collaboration through the movement of project information”).

Mobile clients of collaboration platforms have advantages over SaaS based stand-alone apps (such as avoiding a duplicate horizontal “silo” of information for instance where collaboration platforms are being used) but such mobile client use is also fairly restricted despite the widespread use of collaboration platforms in the UK at the top end.  Of course, mobile IT here is not confined to vendor offerings - there is also the emerging opportunity for larger firms to create and curate their own app stores (as in the promising MobiCloud project from COMIT and partners such as Appear Networks).

There are many reasons why mobile IT is not more universal in construction yet; the project centric nature of buying SaaS solutions which also applies to collaboration platforms; the lack of perceived ROI due in part to the inability to trial easily; the cost of mobile devices; inertia and lack of interest in IT; the fact that such systems have been targeted mainly at Tier 1 contractors to date.  But things are changing now under a number of influences.  It is very instructive to look beyond construction and see what is happening more broadly in other sectors.

Rise of the Enterprise Apps


In recent years we have seen the rise of a new type of enterprise software which challenges the status quo of major vendors in many ways. These include apps for collaboration and communication  across devices and include such apps as Yammer, Asana and more recently Slack which is taking the enterprise world by storm.

These sorts of apps have a number of things in common; their design is driven by great user experience and the ease of use as in consumer apps; they are easy to trial and easy to acquire online; their marketing relies heavily on digital marketing and they have low support costs. They are therefore scalable in a very efficient manner.

This trend has also reached construction (especially in the US) where PlanGrid and FieldLens provides great, easy to use and acquire apps but as yet the early stage US market is still dominated by the legacy and expensive systems which were formerly Latista and Vela as independent companies.  In the UK, Basestone also shows promise and is attempting the same approach. I believe that these sorts of simple app hold the key to the future as described below.

The Promise for Construction


Mobile IT systems today are mainly used for snagging and mobile access to drawings and a number of estimates and experience with real case studies indicate that such technology can save up to 1% of project value (Source: case studies from PlanGrid, data from various sources from US projects and unpublished experience with my former apps, SmartBuilder1 and Plan2Finish). That may seem small but is actually a huge benefit in an industry with thin margins. But there is actually a lot more that such technology could deliver. Many processes which could and should be transferred from paper and legacy IT systems to mobile clients or apps; progress reporting, engineering forms, RFIs (although the latter process will be extensively modified by BIM) and change orders. The list is as high as the stack of paper on your desk. 

Mobile clients and apps of course need enterprise level security, granular and configurable views to eliminate unnecessary fields and context specific access to data where possible.  The use of social media type “walls” to replace email is a common trend in new enterprise software generally and could offer a lot in construction where finding out who knows the solution to something can be time wasting.

Mobile BIM is at a relatively early stage but holds much promise and already we are seeing mobile clients of collaboration platforms allowing access to their BIM model servers on browsers. Being able to access the model in-field and to initiate BIM enabled work flow assignment from in-field will deliver powerful productivity benefits as will in time, use of Augmented Reality as well.  These benefits will also extend to asset owners as well during subsequent building operation.

Another trend is the trend towards real time working and real time mobile collaboration.  The use of the sort of technology involved in messaging apps along with video as well as images is going to allow much more real time working while also providing a secure audit trail of all communications. Some construction and design processes will always be asynchronous but there will be an increasing trend towards real time collaboration over tablets and smartphones (which are larger now days). Many issues which used to need meetings or even worse, trips to meetings to resolve, can be sorted out through use of this sort of technology from individuals or teams in different locations.

Finally” gamification” or including game like elements in software is an important trend in corporate training in a number of sectors. This could potentially have great benefits for construction in relation to induction, on-going training and very importantly, safety.

So what is needed to realise all of this promise within the construction industry and deliver the real productivity gains that other industries have seen from enterprise mobility?

Mobile Access for Everyone, Everywhere.


Mobile IT in construction will only realise its potential if four things happen – firstly if it is deployed enterprise wide by the large companies; secondly if its use extends down the value chain; thirdly if such software is made much easier to use, trial and acquire and finally if it all ties together through interoperability.

As in collaboration platforms in the UK, mobile apps are not normally deployed enterprise wide. In the case of the collaboration platforms that reflects a lock out effect of clients deciding which one to adopt so that even if a contractor has a favoured system they must change as required on a project by project basis. In mobile IT the causes are different although there are some similarities; procurement is also project to project; project experience is often lost so that even if value has been obtained key decision makers to do not know that; top management do not see mobility as a priority; the cost of giving everyone a tablet is too high and what to do about tablets for the sub-contractors? Finally the price of vendor offerings has historically prohibited enterprise wide use.

In relation to the device issue, there is really no alternative in the UK but to bite the bullet and accept Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies as is happening in other industries. This solves the issue of how to get the entire project team using mobile software. Given the availability of excellent Mobile Device Management (MDM) software from companies such as Citrix for apps and the security built into collaboration platforms, there is really not much excuse for rejecting this solution.  Of course, BYOD on its own will not solve the pricing issue – it also needs to be combined with software which is affordable across the enterprise and not just for a few projects.

Deploying a few individual mobile IT licenses per project as has happened in the UK is not the best way to get efficiency on a project. It needs the entire supply chain to get involved. That means project pricing and also software and pricing and policies which are attractive to sub-contractors so they can buy it themselves. There is a big untapped opportunity in the sub-contractor space.  An example of this from a different sort of technology is the US public company Textura Inc. which is growing a very fast rate as a result of its own financial offering to construction sub-contractors.  There is also a huge base of smaller main contractors who would benefit from mobile IT.

A key part of the solution here is giving people easy to use and easy to trial software. If software needs set up and training, then by definition it cannot be trialled easily.  If on the other hand users are delighted by beautiful, simple software that makes their life easier and needs no training, they will flock to it. This is the trend that PlanGrid and FieldLens are backing.

Finally there is the issue of interoperability. If major firms are using say, the mobile clients of collaboration platforms and smaller firms are using apps, they need some ways to work together unless the system of the top contractor can be driven down the value chain. I see the future as being a mix between collaboration platforms and apps.  The cloud based back end of the enterprise apps will increasingly offer simpler and less costly solutions for “a collaboration platform” for smaller companies.  All that is needed to make everything work at every level are APIs and the will to implement them but in the era of cloud computing that is not the barrier it once was.
The biggest challenge is not technical, it is cultural. This challenge is for construction managers to get with 21st century ways of working.


Peter Daly (LinkedIn) is the former co-founder and CEO of SmartBuilder Software Ltd, later rebranded as Plan2Finish