In reviewing the report, “Beyond the basics — how UK construction is using digital solutions to achieve efficiency, integration and sustainability,” Causeway and VansonBourne look to answer one important question with input from respondents*: How integrated are current digital solutions, and what is the impact that integrations are having on their business?
87% agreed that the inconsistency of processes and technologies posed a challenge for their organisation
95% agreed that integrated and automated workflows are key for success and were noted as a “Superpower” for businesses
*Respondents include C-suite, senior management, non-senior and technical personnel from 175 Tier one and large subcontractors including construction (50%) and civil engineering sectors (50%)
Disjointed processes and technologies create issues for today’s businesses
While the article considers all digital systems across all business processes, we focused our commentary on systems for managing project information.
100% of respondents reported that system customisation (via configuration) was an unfortunate and unavoidable requirement for project teams, and this resulted in non-standard data sets incurring significant expense to manage, both during the deployment and operational phases of a project.
Non-standard configuration leads to different journeys and outcomes for each project and this makes it difficult to create and optimise processes and leverage high-level insights across projects.
48% of employee time was spent participating in highly automatable tasks such as moving data between disparate systems, and increasing exposure to risk due to manual transfer error and an increase in security breaches.
Opportunities identified in integrated processes and technologies
The report found that the benefits of integrated processes and technologies broadly stood to benefit organisations, and respondents expected to see the biggest impacts on the ability to complete projects on time.
Image from Causeway Insights 2023
A rising tide lifts all boats: Leveraging industry initiatives for the integration of processes and technology
Forward-thinking clients like the UK Government could apply “pull” forces on their supply chain. This would result in the alignment of system configurations for information processes that cross platform (and contractual) boundaries.
We’ve seen success in the past as the UK Government required that all suppliers use “BIM Level 2” processes to work on their projects. By enforcing this requirement with a deadline, this led to increased adoption of BIM across construction in the UK.
The wider construction industry or leading organisations in this space could follow suit to move the industry toward a more standardised approach to integrations.
What do businesses need to be aware of as they move towards standardised configurations?
David Emery hits the nail on the head when he states:
“People really struggle to calculate a return on investment for digital tools, particularly in terms of sustainability. And it’s really hard to make the business case sometimes.”
Business and information strategies are dynamic and continually evolving, and system configurations need to grow accordingly. If not managed properly, costs add up quickly, as each new variant compounds in terms of time, effort and risk of failure.
The days of humans taking complete responsibility for highly automatable tasks are over, and so too is the day of blaming them when issues arise.
How do businesses drive a successful change effort?
Managing change requires an early collaborative approach from those involved.
By establishing new standards, we can drive consistency across the entire digital ecosystem and operational efficiency.
Teams are involved in the evolving information management requirements for the business as new solutions, processes and technology are introduced.
The business case for investment in new innovative tools and methods becomes less burdensome, as we can justify capital returns to scale value across the organisation.
The out-of-the-box integrated solution
Ultimately, we do not see businesses successfully enforcing use of a single technology platform approach.
Since there is no impetus for shared development of an open standard amongst software developers, and we have seen many failed approaches in the past, BIMLauncher continues to demonstrate the value of integrations to solve these problems.
By offering integrated workflows across platforms, BIMLauncher unlocks collaboration from the beginning to the end of projects to:
Reduce costs during deployment and operational phases of a project
Align outcomes and journeys across users
Make it easy to create (and continually optimise) processes
Maximise business impact by leveraging high-level insights
Automate data transfer tasks between disparate systems