The digital adoption problem in construction and how SymTerra makes a difference
On a construction project, in addition to handling the task in hand, you will likely be doing one or more of the following five things:-
Firefighting what is happening on the ground right now
Sourcing information and logistics to deliver the next piece of work
Piecing together what has occurred at an earlier time
Trying to mitigate a commercial dispute
Filling in assurance paperwork
The culture of the industry is driven by physical things being done on site over everything else. Construction, in effect, manufactures its products in fixed locations undertaking a large proportion of work in-situ, while at the same time relying on long and multiple supply chains for management and delivery. At the ends of these supply chains is site work — where diverging commercial interests, coordination problems and assembly problems result in poor predictability, low productivity and low quality.
If you line up 100 randomly selected people on a construction project, each will give you a different story of what is happening. Everyone has a different perspective.
Each person, team and contractor has the ever-growing pressure of delivery, programme, assurance and commercial defensibility with the result of generating additional emails, organising meetings and reporting. Control is at the expense of a huge amount of additional paperwork much of which will become lost in the various project files. However, we all know that only a fraction of the information is captured. This is an open secret within the industry and the Grenfell disaster is a tragic example.
Traditionally, information, change requests and photographs are in stored in an individual’s inbox or mobile device. At best, some of the information is in a Word form, on a contract administration system or on a SharePoint page. A key industry problem is that key people frequently move on and a significant amount information can be lost. It is rare that the team that starts on a project is the same as the one that finishes.
The issue is that nobody can access all past information even on the best managed projects. Consequently, it is commonplace to send a survey team out rather than being able find the information you were looking for. When I was a Senior PM at one of the largest UK contractors and project management consultancies, a Project Director frequently lamented:
“why do we start from scratch every time we have a new project?!”
So how can SymTerra improve this?
We have found that this problem can be easily resolved by introducing a bottom up approach.
SymTerra is a radical new solution that provides site and project teams a quick, easy and flexible way to capture information and crucially any change at the point of work.
SymTerra allows teams to easily record what is happening at the time, removing post administrative work, allowing the team to leverage the data and empower them to focus on delivery. While other construction tech disruptors have focused on top down SaaS approaches, we focus on a bottom-up approach. Using our extensive site management experience and having been on the receiving end of systems that we had to feed as opposed to use to the project’s benefit, it was vital for us to build something that would have benefitted us when we were delivering work and struggling to keep on top of things.
Furthermore, where systems were implemented, we rarely saw the benefits outside of general compliance or simple covering yourself from future blame. Even then, much of our time was still spent explaining current and past decisions to management and the client team, rather than improving delivery. And while we heard about how drones, Spot the dog or Construction 4.0 were going to transform construction, none addressed the fundamental problem of making better informed decisions in real-time.
How SymTerra makes a difference?
The expertise of those on the frontline who build, and deliver is truly mobilised.
SymTerra resolves the digital adoption problem by starting at the point of work and building an information pipeline starting from site. These foundations immediately improve visibility and transparency but also allows automated reports, insights and trends for the whole project team.
SymTerra creates a golden thread of information. Not only does this information protect their interests, it allows clients and contractors to leverage the information from the people who deliver and truly enable the industry to deliver construction 4.0! And all at minimal additional effort and cost.
