In the following interview, Mark Enstrom, Oracle Construction and Engineering director of product strategy, explains how Oracle can help construction teams to work more efficiently and facilitate true collaboration.
What does Oracle see as the technology that will have most impact on the job site in the next 2-3 years? Which type of tool must construction firms be investing in?
There is a great deal of buzz around technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT), virtual/augmented reality and drones, and each of these will provide some benefits on job sites in the next few years. But delivered in isolation, the benefits of such tools will be limited in magnitude.
Realizing true, real-time collaboration across all stakeholders remains the biggest challenge on the job site—and the area where cloud technology, together with a solution platform approach, will have the greatest positive impact on project outcomes. The ability to quickly, easily and inexpensively stand up a complete project controls environment in the cloud will enable the end-to-end collaborative workflows and communication needed to improve productivity and margins. Project participants are numerous and teams are highly distributed, and project complexity increases with size. The cloud and mobile applications enable these stakeholders to work together wherever they are.
In addition, mobile features such as GPS positioning allow for a context-sensitive user experience together with a live link back to the office, allowing issues to flagged and resolved quickly and easily. Wireless connectivity and sensors will also have significant impact on job sites in next 2-3 years, with next-generation wireless connectivity (5G) enabling the transfer of gigabits of data in seconds. This will make it even easier to collect data from connected construction tools, equipment, wearables, sensors, drones and vehicles and to leverage the IoT on job sites to improve productivity and safety.
But just efficiently capturing data is not enough. Robust data management platforms are needed to combine the captured data with external sources to yield actionable insights that help construction firms become more competitive and to continually improve the ways in which products and services are delivered. Cloud platforms provide the tools, scalability and access needed to make this happen.
What advice would you give to contractors who are just starting off on their adoption of Lean? What benefits have you seen to justify Lean scheduling?
The Lean journey can be a bit messy in the beginning because people tend to get stuck in existing paradigms. Our first piece of advice: Don’t give up. The productivity gains and predictable output achieved through Lean delivery have been shown to improve upon traditional project management methods.
Management should define the objectives of what needs to get done, but the details of achieving those objectives should be left to the people closest to the work. That simple concept can produce remarkable results when applied to construction projects, and it drove development of our Oracle Lean Scheduling solution. Part of the Oracle Prime Projects Cloud Service, Lean Scheduling is the first tool to integrate the Critical Path Method (CPM) and Lean scheduling approaches, enabling project managers to define objectives and Lean last planners to plan and meet them.
Engagement of PMs and superintendents in the pull planning and a high level of collaboration across stakeholders are critical to the successful adoption of Lean. This process streamlines scheduling and allows the defining of specific handoffs between trades following the milestone schedule. Research has shown that trades’ active participation in the scheduling process allows projects to be delivered more safely and quickly and at lower cost. Better productivity and predictable outcomes also reduce stress on project management staff. Overall, uniting Lean and CPM scheduling in the cloud delivers complete coordination and improved control.
Which tasks do you find a lot of your clients still perform on paper, which should be moved to digital/mobile platforms? What is the ‘lowest hanging fruit’ when it comes to removing paper from the job site?
Many construction activities remain paper heavy, including submittals management, RFIs, safety inspections, commissioning, drawings, progress reporting, as well as change and issues management, among others. These activities all are ripe for digitization and constitute part of the processes we are working to help builders improve via the Prime Projects cloud technology.
Payment management is another obvious low-hanging fruit. All trades want to perform their work and get paid as efficiently and as quickly as possible. But the traditional manual, paper-based processes in construction slow things down, limit visibility and introduce potentially costly errors related to compliance materials and lien waivers.
Oracle Construction and Engineering last year acquired construction collaboration solutions provider Textura and now provides the Oracle Textura Payment Management Cloud Service. Textura Payment Management, which integrates with ERP solutions, streamlines and automates payment and compliance processes to boost efficiency, improve cash flow, increase visibility and mitigate risk for owners, general contractors and subcontractors.
To learn how Oracle can help you optimize payment management, check out this video or read our white paper.
