Transforming Project Controls: How CCC Group Boosted Margins and Visibility with InEight

Adam Palant:

Hello and welcome to this webinar, Transforming Project Controls: How CCC Group Boosted Margins and Visibility with InEight. This event is brought to you by Engineering News Record and sponsored by InEight. Hi. I’m Adam Palant. ENR special sections manager and your moderator for today’s webinar. Thanks for joining us. Now today we’ll hear our first-hand account of how industrial services contractor CCC group, ranked number 362 on ENR’s top contractors list leveraged InEight software to drive consistency, improve forecasting, and deliver data-backed transparency to both clients and executives. Now let’s get to know our presenters. Rick Deans is the Executive Vice President of Industry Engagement at InEight working with clients in more than 35 countries since 1998. In his role, he helps to identify innovative solutions that address their biggest project management pain points. Rick works closely with the industry Advisory group, partnering with top firms to shape solutions, test innovations, and share best practices with a focus on building strong industry partnerships.

Ricardo Filho is a Project Controls Director at CCC Group. With over 15 years of experience leading large-scale industrial construction projects across the Americas. He has advanced the company’s project management practices by driving tech-enabled planning, scheduling, and performance tracking. Passionate about making complex projects run more smoothly, Ricardo focuses on practical solutions that boost collaboration, accuracy and results. Now, I’ll be rejoining our presenters at the end to answer any of your questions that come in throughout the webinar, so don’t forget to submit them in the Q&A section of the webinar console. And now I’ll hand things over to our presenters to kick off today’s conversation.

Rick Deans:

Well, thank you Adam. Appreciate the opportunity. Really excited to be here and really appreciate the opportunity ENR gives us to hold these webinars. For those who aren’t familiar with InEight, we provide powerful field-tested construction project management software for owners, contractors, engineers, even architects who are building the world around us. Customers worldwide rely on InEight for real-time insights that help manage risk and keep projects on schedule and under budget across their entire lifecycle. So a little bit about us, we’d like to learn a little bit about our audience. We’ve got a couple polling questions. First one asks, which of the following best represents your organization? Try to pick one. Usually the way these work is 85% of the people choose other, but if there’s something that aligns with what you’re doing out there in the real world, we’d love to do that.

Ricardo and I talked about this. We can certainly shape the presentation based on how we read the room and how we see folks filling these out. So it looks like, yeah, good mix across all the different types of firms out there. Well cool. So these are the results. So a good balance between consultants, GCs got some owners, reps, some owners, 36% or owners or owners reps so that’s really good to know. And we only had 12% in the other bucket, Ricardo so we’ll take a look at that. And then the next question just asks about your role within the organization. Now that we know what sort of firms we’ve got present, we just want to know what sort of folks we’ve got representing those firms.

And again, it looks like we’ve got a good mix. We’ve got a little bit more in the other category, but we can take a look at these polling results as they’re finishing up. So we’ve got some others. Consultants, we’ve got some executive management in the room. That’s great. Ricardo, we’ve got some project managers just along your lines there. Estimators and planner, schedulers, rounding out the group as well. Excellent. Excellent. Well, let’s get into the meat of today’s discussion. I know Ricardo has come ready to talk a lot about how his organization has done a really good job of digital transformation, and the first thing we’re going talk about is how they’re building a business aware field culture. So I know a lot of times with the field, Ricardo, they’re asked to do a lot of additional stuff, asked to take on a lot of additional responsibility. What were some of the things that you guys did at CCC group to really engage the field and let them see this as something that was helping them as opposed to something that was feeding the corporate monster back at the office?

Ricardo Filho:

That’s a very good question, Rick. And there’s no short answer. So I’ll try to summarize as best as I can. But I think one of the biggest preconcepts that field teams have that really create a barrier for adopting different solutions or ways to manage jobs and report on jobs more frequently is that separation between what happens in the office and what happens in the field. What’s the bottom line has to do with my performance factor, or why is my schedule slippage impacting my margins or regional performances? So one of the first things we wanted to do in project controls with the project managers from the operations team before the rollout was to create an environment where they understood that everything starts in the field. Everything starts with a good plan, good execution, understanding what the goals are and communicating those goals and objectives as clearly as possible without using too much of technical terminologies or complicated acronyms or abbreviations.

So we wanted to make the … You said transformation. I think it’s a transformation, but also transition. So we wanted to make that transition as simple and seamless as possible and without adding complication complexity to the change. So one of the first steps was really removing the mist. Hey, it’s business conversations. It’s a business only environment. We wanted to make that disappear. We wanted to make the field think of their performance as a business results driver. So that was probably step number one. Another big action we took to make sure that engagement was happening, that they were really believing that the initiative would work and benefit field execution was to demonstrate how accurate and measurable performance would become via detailed planning, via a more interactive breakdown of the scope. I’m thinking that helped quite a bit on the work breakdown structure standards, and standardizing the way we would look at the scope and break it down into something that would work for everyone, for every audience from the field work front leadership to the executive team in the main headquarter. So that was a big thing we did. And we didn’t do that alone. We needed backup and support from project managers, from coordinators, project controls, experts throughout the regional offices and good support from corporate as well.

So if I had to summarize how we made that happen, step number one really simplifying the way we would deliver that message to make sure that they understood whatever happens in the field impacts the company’s bottom line. Number two was really speaking the construction language. Not that business jargon loaded preconceived speech. We would translate all that complexity to construction language where the people executing the work that really understand what we meant. That was huge. The third thing that I think makes the top three initiatives that we took before the full implementation was defining how we would measure what we wanted to measure. And our decision was to scale that deployment as consistently and progressively as possible. So we would avoid that information overload and prevent change fatigue.

So we wanted to go with migrating the basics to new environment. Hey, we talk about schedule performance, we always talk about cost performance, we talk about at completion variances and indicators. Now we’re going to do the same using the InEight. And what’s the benefit really? The benefit is that we now have standardized the way we measure progress, the way we count things, whether it’s tons of steel or footage of piping or welds in piping or area for surface components. So we also came up with ways to measure performance and we report on that so people could have a better understanding, Hey, if I do this, that happens. And that helped quite a bit with creating engagement, creating the buy-in mentality really. Hey, it’s a new thing we’re doing, it’s most likely helpful, and here’s how corporate and the project controls group will support the field execution moving forward.

So we were very cautious about how to deliver the message, how to deploy the software, the tool, the platform really. And the communication was a key factor. We didn’t really just made a change overnight. That’s what you’re going to do starting tomorrow. We given time when we have plenty of training sessions and we played a little bit in sandbox in the test environment to make sure that we knew what the outcomes would most likely be. And in my mind, that made a huge difference on not only adoption throughout the company and throughout the different regions and the territories, but also enabling is smooth transition. A smooth kickoff so we could move to the new environment without major pain points.

Rick Deans:

You mentioned that your first point, I think it was really good. You said what happens in the field really affects the organization’s bottom line. In some organizations, profit is a four-letter word. They don’t want to share profitability information with people in the field for various reasons. In your organization, were there any barriers that prevented field staff from understanding the project’s profitability? And if so, how were you able to overcome some of those issues Ricardo?

Ricardo Filho:

On the contrary, I think culturally what we do at CCC is try to communicate as clearly as possible what’s happening. And obviously there’s components that are a bit more sensitive in terms of confidentiality. But as far as job margins and profitability and what’s happening, what is it looking like at completion we do our best to make that as clear as possible as early as possible at all levels of the organization, at all levels of the org chart. We do have frequent consistent meetings every month that we talk about that with the entire job team. Hey, this is what it’s looking like and this is your margin percentage, that’s what your profit’s looking like and it’s impacted positively or negatively by this and this and this. What can we do about it? And I do believe that’s a key factor on creating that sense of ownership where people at the job site where people executing the task, they truly understand, Hey, what am I doing here? What am I performing today?

Might plan, it’s really impacting the company’s outcome and will be more profitable, less profitable. And it’s a win-win. So we had that mentality from day one that withholding information or creating barriers to access information that would only be detrimental. We want it to be as clear as possible as frequently as possible. And I think we do a fairly good job at that. And having all that data in one location helps quite a bit.

Rick Deans:

That’s super. And then your third point, we can come back to this later in the discussion, but measuring what we’re going to measure and breaking things down so that we have a quantifiable objective rather than subjective recording of what happened during the day. Are you finding out that you have less projects reaching that 90% mark that are going great until you spend 30 or 40% of your budget to complete that last 10% of work? Which sometimes happens when we’re a little bit more generous with our reporting quantities.

Ricardo Filho:

It happens less frequently now. A lot less than before. And my experience and what I’ve been observing throughout the years that it has a lot to do with how well and frequently we monitor things. We have our quantity tracking performed on a daily basis or a weekly basis. We have that option. And we push for daily. Most of the times we do that daily. In a few rare occasions it gets a little behind, but never later than a week. And having that consistent quantity tracking the progress reporting on a structured manner … Because we’re using components and rules of credit claiming schemes using InEight’s terminology and breaking that down to the level that makes sense. That’s a key component as well. If you have a month long job that’s got, I don’t know, two structures, you don’t need six layers in a work rate on structure. You break that down to the level that makes sense. And I think once we got to that point and the teams were trained and the tools were well understood, and people got somewhat proficient on utilizing and navigating through the system, forecasting and projecting performance became a lot more accurate and that reduced variances quite a bit really.

Rick Deans:

Yeah. And let’s talk about that because through the consistent planning and like you say forecasting, reducing that margin variance, you’ve seen tangible results of that, no doubt.

Ricardo Filho:

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I had a few bullet points here, but I’ll skip those because we don’t need to do that. But one of the things I was planning to mention is how it changed the way we planned the work really. Before going full digital our exercise was the typical traditional, Hey, let’s pull up the schedule, print out a three weeks, look ahead, bring the team in, let’s talk about the look ahead. Can we do it? Can we not do it? What’s on the way? How do we remove those barriers? How can we overcome those challenges? And once we started migrating to InEight using the platform and digital work with structures and work packages, we could go a step further. We’d have the look ahead. So that’s what we’ve got to do. And then when we look at the schedule and we cross-check that with what’s in InEight in the work packages, we cannot quantify the work that has to be accomplished at the level of detail we want really.

And the schedule says for foundation A, but in InEight we have, Hey, we need to excavate and lay out and install the formwork and work and fabricate and install the rebar, put in the embeds, pour the concrete, let it cure, etc. So it gave us the flexibility to go a step further and really quantify the work to be done. And that would give us the earned value associated. So if we do this, this is how much we’re going to gain. And having that plan crew and headcount and resources allocated to the task, you could have a preview of our performance factors plus performance indicator schedule, performance indicator, estimates of completion. Throughout the planning, during the planning exercise, we could also have a little forecasting exercise. So once we had that going, I think variances and forecasting became a lot more streamlined. Not necessarily pushing margins up, but we could respond to challenges much more .. I don’t know. Much more efficiently.

Rick Deans:

Well, it’s a rule of thumb. If there’s something that’s going to go wrong, I’d rather hear about it earlier rather than later.

Ricardo Filho:

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Rick Deans:

It sounds like you’re learning that, hey, we can identify these trends early on, make some corrective action before they whiplash out of control.

Ricardo Filho:

Absolutely. And the way we did that was by crew. How’s this crew going? How’s this crew doing? How’s this, I don’t know, construction work package, doing? What’s happening with this superintendent’s team or this battery limit? So we could narrow down to a specific point, the work rate on structure or zoom out completely and say, how’s the project doing? How’s the regional office doing? How’s the organization doing? So it gave us a lot of freedom to assess performance.

Rick Deans:

So when you’re analyzing things at the crew level, I know folks tend to be competitive. Did you notice there was some competition amongst the crews or was there an opportunity for some knowledge sharing amongst the crews? Hey, why is this guy’s performance factor so much different than mine? What can I learn from that individual? Did you see some of that happen organically within your organization?

Ricardo Filho:

I believe I saw a 50 50 of competition in collaboration really.

Rick Deans:

Okay. Cool.

Ricardo Filho:

A little bit about my PF is higher than yours where my SPI is better than yours. I saw a little bit of that, but not only aggressive manner really. It was collaborative. It was really, Hey, I’m doing good because I’m doing this. I’m looking at my work packages. I’m planning for a little more than what’s in the schedule and knowing my crew size and how many people, hours I’m going to work versus what’s in the budget or how many earned values associated to that plan, I can optimize my KPIs. And that knowledge, that thought process started being disseminated across the job sites and regions and offices, and the results were there to prove that. So I think initially there was a little bit of a competition happening and then becomes collaboration. As they do that and they see the impacts in the bottom line, they also realize that, hey, if the company does well, we all do well. There’s more opportunities for everyone. We can grow together. So I might as well help my peer than really race.

Rick Deans:

Yeah. Of course.

Ricardo Filho:

Yeah.

Rick Deans:

And then we talked about forecasting. As you know, the tool offers a lot of flexibility. In forecasting many of our customers will say, Hey, when a crew is just starting out and there’s a learning curve and they’re just getting used to working with each other on this particular work package, maybe we want to forecast based on the way we budgeted the work, which makes sense. But as they’re claiming more quantities and as they’re percent complete and their earned value is tracking along, maybe we want to forecast the remaining work relative to how they’ve been performing, or maybe we have some new information. Are you guys at that level where you’re changing between forecast methods based on the progress of the work activity that’s being recorded in the field?

Ricardo Filho:

Absolutely we had to. I’ll try not to become too technical now, but I have to just a little bit. The way we did a forecasting exercise in a nutshell really was understanding patterns. I’ll give you a classic example. Structural steel typically start structural steel doing all the heavy steel, and there’s a lot of foreign value associated, lots of man-hours and dollars in the budget associated to tonnage, not necessarily effort. And then once you start to transition to lighter steel handrails, grading checker plates, which are sometimes more labor-intensive but less costly in terms of tonnages and man-hours and dollars, your performance levels go down a little. And we saw those patterns happening during the forecasting exercises, and we saw the trends going down on performance factors and cost indicators. And we started thinking, Hey, we might need to adjust the forecasts because my performance level to date, whether it’s averaged or weighted, but there is something changing the nature of the activity, and we need to address that during forecasting update, if you will.

So we started paying attention to those variances in performance and making a choice during the forecast. Hey, what’s the trend here? Is the work remaining a little more complex that requires more effort or is the work remaining similar to what’s been done so far that we can maintain that trend, maintain the average and the forecast using that factor? So my answer is it really depends on a case-by-case on the activity we’re performing. But general rule of thumb, I’d say that 75 to 80% of the effort of forecasting really happens in the system. And then the project knowledge tweaks that one, it fine-tunes applying context. Work remaining is a little different because of this and this and this, which requires a little bit of a tune-up in the forecasting factors. So it’s a combination really, but it’s mostly happening using the software.

Rick Deans:

Yeah. That’s great. That’s great. And then in terms of standard workflows, do you have a standard, I know you said depending on the activity, but when you’re going to manage a project for CCC group, this is our standard template that we’re going to expect you to follow. Do you have some organizational tools like that as well? For instance, when work progress reaches 25%, we’re going to switch from forecasting based on our budget, based on our average or our weighted performance?

Ricardo Filho:

That’s a very good question. I had a conversation internally here a few weeks ago about that, and we were forecasting a job that was a critical job. And the conversation went to that, Hey, we’re only 15% complete on earned value but is that the only factor really was my question. Because when you look at scheduled duration completes, we’re way farther than 15% complete. When you look it is installed, it’s a different number. So what’s really the driving variable here? And the decision was to really forecast based on what we know. We’re at 2% complete. And some cost accounts will keep the budget too early to determine, hey, there’s a trend, there’s an impact, there’s an anomaly somewhere that will derail the plan. But some cost accounts, they’re somewhat predictable. And the good example is indirects. Indirect labor, equipment rental equipment, equipment utilization, subcontractors, those are mainly driven by scope and or schedule.

So if you have a really good understanding of the schedule, you can extrapolate that data, that knowledge to determine your forecasted completion. So we do take a very detailed approach depending on the project profile. High risk requires more detail, low risk, we can be a bit … I’m not going to say relaxed. We can be a bit less rigid on the way we monitor and report. Fewer variables if you will. But to answer the question, we do have a workflow. We do have a standard project controls compliance workflow that depending on the job profile, size, duration, how many resources, there’s a compliance workflow. Hey, we’ve got to do this and this and that. And for every step of your workflow, we do recommend and enforce templates and processes and techniques, if you will. When you’re setting up a job, this is how you develop the budget. Once you are setting up a job, this is how we connect the budget to the schedule. Schedule to the work packages. This is how we’re going to determine advanced work packaging. That’s how document control will be integrated into the work packaging and revision control. That’s how we’re going to do it. So there’s a structure, there’s a script. It doesn’t mean we’re super rigid where we cannot change and adapt and respond to a different context, but there’s a framework that we try our best to stick to.

Rick Deans:

No. That’s excellent. And as a large organization with multiple business units across multiple geographic areas, I would imagine that helps the organization in some soft costs as well, because if you take somebody that’s been working on a job in a particular area, move that person to a different business unit, a different geography, as many of our customers say, the processes remain the same, the only thing that’s going to be different is the job number. A tongue in cheek response. As opposed to having to adapt to the preferences of this new project manager versus an organizational standard.

Ricardo Filho:

No. Absolutely. And I think that’s a challenge everywhere. Because systems and processes, those are the easiest to define, configure and deploy. But the utilization, the variable really that requires training and really interaction. I’ll say interaction. Communication is the human factor. It’s really the user. Hey, this is the process, this is the tool, this is the template, this is how we monitor the plan, report and calculate things. We understand you Mr. project manager on job X, you have this experience and you would prefer this and this and that, and let’s talk about it. Maybe it’s a little better than what we do. Maybe it’s a lot better than what we do. And let’s see. Let’s be creative, let’s try something new. But don’t forget, there’s a basic level of deliverables and managing processes that we need to make sure happens. So that balance between being pragmatic on processes and tools and allowing for creativity and autonomy, that’s a little tricky, but I believe it has to be there.

And on the topic of standardizing across regions and project types, that can become a challenge. And it was a challenge for us for a while due to what you said. There’s cultural differences, there’s experience differences with, I like iPads, I don’t like iPads. I like to do it all on paper, versus I’m okay using computers and laptops, et cetera. So we had to spend some time … It’s really an investment. I’ll correct myself. Not spend time, but invest on training and invest on communicating with the teams about, Hey, I understand that’s a little different than what you’re used to doing, but here’s the benefits. And we have this many jobs in the past recently that were successful because we were following the procedure, we were following the framework, and let’s give it a try. Let’s see what happens. And if you like it, that’s great. It’s a win-win. We’re going to celebrate together. If you find things we can fine tune a little more, improve a little more. Thank you very much. You’re helping the company grow.

Rick Deans:

That’s awesome. So yeah .obviously it sounds like there were some challenges, but you overcame them by, like you say, describing the benefits and making sure that folks understood the end game, the end result there. So that’s awesome.

Ricardo Filho:

Absolutely.

Rick Deans:

One of the topics that I spend a lot of time on with our customers is just change management in general. Did you have a separate change management, organizational change management effort that accompanied the rollout of the software? Or was it wrapped into the deployment of the software? For instance, messaging to employees about the benefits consistent across the organization, quotes from leadership, extolling the virtues of heading down this road. Was there a focused effort on your end and what did that look like from an organizational perspective?

Ricardo Filho:

Very good question. Again, only good questions. It was a combination of everything you said, plus organically introducing the importance of scope control. Like I mentioned before, we had the planning meetings in the past and then we improved the planning meetings to make it a little more measurable and a little more structured using our own guided principles. And during those conversations, we introduced the concept of identifying issues, identifying interferences, delays or opportunities really for accelerating schedule, for improving performance. And along with that speech, with that message delivery, we reinforced that, Hey, as you are filling out your time sheets as you are claiming quantities, you can also just record what you found in the field today. There is a little issue log feature in the system in the same page. It takes one click for you to get there. And you can take a picture, Hey, there’s an existing structure in my excavation here, or piping and pipe supports. They’re not in the same elevation. There’s a little clash somewhere. You can capture that as quickly as you can just click on the screen, just touch the little camera icon and put a little narrative, Hey, drawing number X revision two on area one there’s a clash there, let’s talk about it.

As we were implementing the new format of the planning process, we have also reinforced that capacity, that capability. Hey, instead of just explaining why you couldn’t meet the plan at the end of the week, why don’t you capture that as you discover that? So we can respond immediately. We can call a five-minute stand-up meeting, we can talk about it. We can write an RFI to the engineer and ask for an answer and talk to the owner, talk to the rep and say, Hey, this is what I found. It’s impacting discipline that’s impacting this activity in the schedule. And look at that. It pushes critical path, so let’s resolve this as soon as possible. So we decided to deploy the feature to reinforce that behavior organically during the planning sessions and during our forecasting reviews, we do the monthly on bigger jobs. That was a recurring topic.

Rick Deans:

When we did our poll, we saw that there was a good amount of executive management represented here. And I know sometimes there’s a tendency for executive management to think, well, it’s just going to be a waste of money to give iPads to folks in the field because they’re going to drop them. They’re going to bury them in the concrete. I know anecdotally that we’ve had to increase the notes field on a lot of our field data collection tools just because people in the field, they want to do a good job and they want to record not just the time who worked what activity, but if there was an issue that arose or if there was some additional information they wanted to relay they’ve far exceeded the notes character limits on some of those fields. So people in the field I think, do want to do a good job. They do want to be heard if there is an issue. And I’m sure you’ve seen that. It sounds like you’ve seen that not only through the issues log, but probably providing some narrative around what happened today.

Ricardo Filho:

Absolutely.

Rick Deans:

Does that help for instance, your communications with the client, for instance, if there was a delay or they couldn’t access the area where they were supposed to be working, are you finding that that’s surfacing up in a better way through some of this digital capture of data from the field?

Ricardo Filho:

100% Rick. And commenting on the first portion of your question, we asked that question as well, Hey, how many iPads do we need to buy? People are going to drop those iPads, they’re going to break, we’re going to replace those on a weekly basis. Oh my gosh, it wasn’t budgeted for. How do we address this? We have connectivity at the job site. It’s in a remote area. How do we sync the databases with the system on a daily basis? But I think the benefits far surpass the challenges. I think the agility that it enables and the ability to communicate fast. I’m planning for something, I went to the field and there was an interference somewhere, and I can take a picture, I can make a little cloud on the drawing and send it out via RFI or a transmittal or call a meeting and discuss with engineer, with the owner, with my project manager. I think that encourages people to be more proactive really and more transparent on what’s happening out there. Because like you said, people like to win. We wake up every day and we go to work to win. We all like winning. And if there’s something out there for preventing people, holding people back from winning, they want to get the result.

And once we give them the tools and the means to overcome that challenge and they feel supported because the communication channel is working, that’s efficient, they’re getting the message accurately, there’s no reason not to use it. And we experienced that once we had the people trained on the issues log on the change management module, and they saw the benefits of how fast communication became and how clear and free of ambiguity the answers were. They really bought in. And I think from both sides of the equation, from the contractor side of the equation, and the owners was now cross-completions in budgets and forecasts became a lot more accurate, more frequent, and less arbitrary really, because we had solid data to substantiate those numbers, those calculations.

Rick Deans:

And are you finding a lot of iPads are coming back, needing repair or getting buried in heavy equipment foundations?

Ricardo Filho:

Very few Rick. Very few. It happens every now and then, but the cost of replacing, repairing, re-buying, it’s negligible. It disappears in the grand scheme of things.

Rick Deans:

I think that’s an important message for a lot of our folks to hear.

Ricardo Filho:

Absolutely.

Rick Deans:

Another cost we have to control. But to your point, you’ve mentioned it several times, it’s an investment that’s actually showing return.

Ricardo Filho:

Yeah. Absolutely.

Rick Deans:

[inaudible 00:35:52].

Ricardo Filho:

And when you think of, hey, what’s the cost of delaying my job one day? What’s the cost of reducing my work hours for a couple of hours on a crew that’s 20 people? That’s way higher than replacing an iPad if the iPad breaks, if it gets dropped or malfunctioned somehow. I think it’s a no-brainer, really. Like I said, it’s an investment. It’s a small tool that prevents a lot of headache.

Rick Deans:

Change management documentation. Help me understand maybe the before and after scenarios with some of your document management techniques for instance. Document controls roles prior to InEight and maybe what you’re doing now in terms of the documentation associated with the project.

Ricardo Filho:

Absolutely. Okay. Before InEight, let’s call it BI, before InEight. So document flow before InEight was inconsistent. As inconsistent as something can be. Some jobs were managing documents in their hard drives, in their laptops, and revision control was, “Oh my gosh, I got an email. Let me download the attachment, move the previous file, put in an obsolete folder and replace with the new. And if I remember, I’m going to go and update my master document list in up one red and put the date.” It was highly manual, highly demanding and distracting. Sometimes we’re using storage solutions, One Drive, Dropbox, Google Drive, any cloud storage piece of software you can imagine. And every job was doing that differently. Power drives and Dropbox or flash drives. It was highly inconsistent, high risk really. And we saw that from both ends. Some of our projects were doing that, some owners were doing that as well, and it created so much rework, so much confusion because we would plan for something using a red that could be the latest or not, because we don’t have a track record that’s easy to access. That created a lot of issues.

Then once we migrated to InEight document and we developed a framework and said, Hey, this is how we’re going to handle the EDMS, the electronic document management system. This is how we’re going to file documents. This is the nomenclature process and that’s the nomenclature filing procedure, and this is how we’re going to treat revisions. This is how we’re going to compare revisions, overlay previous versus current, what has changed. And if it has changed, let’s communicate with the engineer. Let’s communicate with the owner. If it hasn’t, okay, so be it. It took a while really being very realistic. I think changing a culture takes time, obviously. But we’ve been seeing consistent results throughout last two, three years really where rev control became a lot more streamlined and consistent, where communications became a lot more fluid, if you will. Sending RFIs, getting responses, commenting, putting notes on requests for information on transmittals, on submittals for approval. We saw that change happening fast once we had procedures in place, the processes in place and the training in place. We saw the transition happening a lot faster than we planned for.

And the real work has reduced because now there’s less uncertainty around revisions and changes and what’s the latest version out there. Communication between owner, engineer, contractor became a lot more consistent. There’s less noise between those interactions as well. Because now we look at one place, the drawing is there or not, and there’s a workflow for approval for recording to moving that from the holding approval area to the IFC area. So having that consistency across the board, I think it has reduced our … I’m not going to say spend, but our demand for dog control effort quite a bit. So we could focus on execution and we could focus on scope control.

Rick Deans:

You mentioned this a couple of times. Obviously you guys aren’t doing work out there in a vacuum. You’re working alongside engineers consultants, you’re working for an owner, you’ve got subcontractors that are performing work for you. Have you seen any tangible evidence of them noticing or engaging with you in some of this new efficiency? Does it go unnoticed by the owner of the project that you guys have upped your game, if you will, with the document control solution?

Ricardo Filho:

No. I think it’s becoming more and more a priority every day and last couple years we’ve been seeing kickoff meetings where doc control is one of the first topics. We talk about the safety processes in culture and management system, quality management system, how we’re going to execute the work execution plan, reporting structure, document control processes, how we’re going to handle RFIs, how we’re going to handle transmittals, how are we going to handle submittals, how we’re going to handle revisions, how do we make sure previous revs are removed from the environment and replaced with the newest? That’s becoming more and more a recurring topic that we enforce, but we’re also seeing owners enforcing, Hey, before we kick off, before you guys mobilize and start executing the work, let’s talk about doc control and how that’s going to be handled. My experience in our experience here at CCC, there’s very little resistance between teams, across teams to make sure that there’s a well-defined agreed upon process for doc control. That’s really good.

Rick Deans:

That’s great. Yeah. And it seems like the industry is not getting less complex. Owners are getting more sophisticated. Their demands are increasing. So no, that’s great to be able to not only stay aligned with those demands, but stay maybe a half a step ahead of them as they’re becoming more complex.

Ricardo Filho:

Absolutely. I believe, like you said, as projects are becoming more and more complex and the expectations are more and more complex and higher than before, the means and methods and systems to get to that delivery have to be somewhat simplified. And I think that’s where systems like E&A and project management software pieces help teams really. Hey, I don’t need to spend hours and hours filling out spreadsheets and developing formulas and writing code and writing macros when I can just put all the parameters in my system and make sure it matches my estimate, matches my budget, matches my schedule, and I’ll have a kickoff with the team. That’s how we’re going to play the game. And we monitor. From that point on we monitor performance, we monitor change, we communicate as frequently as possible with every stakeholder that’s involved. But at the same time, processes as expectations become more complex, processes must be simplified so we can keep up with the expectations. There’s a fine delicate balance there. That’s the challenge, I believe, for most of the project control’s teams out there.

Rick Deans:

Well, that’s amazing. And I know that the audience is learning a lot from you as evidenced by the questions that are piling up. So I think I’m going to turn it back over to Adam and maybe he can address some of those questions that we’ve received from the audience.

Adam Palant:

Yeah. This has been a great conversation, but before we address your questions that came in throughout the webinar, I like to remind you that we would love your feedback. So please take a few moments to complete our webinar survey, which you will see on your screen now, or you’ll be redirected to it at the end of the webinar or one of the program. Oh, yeah. Let’s get to our first question. Let’s see. So we have, if CCC group is working government-type contracts, are there any different processes via the EVMS reporting?

Ricardo Filho:

Very good question. And I’ll disappoint you with the answer, but most of the work we do is private. We don’t really do a lot of government contracts.

Adam Palant:

Got it. Got it. All right. Well I hope that helped that answer. All right. So another good one. How does CCC track their daily field activities? Do they utilize a daily report function through InEight?

Ricardo Filho:

Great question. And the answer is yes. So the way we track our daily field activities, one is setting up those targets. What’s the objective for the day? We call it the daily planning in the progress module of InEight. And we set up those targets by crew depending on how the crew is broken down. Is it by superintendent, by general form and by area by building. And we set those targets all the way down to the widget. So on project X, area one on the structural steel discipline on installation work package elevation, 200 through 220, sequence of installation 41, we need to offload, shake out, fit up 21 tons. So we set those targets at that level of detail if required. If it’s a more simple job, we don’t need to go all the way down to the level of detail.

And on a daily basis, the crew leader reports in progress. Hey, that was my target, that’s what I did. So I have accomplished this quantity and I have spent this many man-hours because in the same reporting environment, that’s where the time sheets leave. So we have how many people for how many hours producing work were allocated to that plan. And that gives you instant performance factors. So we do that. Most jobs, we do that on a daily basis, on a few jobs, it’s every other day somewhere weekly. But we have the capacity to not only set the targets, but measure adherence to the plan as frequently as we want. And all those features are in InEight. Like setting the plans, quantifying the plans, getting those actuals and recording the actuals. We do it all in InEight.

Rick Deans:

So to play devil’s advocate, clearly setting up those plans requires some time, requires some discipline. That’s time where the people could be in the field building stuff and getting stuff done. What would you say to someone that says, “I don’t got time for planning because I’m too busy building the work.”? What would be your response to that sort of a …

Ricardo Filho:

I think the complexity or the time spent on developing a plan is inversely proportional to how well your work rate [inaudible 00:47:12] is built. So once you’re setting up your jobs and setting up your budgets and work packages, if that makes sense from a constructability standpoint, the process of creating a plan that matches what’s in the schedule, what’s in your budget, and the execution plan, that becomes a lot more streamlined. It shouldn’t be painful at all, provided there was some attention paid to the way the job was set up and configured in the beginning.

Rick Deans:

So it goes all the way back to pre-construction and the estimating process.

Ricardo Filho:

Absolutely. It’s-construction all the way, sir. And the project control’s fourth, obviously. Because like you said, once we’re playing the game, it’s all about field execution. And if they’re well-supported with good plans and good agile reporting systems and performance indicators, they’re set up for success.

Adam Palant:

Outstanding, Ricardo. Good one. Another great question came in, how did CCC Group maintain continuous improvements after initial deployment? So that processes stayed consistent as projects evolved?

Ricardo Filho:

Very good question. One of the things we did, and I mentioned that in the beginning, was we didn’t roll out entire suite at once. Say, “Hey, starting tomorrow, you’re going to use all these modules, all these tools, and I need you to fill out all those fields every day.” So we were very realistic. I was going to say conservative, but it’s not about being conservative, it’s about being realistic. We knew we were making a big change in the way projects were being set up, executed and monitored, and to reduce that change resistance, we decided to deploy that progressively. And as we were deploying those features progressively, and we started with quantity tracking and timekeeping. Basic stuff. You count what you’ve done, we’re going to tell you what’s the goal, and we’re going to also assess how much it has cost us to achieve that goal.

As we did that, we were also asking for feedback. “Hey, what do you think about the process of quantity tracking? What do you think about the process of timekeeping, time capture? And is the way we present indicators back to you enough for you to understand what’s happening, what’s going on?” And we were gathering that feedback consistently because we were asking the question and some people were really providing feedback without being asked that question. And as we were understanding the struggles and pains or the opportunities out there, we were tweaking the processes as we were going. So the continuous improvement was a combination of a progressive deployment rollout and that ability to create that two-way feedback channel. Say, “Hey, tell me what you think about it. Is it working well? Does it need to change? Is it making your life easier? What can we do? What can we change out there that makes it even better?” So that open channel, that clear communication and the display of support, that was paramount to help deployment and help the teams believe there was a beneficial initiative.

Adam Palant:

Excellent. Excellent. Another one. So was CCC able to utilize the IWP planning lessons learned in constraint removal, or is it something you’ll consider in the future?

Ricardo Filho:

I found the question. Able to utilize the IWP planning lessons [inaudible 00:50:40]. That’s a very complex question, but I’ll do my best to answer that. We do use the IWP planning features. We build those IWPs. Obviously we do the-

Rick Deans:

And for those folks on the call that might not be familiar with that acronym, Ricardo, can you spell that out for us?

Ricardo Filho:

Installation work package. So the nomenclature that InEight utilizes in the platform for the different levels of the work breakdown structure is project name, and then we have the construction work areas, construction work packages, installation work packages, components. They could be engineering components, material components, activity components, depending on the EPC phase your job is at. And then down one level, that’s where we set up the rules of credit. In InEight it’s called claiming schemes. That’s a scheme in which you’re going to claim your progress. So back to the question, yes, we’re utilizing the IWP features in InEight and we fill it out as best as we can with all components, budgetary components, safety components, TSAs, JSAs, hazards. We do fill it out with QA, QC components if applicable. We do link document control for that specific installation work package, whether we’re talking about drawings or specifications or data sheets or PNIDs, PFDs. Like I said in the beginning, the level of detail we apply to the work package depends on the risk profile of the job, but we are utilizing that.

Second part of the question was how do we manage lessons learned? I do believe that we’re still making progress on lessons learned. We’re much better than we were before transitioning to a digital solution. We do capture lessons learned. Some are captured using InEight right in the notes and requirements, in installation work package. Some are captured organically really. During the planning sessions, during the progress review sessions, we get that feedback and we enter that in a repository. But we’re not fully converted to managing lessons learned in InEight. That’s the intent, that’s the plan. But like I said, as we’re going progressively on deploying features and tools and managing expectations, that’s in the roadmap. And I can’t find the third part of the question somewhere. So the question was IWPs, lessons learned and removal of constraints I believe. I didn’t fully understand what that means in the question what’s the removal of constraints, but if I had to guess, hey, this is really a risk assessment. It’s a project execution risk assessment associated to the installation work package. We do address those during the planning sessions. Hey, do we have any engineering risks? Do we have any execution risks, environmental risks, procurement risks, commercial, methodology, equipment, tools, permits, licenses. That’s addressed and captured.

Adam Palant:

Excellent. Ricardo, let me ask you this question. Phil, are you all right there? Okay, good. Ricardo, if you were advising a peer contractor just starting their digital controls journey, what one piece of wisdom would you share?

Ricardo Filho:

That would be to develop a detailed and conservative implementation plan. And what do I mean by that is really setting up the expectations as realistically as possible. Because I’ve seen instances where organizations or groups or divisions, they do acquire a piece of software in their expectation. “Hey, in a month we’re going to be fully converted.” And I do believe the factors that get neglected there are behavioral. Because you’ve got to remember, teams are made of people and people have biases and experiences, and those are all valid. And some people like digital solutions. Some people have a preconcept, “Oh my gosh, it’s one more widget, a gadget for me to carry. I got to charge that thing every night and I need to update the software and it’s more work.” No, it’s not more work. I think the challenge becomes making that transition, that message delivery as clear as possible and adding what are the benefits of transition.

If you add that layer in the message, “Hey, those are the benefits and this is why we believe that’s going to work.” Look at this. Those X jobs we’re utilizing, they have migrated to a different way of monitoring jobs, of managing projects. And look at this. Performance went up, outcomes became more predictable. Not necessarily more profitable. Most are, but at the very least more predictable. We have early signs of variances and deviations instead of just finding out, like Rick was mentioning in the beginning, oh my gosh, once we reach 90% completion and we’re now in pre-commissioning turnover package, it’s all messed up. Once you have that predictability added to your day-to-day work, that supersedes all the worries, all the concerns. But back to the question. Piece of advice and one advice I’d say to develop a detailed and conservative deployment plan and have that clearly communicated. I think that if you have one source of, let’s call it an expectations baseline, if you have the one source is your expectations baseline, the team aligns and expectations become aligned and everyone looks towards the same direction instead of getting distracted by biased or ambiguous expectations. I think that would be my advice.

Adam Palant:

Excellent. Excellent. Well, Rick, did you want to add anything? Because I think we’re going to need to close out.

Rick Deans:

No. I was just commenting that that was an excellent response, and obviously that involves buy-in from all levels of the organization. It just can’t be a top-down executive push-out. It’s got to be supported by middle management. To your earlier point, it’s got to be supported by people in the field as well, so it’s really got to be across all levels of the organization. They buy into that plan, I think, and own that plan and begin to execute against it.

Ricardo Filho:

Absolutely.

Adam Palant:

Absolutely. Absolutely. I think we’re in all agreement there. Unfortunately, that is all the time we have for questions today. Please join me once again in thanking Rick Deans, Ricardo Filho for this presentation as well as today’s sponsor, InEight. If you have any additional questions or comments, please don’t hesitate to click the email us button on your console, and we will share them with our presenters so they can respond directly to you. If you didn’t have a chance to fill it out earlier, you will be redirected shortly to the post-event survey. We look forward to hearing how to make our programs work better for you. Please visit enr.com/webinars for the archive of this presentation to share with your colleagues as well as information about our upcoming events. Thanks again for trusting us with your time. Have a great day.