If You Can See It, You Can Fix It: The Promise of Modern Project Controls

Laura Beth Ezzell:

Hello everyone, and welcome to today’s webinar, If You Can See It, You Can Fix It: The Promise of Modern Project Controls. We’re excited you could join us. My name is Laura Beth Ezzell and I’ll be moderating today’s event. Today we are going to deep dive on the biggest challenges project controls teams face in achieving excellence within the time, budget, and quality constraints set for the project. We are thrilled to be joined by three speakers today. Joining us today we have JR Karbowski. He’s the Operations Support Director at CCC Group. Rouan du Rand is the Vice President, Project Management Support Services with Redpath Mining Incorporated. And we have Mason Williams, who is the Vice President of Project Delivery at InEight.

But before we get started, I have just a few items to go over. Please note, the slides will advance automatically throughout the presentation. To enlarge the slides, just click the enlarge slides button, that’s located in the top right corner of your presentation window. If you need technical assistance, click on the help widget, that’s located on the bottom left corner of your console.

Now, this is important. We encourage you to submit questions at any time throughout the presentation using the Q&A widget at the bottom of your console. Now, we will try to answer these during the webcast, but if a fuller answer is needed or we just run out of time, it will still be answered later via email. So please know that we do capture all your questions, and you are welcome to just go ahead and pop those in there during the presentation at any time. Okay, so to kick it off, I would like to ask each of our speakers to provide a quick introduction of themselves and their work. So JR, let’s start with you.

JR Karbowski:

Perfect, thank you. My name is JR Karbowski. I’m a very experienced professional. I’ve got 35+ years experience not only from an owner’s perspective, but also from a contractor’s perspective executing projects throughout the United States and internationally, whether they were in an oil and gas or petrochemical industry, pulp and paper, power generation, mining, et cetera. So I’m very, very happy to be part of this panel discussion today and hopefully we gained some good insight from everybody.

Laura Beth Ezzell:

Absolutely. Thank you so much for being here, JR. All right, Mason, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Mason Williams:

All right, thank you. I’m Mason Williams. I’m the Vice President of our Project Delivery at InEight. I came from 20 years of construction experience in heavy civil construction all the way from working my way up through field engineering to project management to Operations Director, and specialized in aviation work and heavy civil roadway work. Then I came over to the software side, and now we help our customers be successful as we implement the InEight platform. And that’s globally, so we have a lot of good perspective from multiple regions down in Australia to Europe and then North America of course, and so it’s great to apply our industry knowledge and help our customers be successful. So looking forward to today.

Laura Beth Ezzell:

Yeah. Thank you, Mason for being here. And Rouan, tell us about yourself.

Rouan du Rand:

Well, thank you Laura Beth. I started my career in South Africa as a Quantity Surveyor with about 30 years experience. I started actually in the building industry, then moved into the civil heavy infrastructure, and eventually sort of the early 2000s ended up in mining. Came to Canada about 20 years ago, and since then I’ve been involved in numerous mega projects internationally and locally. I’m also highly engaged with our company’s systems deployment across the group globally, including development of digital transformation strategies.

Laura Beth Ezzell:

Excellent. Well, thank you all three of you for being here. So let’s start off the discussion by parsing out some of the specific challenges when it comes to working within the time and budget constraints on projects while maintaining momentum. So Rouan, let’s begin with your insights on this.

Rouan du Rand:

So I think one of the key challenges I personally have found is there’s a lack of reliable information on projects as well as the timeliness of that information. That’s got a big impact on key decision makers on projects, deciding in which direction the project needs to go into. And a big part of that is, I think all of you can agree that we all still do our reporting at the job site using Excel. But the problem with using Excel, it’s not connected to our budget, it’s not connected to our schedule, so it really creates opportunities for errors and ultimately leads to inadequate visibility.

The issue is exacerbated when these multiple contractors and you’ve got a consultant working for the owner to consolidate all the feedback or you engage directly with the owner, where all those spreadsheets get consolidated again into another big spreadsheet. And really, you end up with something that’s a great report, but it’s not reliable. And if you’re a very well-experienced construction manager, you can probably work your way through it. But for the younger people, that may be a challenge. So we sit with a disconnected approach where we have information that’s not timely and ultimately not reliable. And one’s got to work towards a way of connecting the dots and increasing that timeliness and reliability to make better decisions.

Mason Williams:

Yeah. I think he hit it right on the head. Capturing those field changes is extremely important. And if you don’t have the right technology or processes in place, then that communication is hard to come by. And so crews, if they don’t have good knowledge of what they’re going out there to do on a daily basis and that work, and then they run into something that is a change, then they keep working. And then, next thing you know, you’re spending money and time on something that is technically a scope change. Whereas if you have the right systems in place, you can immediately help to identify that, get that communication back to the office, get that feedback back, and then know that you’re capturing that time and cost correctly so you can help manage those impacts and keep the project on schedule. Then once everybody has that visibility, even the external stakeholders, then you get that mutual buy-in and that visibility on project cost and schedule, and you don’t let those project changes bog the project down and you can solve for those who make those decisions.

JR Karbowski:

Absolutely, Mason. It’s one thing to talk about the actual scope work, but then it’s all those unforeseen changes, whether it’s supply chain disruptions or changes in client requirements. All these things are important to be able to capture. And you might think to yourself that, “Hey, well this is just one little thing that’s happening right now. I’m sure it’s not going to happen again.” But guess what? It all becomes and gets a cumulative effect, and it has a ripple effect in that they start ballooning. So next thing you know, you’ve got these small things and it accumulates into additional labor, additional equipment, additional materials and all that, and then you’ve got to be able to try and capture that. So managing those changes requires a lot of careful planning, and right, wrong or indifferent, but an Excel spreadsheet is probably not going to do it all for you.

And you need to be able to make sure that when you monitor that and take all those things into account, you’ve got to be able to do the number one thing, which is risk mitigation. So you need to mitigate your risk in terms of the increased cost and the delays and making sure that you understand how you’re going to capture that. If you’ve got some kind of delay that happens, then read the contract and say, “Hey, what is the timeframe that’s available to me to be able to provide that notice to the client?” Again, from a contractor’s perspective, so, “What do we need to do?” So you need to look at those kinds of things. Is there any outage requirements that might take place that might not have been accounted for, an emergency outage in a certain situation?

You have to look at who’s going to take care of any of these outstanding issues and then how do you notify the owner themselves so that you can identify these early tasks and then come up with a mitigation plan and a strategy to be able to execute that. And having integrated systems is the only way that you can do something like that effectively and on a timely basis.

Laura Beth Ezzell:

Yeah, great points. And it sounds like there’s just maybe a big disconnect between what decision makers know and what they need to know to take fast and effective action on a project. So where are the biggest opportunities for taking the reins back? Does it start right at the beginning with understanding the risks and contract terms? JR, let’s start with your perspective here on this.

JR Karbowski:

Sure, exactly. And then, I touched on it briefly already, is that know what the contract says. Not all the team members are going to be, for example, experts in all the legal jargon that comes up. Because let’s face it, when you look at a contract and you look at the terms and conditions in a purchase order, it can be absolutely overwhelming. But if you come up with what I’ll describe as a contract brief, if you will, then that can kind of help summarize in more layman’s terms for the project team to be able to execute what you need to be able to do.

For example, it might say that you have 24 hours to provide a written notice to the client in terms of any potential changes that might be coming up. But in another section of the contract it might say notices cannot be provided via email or via phone, it has to be via tele-fax, it has to be via a courier. And you’re like, “Wait a minute. So if I have to send a courier package, whether it’s DHL or UPS or FedEx or everything, it’s like, how am I going to do that within the 24 hours?” Well, it just doesn’t make sense. So you need to be able to have information like that available to you and understand the contract so that you can follow the guides that are spelled out for that. In terms of doing extra work, you have to provide a work authorization. How are you going to provide that work authorization? If everybody is using a connected system to be able to transmit RFIs, transmit questions, transmit submittals and those kinds of things, then it’s really going to help you out in terms of effectiveness, timeliness, and execution.

Mason Williams:

Yeah, I guess I’ll add in. I think there’s a great opportunity to address those challenges in the estimate phase right at the beginning of that. Always a big fan of going out to the site, or if it’s at a place where you’re not used to, you go out and understand the local community. That allows you to understand, “Okay, is there a labor force issue that needs to be addressed? What kind of permitting issues do we have?” And then, looking at the site logistics for trucking and material staging and things like that. And so, all of those things start to weigh in and you start to understand those risks. And then, by estimating your scheduling tools and things like that, you’re able to document all those risks and then you can effectively put probability factors against those to help come out with a better outcome to really help you put the right cost into your estimate to help that number and that good defense as you go into the project. Then you learn from those from project to project as you go on.

Laura Beth Ezzell:

Yeah, great thoughts there from both of you. And we’ve heard how disconnected systems create those costly issues on large projects and why contract and risk understanding is important really from day one. So it starts with getting a handle on what the project entails, where the risks are, and estimating as well as possible knowing those factors. So what happens once the project is well underway? How can project teams collect and share information effectively to perform better? All right, Rouan, start with you on this one loaded questions there.

Rouan du Rand:

It is loaded, but it’s got a simple answer, but a very difficult way to execute. The primary or the key point is you have to find ways to connect your estimate, your budget, and your schedule to your short interval planning and controls effort. And the reason for that is that you can focus your construction teams and the construction effort on the work that they must be doing and not evolve into things that they like to do. Then what you also have to ensure is you’ve got to collect your data as close as possible to the workplace, because that’s where the work gets done. You have to embrace technology as another point, and the technology must be focused around the end user. If you give a person an iPad, an iPhone, or an Android device and ask them to collect data, if it’s not suited for the work that they’re doing, you’re setting yourself up for a challenge.

Then everybody has heard the term big data and construction is slowly moving in that direction. But when you start out, keep the data that you want, keep it simple, make sure that it’s relevant to what you want to measure. It must be measurable as well, and it must be accurate. Standardize it, because the other big challenge that you have is when you do get your mobile devices out to the work front, if it’s not standardized, it’s very, very hard to enforce discipline.

And lastly, there’s got to be a digital culture installed in not just the workplace but the entire organization. As I’ve said, construction is moving towards big data and we’ve got to change our mindset to data is important. We’ve got to collect data so we can understand our operations better. When you do collect the data, please provide feedback to your crews. They are as interested in how they performed as the construction manager or the construction manager’s boss.

We recently had a project where we did a pilot and we’d create a simple daily plan of activities. We loaded our operators, we loaded the equipment, we specified the plan activities, etc. And we basically just asked the teams, “Go out, start collecting when you start an activity, when you stop the activity, if you’ve excavated, how many cubes of excavation, etc.” And we took the data and we displayed it on using Power BI, and it was amazing how quickly you could see the performance by different operators on the crew, the performance of different crews. You could see the performance of different machines.

And then something I kind of thought, “Well, we’re going to get a 5% improvement by just getting better and knowing our operation.” And by having access to the data, we saw a 30% increase. So it was amazing at how little data you need to have a big impact on the project. And as we move towards big data with the coming of artificial intelligence, etc, we’ll be able to establish patterns and trends, and we will be seeing things that we didn’t even know which questions to ask. So anyways, that’s how we went about it.

Mason Williams:

I think those are great points. I’d just add on top of that real quick is that ability to make timely decisions and getting that instant feedback, the data on it. Now with these systems, you’re able to, like Rouan said, is to create these daily plans and then you can have instant feedback at the end of the shift with reporting.

And as a project manager, you have multiple crews in the field. And if you can get that consolidated report every afternoon of how teams performed that day, it really helps you narrow down, “Okay, where am I succeeding and where am I not succeeding?” And then you’re able to ask critical questions like, “Are we planning to be successful?” Because if you start recognizing, “Okay, we’re consistently not hitting the mark, and we’re going out and we’re giving these teams these tasks of work.” Then you can go, “Wait, let’s be realistic on what we’re asking them to do and set them up. How can we better set them up for success?” And I think that’s where, to his point on seeing that 30% increase in productivity, that analytics and that process really helps you set that out.

JR Karbowski:

Yeah. Mason, you touched on it, Rouan, you touched on it. How easy is it in today’s environment to use technology, whether you have an iPad or phone or anything else to sit there and say, “You go out in the field, you find an issue, and you take a picture of it.” And then you can write whatever you need to in terms of the notes. And if it’s connected to a bigger system that’s fully integrated, then you’re able to make sure that the document control component of it, which is critical, is managed effectively to be able to mitigate those risks.

That software and that program and these tools help you transmit RFIs more efficiently. It helps you take care of notice of delay and then have documentation that supports all that. It helps you take care of any notice for actions that need to be executed. And then, the fully integrated teams that are available, all the right people with the right access to all that information, can make effective decisions on behalf of the team.

Because bottom line is that all this information, all this data that we’re collecting, is to do what? It’s to give project managers and the project team more information to make better informed decisions to be able to execute that. And if you do something via an email or a conversation and it’s not linked to anything else, then who else knows about it? And then you’re working in a silo. So that really doesn’t help the situation. But we’ve got lots of tools out there that are available to be able to execute that and integrate that effectively to take care of all this data.

Laura Beth Ezzell:

Yeah, great points there. And so, we’ve heard that using mobile technology to collect up-to-date data can help teams make these more informed decisions on current issues and better predictions for future outcomes. But how can leaders implement effective document control and data collection systems to spread the most information to the most people in a way that improves the project? So Rouan, we’ll start with your thoughts again here.

Rouan du Rand:

I think, and I’ll mention it again, it’s when you deploy these systems, it’s really key to have the end user in mind when you deploy those systems. If you deploy an app that’s really not geared toward the type of work they do, it really makes the adoption significantly longer and you’re potentially even setting yourself up to fail. So to me, that’s a critical part. And then, the application that they use in how they collect data, it must be intuitive and it must not impede the way that they perform the work. If it’s not intuitive and it impedes the way they work, the chances of you getting quality data is very low.

In addition, specific to doc management, it’s also really key that you do have a tool that can grab things like specification, drawing, purchase orders, subcontracts, and other relevant information that they can access the data at the workplace. So if you’ve got a query around the design, you don’t have to run to the office, pull of drawing, spend half an hour an hour looking at the drawing, and going back to the workplace. You can stand at the workplace, you can share it with your crew, and you can solve a problem literally in a couple of minutes. Because I’ve seen too many times where a foreman will actually have to down tools, go into the site office, open up the computer, send emails and queries to people within the organization, just to wait a day, sometimes two, to get the information back to allow them to do their job. So by using technology and using the right technology, we can start making more effective decisions at the workplace.

And the last thing that I’ll mention is when you get people to start using these tools and you get success stories, it’s really important to share it with others, because the best way to communicate the successes is by getting your own people to speak to other crews, to speak to other people, to explain how it has helped them to improve. And if you have ways of measuring that, that’s even more powerful. I spoke about the 30% improvement in productivity, and that’s all by getting the right tools in the hands of people, including things like specs and drawings, et cetera.

Mason Williams:

Yeah. He kind of hit a passion button for me, is keeping it simple. In construction, we’re very engineering, analytical, and we love numbers. And then, we want to sometimes bake a bunch of information into a process, therefore making it overly complicated because we think it’s going to give us the right outcome. And I think what Rouan said is a hundred percent, keep it simple, keep it intuitive. Challenge yourselves, what data do you really need? Do you have to know every little thing? Because how are you going to adjust to every little thing? So start at that simple level, get people using the systems, get them adopted, and then start layering on as the business sees things.

To get back into the question itself, having that document management system and an integrated project control system, you’re getting one place, a source of truth for the project to act on. And then, I think from a leadership standpoint, focus on a robust cost control system that’s going to give you those outputs. And then, that really drives that dashboarding and those reports, which goes back to that simplified information. What are we looking at to help drive decision making on the projects with our KPIs and things like that?

JR Karbowski:

Sure. Both of you guys had great points. And when we talk about that kind of document control and having a system in place, the most important thing out of all of that is forget the software for a moment, is you’ve got to have a process in place. And having a process in place is key. And then, you have to make sure that the teams that are executing that work understand and use that process effectively.

So for example, Rouan touched on it a little bit already, is that let’s say somebody puts together an RFI. And they put together their own little spreadsheet that they keep track of and all that kind of good stuff, and then they convert whatever form they have on an RFI, they convert it to a PDF, and then they send it by email, and then it just sits there. Just like what Rouan said, it just sits there with somebody you don’t know whoever the recipient was on vacation or whether their email crashed or whatever the system might be, is next thing you know, you don’t receive a response.

And to be able to execute the work on a timely basis, then you’re expecting a response or the contract might say that you have 24 hours to provide a response to that RFI or whatever the case might be. But next thing you know, it’s like, “Oh, okay. Well, who was it? Oh, this guy didn’t come into work or this person didn’t do that.” And next thing you know, because they didn’t use the RFI system that we had in place, it’s hard for the right people to know what it’s all about and then to be able to see it

The same thing goes along with prior authorizations. It would work similarly with that. So you’ve got to be able to have that information that’s available to you on an immediate basis, if you will, to be able to determine, for example, any cost and schedule impacts. Again, going back to the original question, if you can perform those calculations on a separate system and then it’s not interconnected, it really doesn’t help somebody to be able to translate that data and then look at it to be able to make effective decisions.

So that means taking an Excel spreadsheet that somebody then has to interpret and figure out whether they did or didn’t calculate the formula correctly. An ERP system that’s more financially driven that only has a limited amount of information, an earned value management system that you might have or a schedule. And all these disparate independent systems, if they’re not connected, they don’t allow you to make good informed decisions. So to be able to put all that stuff together and calculate things like labor hours and making estimates, cost implications, and to make that information available quicker and more refined if you will, then that presents its own set of challenges. So that’s really the kinds of things that we’re looking at there.

Laura Beth Ezzell:

Yeah. And we’ve heard how connecting divergent systems like ERPs and project controls can provide important opportunities to reinforce project controls. So what are the roadblocks to implementing these systems? Mason, let’s start with you.

Mason Williams:

Oh, boy. I’ve got a list here, but it starts at the top. It starts at that commitment, that leadership commitment when you get a system like this, and then Rouan said earlier, that digital culture of pushing that down.

The other thing I’ll say is this is a real project when you buy a system to implement. It takes time and it takes the right people. And so, I think often people rush in thinking that, “This is easy. This is software. I have my iPhone or I have something like QuickBooks.” They have that kind of notion and that, “This isn’t going to take much effort, we can be up and running and get the benefits out of this in a couple of weeks” or whatever that may be. And that’s oftentimes far from the truth.

So when you have these types of projects and take these on, you really need to look at it as an opportunity for the organization and those people that you’ve assigned to then do the implementation, that project team, that core team that we refer to them as, that’s a career opportunity. Because when you do that business transformation, that’s a big deal coming out the back end of that, because you’re now supporting building your company up to a digital transformation. And so, that really helps significantly.

And then, I would say that the ability to change; so you’re doing this for a reason and you’re affecting these current processes that… Your company’s been doing it this way for many years, right? But something’s obviously wrong or else you wouldn’t have gone out and decided to make this change. And so, be open to making those changes and doing things differently. Again, that’s why it’s that hard, because you’re changing how you run your business on a day-to-day basis. And so, there’s a lot of impacts there, and so then that blossoms out into the change management aspect, which you really have to be cognizant of. And it’s hard to control, but you’ve got to be confident and drive the ship. And you’re going to have bumps in the road, but it’s just something you’ve got to stay the course on.

JR Karbowski:

Absolutely, and I got a little chuckle out of what Mason said there in terms of leadership. It’s like, “Oh boy, where does the list start?” But let’s face it. Leadership can be resistant to change on any of these kinds of things, but that’s human nature. The whole change management thing can take you down a different path, but you really have to look at it and boil it down to say, “Okay, what are the fears? What are the anxieties that the leadership might have?” But it really comes from potentially is that they don’t see necessarily the potential in the data. “What is it going to do for me?” And if you’re able to get management engaged quickly and they can understand and see the value of getting all this data to be able to make informed decisions, that’s really the key there.

Rouan du Rand:

Yeah, I would definitely echo what Mason and JR are saying. I’ve got the opportunity right now, we’re deploying globally a project management suite, InEight Oracle Fusion and tools like Deswik to do all that we need to do. So I truly understand all these issues. You definitely have to have executive interaction, but there’s also things that we’ll need to consider is to make sure that the technologies that you choose are end user, field-focused, because that’s where you collect most of your data. We often make the mistake, and then it becomes a roadblock where we pick a technology for the back office where it’s generally it’s clean, it’s nice, it’s easy to operate the software.

It’s further really important to explain to especially your site teams why we are doing it and what’s in it for them. If you don’t go through those discussions, then again, great system, great solution, but the update may be very poor because people don’t really understand why you need the data.

And ultimately, something that’s not often spoken enough about is, and I’ve mentioned digital transformation strategy, you’ve got to have that strategy tied to your business strategy. And what I see in a lot of organizations, by not having that, it’s not just the roadblocks that become a challenge. They are continuously evolving because they don’t have that clear roadmap to get them from point A to point B. So they’re exploring different solutions. And some work, some don’t, and a process that should make your construction operations a lot more efficient will now take 10 years instead of three years to implement. So those are kind of the key things that I would add.

Laura Beth Ezzell:

Yeah, great thoughts and comments from all of you. So once workers get on board, they can adopt to mobile processes pretty quickly, but first, leadership has to understand the advantages of having all that data. Right? So what are the opportunities they should know about for improving project controls and forecasting through the use of data collection analysis? JR, I’ll throw this one at you first.

JR Karbowski:

Sure, sure. So the euphemism that’s out there is that everybody’s familiar with having leading indicators, lagging indicators, and all those kinds of dashboards that take place. But the most important thing to recognize out of all that is pattern recognition. So that’s a big opportunity to be able to identify risks and make accurate predictions.

For example, if you’ve got something, the data that shows in a schedule that budget overruns are about to happen, then there’s new systems that can predict what’s going to happen on future projects given those same similar variables. So the decision makers, they have to be able to trust that data. But that comes with its own set of challenges in that you need to be able to make sure that you perform some kind of data purification and that you’ve got a process in place to make sure that that happens. But that’s critical to be able to make these decisions to improve project controls and forecasting. Those tools are available, but it requires some discipline.

Rouan du Rand:

Yeah, no, I fully agree. Over the last year I’ve had lots of experience where I see the opportunities actually when you start collecting the data, it actually extends far beyond project controls. It’s simple things where you’ve got 10 different operators all performing the same activity. If you’ve got the data, you could start seeing which operator is highly proficient, which is less proficient. You could change the mix of your crews or you can identify training opportunities for the individuals that aren’t performing as well as some of the others. You could identify some of your machinery or mobile equipment that is less productive even though you think it’s performing the way it is. So it really gives you insight into your operations and you get to a point where you start asking questions that you never thought you would ask.

The other thing that I experienced is once you start collecting valuable data, especially relating to your cost and your schedule, you can now early on in the project, now you bring that information back to your estimate and your budget. And I see one of the attendees that say, “But things change.” And you do change it because you have to, but you still want to meet your cost and schedule. So even if you make those changes, you capture the data. Now we’re getting some factual information that you can use to either validate the assumptions you had in the estimate, or if it doesn’t work, now we can re-forecast. And you can base that on real productivities. And I think that is immensely, immensely powerful.

You also get the field teams, the information they collect can be actionable, where they can see that they are not meeting targets or things don’t work, so they can reorganize their construction activities. You can identify areas where you know it’s going to be a congested area. You can re-plan your procurement and logistics initiative. So it just gives you… When I say it points to things that you didn’t even think about. Good data, that’s what it brings, that you identify the risks, you mitigate the risk, and it’s all just based on good quality information.

Laura Beth Ezzell:

Yeah.

Mason Williams:

I just have-

Laura Beth Ezzell:

Go ahead.

Mason Williams:

Just a small offshoot is when you’d have that standardized account coding set across an organization, what we used to actually look at was who did this type of operation better? And it might even be in a different state or area and you don’t know those site conditions, but that’s still, we’re naturally competitive. And so, you’re able to look at some of those past costs from other regions and then set yourself up as, “That’s a target goal on this project, is for me to beat that best past cost that they did in San Francisco or somewhere.” So it opens doors and it really helps, to everyone’s point, you can see it across, and as you standardize it across an organization, use it in ways you never thought you would.

Laura Beth Ezzell:

Yeah, great thoughts there. And we’ve heard how powerful it is for construction leaders to be able to spot those potential risks and opportunities early on so they can make those adjustments that can have a big impact, but they have to have good systems for capturing and reporting data. So thank you all so much for your perspectives.

I would like to shift to some questions from our audience today, because you guys have definitely piqued their interest. We’ve got several questions that have come in. Just a reminder, you can use that Q&A widget and go ahead and submit your question. But let’s jump into some questions here from our audience. I’m going to start with one here. It says, “What technologies do you use for asset management onsite?” So who would like to take that question or start on it for us?

Rouan du Rand:

Well, I can step in. It’s more specific to the mining construction environment, the technologies that we use. We do have a supplier by the name of Sandvik, and they come with a stack of technologies where it’s a very… There’s knowledge boxes on the machines, so it collects the data, it sends the data to the cloud, where they analyze it. And they give us a lot of good information for our plan and preventative maintenance. And we also use Oracle Fusion that we give to our mechanics, et cetera, to capture work orders, et cetera.

Laura Beth Ezzell:

Yeah, thank you for jumping on that question there. Okay, another question here. It says, “Are remote projects typically less efficient as compared to projects near a main supply source? If so, what tools are being considered to control cost?” Great question there.

Mason Williams:

I’ll throw my hat in. It depends, but if you do, you can still leverage those integrated systems in that field mobility capture. And so, even if you’re not in an area where there’s internet connection, those tools have the ability to capture that data. And then, once you do get to a place, you can sync it back up and do that. So I think that as long as you have a good plan in place and you’re using the right system, you can still leverage that no matter where you’re at and get the most out of it. So any more, I would say other than site logistics and things like that, which you’ll plan in place, I think you can still be just as efficient.

Rouan du Rand:

Yeah, I would definitely concur. And I think the only difference between a remote project, or the key difference is instead of doing just in time planning or a week or a month out, you have to start planning three to six months out. For the project in Mongolia, if you wanted to order a pen, it was six weeks out with the process that you had to follow. But if you follow that six weeks later, the pen was there. If it was a larger item, there was different sort of procurement ways of getting things on site. A large item, you had to plan six months ahead of time to get that item. And yes, the systems at site still support you, but there’s still a human element of realizing that just change your horizon for planning.

JR Karbowski:

Yeah, exactly. And it doesn’t have to be a project in Mongolia, it could be somewhere here in the United States. I just not long ago finished a project in a remote part of Southwest Wyoming, and we might as well have been in Mongolia, because to try and get materials and supplies and internet connection and everything else, it was a challenge. But all that meant was Mason talked about taking these systems. Depending on which system you have, lots of these have the functionality where you can take a tablet with the information that’s on there, load it up, capture it, take pictures, and then once you get back to a stable connection, then you can go ahead and sync it. And that gives you the information that you need. So again, there’s tools that are available to help with that.

To specifically answer the question, is it less efficient on remote projects? The answer is probably yes. But again, it’s another one of those things that as a project manager and with the project management team, you can mitigate that as best you can.

Laura Beth Ezzell:

Excellent. Thank you all for chiming in on that one. I want to get to another one here. It says, “What are your tech stacks you use to manage projects and collect data for your businesses?” Who’d like to take that one or start on it this time?

Rouan du Rand:

Oh, I can explain what we’ve done in Canada. We do use the InEight Suite. There’s a different number of modules. We’ve decided to standardize using iPads and iPhones for our data collection at the workplace. And for an ERP, we’ve selected Oracle Fusion that we’ve deployed. So Canada’s up and running, the US is going live very soon, and we’re deploying in Australia plus a few other business units that are coming up. And then, on the equipment side, we’re heavily integrated into our partner, OEM supplier, Sandvik that also provides a stack of systems.

Laura Beth Ezzell:

Excellent. Thank you for jumping on that question for us. Okay, another one here, it says, “When it comes to the implementation of InEight, how could InEight support the change management process?”

Mason Williams:

I’m reading this as change management as organizational change management, not as contract change management. And hopefully I’m not wrong. We can support that. We do support that. Best practices, it comes from inside the company. That’s how you’re going to have the most impact on your company’s change, is by driving it through that leadership and that project team and having a good communication plan, celebrating the wins, doing all of that.

 But what we do is we can help develop those types of things with you, communication plans, training plans. Like I said earlier, the business processes are huge. And so, we come in and we can offer templatized approaches to standard operating procedures to help those teams get off to the right step and then document those processes of, “Here’s what our new standard operating procedure is going to be using the InEight tools.” So there’s various things we can do there to help support that.

JR Karbowski:

Yeah. And again, with what Mason talked about is there’s two types of changes. There’s organizational change management and then there’s the project, if you will, change management. But the two do actually go hand in hand, but it depends on what kind of transformation an organization is going through.

But to focus in on the project change management side, whether it’s InEight or other software products that do this, even if you were to do it, I’d go back and talk as if it was on a Big Chief tablet. It’s like trying to come up with an issue. Do you have an issue? And then you create a log. Do you ask that question and get it answered? Fantastic. But if for some reason that turns into a potential change, then now you’ve got it logged. And then, that potential change leads to a pending change because you’ve already submitted it to the owner. And then, that leads to a contract change order. And then, you want to be able to take that information, and if you’ve got it all connected in one system, then you can potentially update that contract value automatically into your financial system; whether it’s an ERP system of some kind, and that way you can go ahead and recognize the revenues and margins and all those kinds of things that affect the bottom line.

So from a project change management aspect, then that’s critical for using the InEight Change Module or anything else that other software providers have. But that’s critical to be able to do that, and it starts with something as simple as identifying an issue.

Laura Beth Ezzell:

Excellent. Great answer there from both of you. All right, thank you. All right. Another question here. “Can you explain more about how data analysis works once the information has been collected from the field? What are the methods for reading and understanding that data? It seems like that might require quite a bit of time, experience, and knowledge to make sense of it.” So great question here. Who’d like to start on that one?

Rouan du Rand:

I can maybe jump in and maybe just share my views. I attended a construction seminar or event in Texas, and that’s probably 14 years ago. And there was a guy by the name of Dan Roan, and what he presented on is how visual people are. So if you give people something to read and it’s words, et cetera versus a picture, people have got the ability to remember a picture a lot better than words or tables, et cetera. And that really stuck with me.

And one of the things that we are focused on is if you try, and when we are now building project reports specifically is to try and make them very visual, to try and put trend lines, put targets, put KPIs, whatever way we could find to visualize the information. We find it attracts more people to actually engage with the tools, et cetera.

And then, what we’ve also realized is extremely handy if you structure your data in such a way that once the user gets into the report and starts understanding the data, and because it’s visual, it’s easy, they can also click where you can get… We can use drill down and drill through technologies to expose the lower levels of detail within that report. And the uptake from a normal tabular report to a tool like Power BI has just been tremendous. Anyway, so that’s what I would say. It’s focus on targets, focus on KPIs, and make the reports very, very visual.

Laura Beth Ezzell:

Yeah.

JR Karbowski:

And Mason could probably talk a little bit more about this and expand on exactly what innate capabilities are, but on my experience is that there’s a lot of built-in dashboards and the built-in reports already in InEight. And if for some reason those don’t satisfy your needs, then just like what Rouan said, there’s the capability to export that data and get it into a more visual tool like Power BI. But that requires a different skillset to be able to do that. But there’s a lot of good information that’s already built into InEight that can be used to represent that kind of information. And it’s highly effective and very much a tool that’s needed to be able to make informed decisions.

Mason Williams:

Yeah. We have several out-of-the-box dashboards and reports, and we’re constantly adding more and enhancing the visuals. But the brilliance of the Power BI stuff is that you can have and create, replicate, or a data lake or whatever your organization. And you can have data not only from the InEight systems, but from other ERP systems or other systems that you’re using. And then, you can take that and build those custom reports for your specific business using Power BI. So I think that having all that data is so accessible like that, and then having somebody strong in your organization that can do Power BI, man, yeah, the ceiling is limitless.

Rouan du Rand:

Yeah. If I can maybe just jump back in quickly, I think the key point there is your data’s got to be connected. That is, if you want to get the value out of it, connect the data. If you’ve got a data lake house, it becomes a lot simpler to connect that. But that’s where the true value lies, where the projects suite and your ERP and your assets, et cetera, all converge in the data lake house where you can then just slowly start building the relevant reports.

And one’s got to remember, a lot of people may ask, systems are complicated, et cetera. And you say, “Yeah, it is complicated.” But that’s where we are in the current day’s world. But one’s just got to bite the bullet and stay committed to implement those systems, because the eventual value of the system far outweighs the complication that it brings to organization. And if you don’t do it, with the coming of AI, if you don’t start collecting the data and start collecting it soon, you’re going to be left behind.

Laura Beth Ezzell:

Yeah. Great answers from all of you. Thank you for that. Okay, another question here. “Can you give examples of how you have been able to leverage project controls and field data to improve future estimate quality and accuracy?” Great question here.

Mason Williams:

I can start on it and then I’m sure these gentlemen have examples as well. But by having that integrated system and coming up with that, how your business does standard operating procedures specifically against how you capture costs in the field, and that’s those phase codes, account codes, they call them many different things; that data is, and I always call it the circle of life.

As you capture that data and have those like accounting codes, when you get to the estimate phase, I know in the InEight systems we have capabilities, what we call benchmarking. And so, then you can pull up that account code and you can analyze different data points across where other places or work has done that. And you can even narrow that down by knowledge on the team of, “Okay, how many of these projects have we done for City X?” And you can see all those different data points, and “Okay. Here I’m back at city X on this estimate. And oh, that unit is much slower or I can go faster.” And so, you’re able to visualize that and see that. That’s the power of having those like account codes, that standard process across your business, or different types of verticals within your business. And you can capture those data points and bring them back to the estimate.

JR Karbowski:

Yeah. Just to be a little bit more specific on that, and I’ll give a very specific example is for example, one of the companies I worked for before, we did a lot of work in power generation construction projects. The next thing you know, it’s like you need to be able to put some parameters. For example, it’s like if it’s a one-on-one combined cycle, if it’s a two-on-one combined cycle project and it’s a grassroots project, you put in parameters like, “Okay, it’s a GE gas turbine. It’s a Siemens steam turbine. It’s a Deltech heat recovery steam generator.”

And you put all those parameters together along with the kinds of projects that you’ve been able to execute, then you can come up with some situations that lets you normalize and do some kind of parametric estimating and validation that lets you get better information to say, “Oh, okay. Well, last time we did this in terms of the alloy piping that was associated with this, then our productivity factors were X amount. And then, that’s because we implemented this.” Or, “When we were doing the structural steel on this kind of project, instead of doing it the traditional conventional way, then we ended up employing and doing modular pipe racks, for example.” So you can plug in all that information as long as you’ve got the right parameters. And depending on how many of these kinds of projects that you do, then it gives you a lot of information that you can use to better the next one and improve your future estimates.

Rouan du Rand:

Yeah. We all know estimates contain a lot of assumptions. You pick the right technology, you go in the field, and you start tracking not just the activity, but the sub-activities or the elements making up those activities. And you collect the data and you bring it back, and you can see how you’re performing in terms of what’s your actual productivity versus your planned productivity. You don’t have to guess where the project is going. Within the first month or two, you could see whether you’re in or out with your assumptions. And now based on your actuals, you can re-forecast. But keep in mind the re-forecast is it’s if you don’t change, this is what it’s going to be. So it still gives you a chance of understanding what the re-forecast is based on current productivity. And now we can start making changes to the methods of construction, the number of people, et cetera, to make a real difference. But I guess it comes back to you’ve got a big technology, but you can actually track your estimate in detail to allow it to be reforecast.

Laura Beth Ezzell:

Excellent. Great answer there. Okay. I want to slip in one more question here before the end of our time. And it says, “You’ve talked about how important it is to connect systems internally, but how do you make that work with external data you receive from material suppliers and subs?” And JR, I wanted to put this one to you because you spoke about document control processes and connecting systems. So any thoughts on how you might approach this here?

JR Karbowski:

Yeah. There’s a way of taking the external data that you can always tie it and get to an Excel spreadsheet. And if you can take something in an Excel spreadsheet, then you can always upload it to a system like InEight to be able to capture at least some of that information.

The other thing that you can do is, we touched on it already also, is you can always use an external tool like Power BI, which is again, more and more readily available and a lot more people are so adept at being able to use that to be able to tie that information together and make sense of it. Going back, you can always tie something into an access database or those kinds of things and then tie different sourced information to be able to get the reports that you want.

One example specifically like what you mentioned on the document control side is if you have an issue, you can either create an issue as an RFI and then let it tie in, for example, to the change module. Or you can create that issue separately in the change module of InEight and then have it go through its lifecycle. So there’s a couple of different ways of doing that, but the key is getting that information and getting it into a system that more than one person has access to and not keeping it a silo. And that’s probably the best answer I can give.

Rouan du Rand:

Yeah, that’s all just-

Laura Beth Ezzell:

Go ahead.

Rouan du Rand:

… just chime in quickly. That’s part and parcel of developing your digital strategy. It’s to acknowledge from the get-go in construction, you will be interfacing with third parties. You will need their data. So you’ve really got to figure out how do you bring that into a solution. Part of it is picking the right solution that allows that interface with third parties. A secondary part of that is also to start thinking about things like data lake houses where it’s pretty easy to suck in structured, semi-structured, and unstructured information into the, I’m just going to call it the big box, and use your reporting tools like Power BI, Tableau, whatever, to expose the information to your decision makers.

Laura Beth Ezzell:

Excellent answers. And that is all the time we have today. I would just like to thank our three speakers today: JR Karbowski, Rouan du Rand, and Mason Williams for just a great discussion today. And thank you for taking all these questions. We appreciate you sharing your insights and expertise with us. And we would also like to thank our audience for joining us today, great participation from you as well. We will hope to see everyone again soon. Have a great day.

Mason Williams:

Thank you.

JR Karbowski:

Thank you.

Rouan du Rand:

Take care.