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Digital Transformation: It’s Not Just A Buzz Word.

As a player in the global construction industry, what are you doing to drive positive project outcomes, cost savings, and competitive advantages? According to a recent study conducted by FMI Corporation, a management consulting firm, and Autodesk, Inc., Harnessing the Data Advantage in Construction, if it’s not working toward implementing formal data strategies and working to implement digital transformation, then the answer is likely “not enough.”  

More than 3,900 global construction industry professionals were asked about their data practices in 2020. What we learned as a result of this effort by FMI and Autodesk, is that digital transformation in many construction organizations continues to only be a talking point or “non-priority,” with nearly 40 percent of survey respondents reporting they haven’t yet built out a strategy or that it’s not a priority. 

Moreover, and perhaps more revealing about the construction industry’s need to embrace formal data strategies is that 30 percent of the survey’s respondents reported that more than half of the data they do collect is bad and unusable in their work. Imagine flying on an airplane that was being managed by a pilot who could only trust 50 percent of the gauges in the cockpit? I don’t know about you, but that’s not a flight I want to be on.  

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Read Also: Deconstructing Digital Silos 

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The Cost Of Bad Data In Construction 

As it relates to the global construction industry, this bad data comes at a price. “’Bad data’ – data that is inaccurate, incomplete, inaccessible, inconsistent or untimely, and can’t be used to derive actionable insights – may have cost the global construction $1.8 trillion in 2020,” according to a press release published on the Autodesk blog, Digital Builder. “Survey respondents who had strategies in place to collect, manage, and analyze usable data [on the other hand], reported benefits such as fewer change orders and reduced safety incidents, suggesting implementing formal data strategies could enable construction teams to prevent future losses and gain competitive advantages.”  

A recent article published by Construction Dive, points to some of the roadblocks the AEC is facing with regard to digital transformation and pulls from the Autodesk and FMI study for clarity. The article cites issues with implementation, hardware/software, and staff buy-in.  

Dan McCarthy, CEO of Dodge Construction Network, noted, “what’s really behind the challenge is that it’s hard to organize data and deploy it in a way that can create value for companies.” 

He’s not wrong.  

There are numerous platforms in play at every stage of a construction project’s lifecycle and, in many cases, these platforms aren’t set up to easily share data with products outside their pre-determined common data environment. As a result, implementation, hardware/software, and buy-in issues are bound to arise.  

There is consensus in the industry that all organizations across the AEC stand to gain from implementation of formal data strategies – especially at a time when staffing shortages make it more critical to make data-driven business decisions to drive efficiency and maximize profitability. To that end, the best place to start is to identify a secure digital framework that streamlines operations between the cloud-based systems in your organization.  

Eliminate Tech Adoption Fatigue – And More 

At ProjectReady we call this solution an Integrated Data Environment (IDE). The IDE allows you to overcome the challenges generally associated with sharing project information between the systems you already own before creating new software integration issues and battling your staff’s tech adoption fatigue.  

Moving forward with a digital transformation strategy rooted in an IDE minimizes the challenges those in the industry are facing by simplifying the implementation phase and allowing all teams across your project to maintain the comfort and security of working with the systems they’re used to. ProjectReady’s IDE is the bridge that connects your existing systems.  

If you would like to learn how ProjectReady has helped construction companies world-wide begin and successfully manage their own digital transformation journey, go ahead and schedule a free demonstration today. 

If you’d like to learn about other ways a digital transformation strategy can help you, check out these resources: