12 minute read
A New Era in Construction Management Innovation
from America's Engineers: The People, Programs, and Projects of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers '24-'25
Better tools for better construction management.
BY CRAIG COLLINS, AMERICA'S ENGINEERS
As rapid technological advances over the past 20 years have propelled private sector construction firms forward, big government agencies have struggled to keep up. As one of the world’s largest public design and construction agents, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) – often in collaboration with the agency’s own U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) and other partners – has frequently been a leader in construction management, and now aims to lead the construction management industry again.
More than a decade ago, people in USACE’s Engineering Construction Division were using a custom enterprise software package, the Resident Management System (RMS), which made common documents, rules, schedules, guidelines, and more available to parties who accessed them from a computer – usually, in their offices.
The RMS of today is, aside from a few new features, pretty much the same system he was using when Darrick Godfrey joined USACE as a resident engineer. He now heads USACE’s Construction Management Innovation Office (CMIO) at USACE Headquarters. “The Corps still doesn’t have a system tied to tablets in the field,” Godfrey said. “Our folks, if they’re going to go on a job site and inspect a piece of work, still have to print out the paper drawing – hopefully the current version of the paper drawing – before they go.” Some team members take laptops with them, to type in their notes – but most find it more convenient to simply write them in a notebook and type them up when they return to their desks. In the current system, key documents are typically viewable by USACE and its lead contractor; others can access the documents by either requesting them in an email or downloading them.
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Meanwhile, in the years since Godfrey came aboard, new capabilities were constantly being pushed out to construction engineers in the private sector. With building information modeling (BIM)-integrated design, everyone involved in a project had the most current plans, specifications, photos, and notes, which they accessed through apps on smartphones or tablets. When a request for information (RFI) popped up, everyone saw it immediately. Employees who worked off-site could see progress in real time – through the helmet cams of colleagues at the project site.
Obviously, USACE’s construction experts are overdue for changes that will make their jobs easier while lowering costs and improving the quality of projects. And the news is good: USACE is on the verge of radical change, as it develops a new software platform that will transform the way it manages its construction projects from beginning to end. The leaders of this transformation – including Godfrey and Alexandra Henderson Connors, who leads CMIO’s Technology Modernization Office (TMO) – like to describe it as an effort that’s about people, processes and technology.
“We’re looking at it holistically,” said Connors. “How do we update our processes? How do we make sure we’re doing things more efficiently, in parallel with these new pieces of technology we’re trying to roll out? And then probably the most important part: How do we make sure our people are supported in both of those things? We’re making sure people have the right tools to do their job, that their processes fit the kind of work they’re doing, and that they’re fully trained and supported.”
The Construction Management Platform: Under Construction
According to USACE’s Chief of Construction Kenny Simmons – who, like everyone leading the transition to a new Construction Management Platform (CMP), came from the private sector – USACE’s construction work is unique, even within the agency: “What makes our Construction Management Community of Practice different is the relationship we have with industry,” he said. “A lot of what we do – on our Civil Works side, for example – we do for ourselves. We’re the owner and operator of levees and dams.” But the agency’s 4,000 construction people, Simmons said, “spend every day of their working career in the field, working with our industry partners. It’s not just a transactional relationship. It’s a partnership, a relationship in the field to deliver the infrastructure the nation needs.”
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The CMP that will soon replace the RMS, then, will be aimed at creating a common operating picture and collaborative environment for an entire project team, from beginning to end: project sponsors and end users, stakeholders, architects, engineers, USACE and other government team members, the contractors and subcontractors, all working in the same system, all looking at the most up-todate versions of documents and events.
Located in the Kansas City District, Connors’ team at the TMO – a relatively new branch of the Construction Management Innovation Office – is designing and developing the new CMP to have long-lasting benefits, and to be capable of evolving and applying new innovations.
The first piece of the new platform, its knowledge base, has set an important precedent for the innovations to come: It’s been developed with the input of engineers in the field, who are calling for better project efficiency, quality, and collaboration. One of the most time-consuming tasks for USACE construction managers, for example, has been searching among multiple websites, and their own email inboxes, for information. The Construction Branch has a publications page that houses its regulations, manuals, pamphlets, and other documents. A design guide website issues engineering and construction bulletins. But once managers have collected all the documents they need, they often can’t be sure they’ve found the most recent USACE guidance.
To streamline and modernize access to these disparate resources, the Construction Management Innovation Team developed a single portal for validated, up-to-date information: the Construction Management Administration Application (CMA2). Built to provide guidance and assistance throughout the life cycle of a construction project, from pre-award inception to closeout, CMA2 is a searchable repository of information that requires minimal legwork, and can be accessed from the field through a smartphone.
But it’s more than just a repository: In collaboration with computing experts at USACE’s ERDC, the CMI team developed a virtual assistant named JAQI (Jobsite-Assisted Quality Intelligence). As a first step, the team identified and assembled more than 1,000 key documents among USACE’s vetted management training and reference materials. A large-language AI model, JAQI can sort through these documents and respond to queries within minutes, with a written answer that’s easy to read.
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According to Jacquelyn Henderson, a senior construction engineer at USACE Headquarters and a key proponent of CMA2, the CMI team has taken steps to ensure that JAQI is a trusted partner: “We give it pretty specific prompts –say, ‘Write me an article about the first phase of the three-phase inspection, and include a list of all of the requirements you’d want to discuss in a preparatory meeting, and when that meeting should be held.’ And then it will generate an article, and it will also provide references for almost every sentence it generates, so that you, as the subject-matter expert, can go back in and validate the information very quickly.” Nothing is published to the CMA2 site without several rounds of expert reviews.
The AI-powered JAQI has saved the CMA2 team hundreds of hours of searching through USACE documents, and team members estimate that these and other capabilities of the new Construction Management Platform – at its core, a cloudbased commercial off-the-shelf application, with new features added as they’re brought online – will reduce the amount of time managers spend on administrative tasks by 30 to 40 percent.
The spring launch of CMA2 was the first big step in the CMI team’s effort to upgrade its collaborative environment.
“Getting that to where it is today has been a big project for the last year or so,” Godfrey said. “Right now, we’re kind of in this transition phase, focused on how existing and available tools can be acquired and used, things like tablets and BIM, virtual-reality training, other chat bots, and AI tools. We’re getting the Corps ready to adopt even bigger, bolder changes when we replace our current Residence Management System software.”
To showcase these tools and how they could be used, the Construction Branch unveiled its new Construction Management Innovation Lab in Kansas City in April 2024, with a hands-on interactive workshop demonstrating several capabilities. Participants operated an aerial drone to see how it could track progress and conduct inspections; used 360-degree cameras to capture the entirety of a project site; logged in to CMA2; asked JAQI for advice; and strapped on a virtual-reality (VR) headset to tour a three-dimensional model of a project – an application with the potential to save time and money on multiple fronts.
As the Construction Management Community of Practice integrates these tools into the emerging CMP and adapts them to the needs of its projects, the lab will provide a home for new Construction Management Innovation initiatives, and a place where professionals can take them out for test drives.
The Uniqueness of USACE Construction
In framing the USACE construction community’s transition around people, processes, and technology, there’s a reason people are mentioned first, and technology last: A new Construction Management Platform will be a means, not an end – a suite of tools for enabling up-to-the-minute collaboration and quality assurance. The purpose of the new Construction Management Innovation Lab is not to show off new gadgets, but to enhance the coordination of design and construction, optimize the design review process, validate constructability and operability, create baselines for acquisitions, and develop benchmarks for districts in design and construction reviews.
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“You can’t just throw technology out there,” said Godfrey. “It has to come as a complete package, with training, process improvement, and feedback loops, so that you figure it out and make sure you’re moving forward with it appropriately.”
As Henderson points out, the collaboration with ERDC isn’t aimed at finding the next big gizmo: “It’s a much more business-focused than widget-focused effort.”
The emphasis on developing benchmarks is an important feature of the future collaborative environment, and hints at an issue that’s particular to USACE’s Construction Management Community of Practice: While many new innovations are, and will be, inspired by its partners in private industry, they will be tailored to USACE’s unique needs and circumstances. The Construction Branch is, to state the obvious, not a business, and profit is not one of its key performance indicators.
The size and scope of USACE’s construction enterprise presents singular challenges and opportunities. The agency’s 45 districts span the globe, and the lack of a common operating platform, in which stakeholders can collaborate in real time, has led the evolution of different practices and processes.
“We need to prioritize having enterprise processes for different things right now,” Henderson said. “We have stakeholders who partner with various districts and have vastly different experiences, because we don’t have common practices across all of those districts.”
“Our goal is really to make this more of an enterprise initiative than ever before,” said Godfrey. “We’re going to figure out a way to get tools and technologies and best practices out to everyone – but still somehow to encourage the pockets of innovation we have now, to let those folks innovate however they have to, to get the job done.”
This is what Simmons wants everyone involved in USACE construction projects to know: The transition to a new collaborative platform is, first and foremost, about them.
“When you look at all the challenges facing the design and construction industries today, we need to better equip that workforce,” he said. “It’s the people in the districts and the field, 4,000 people in our Community of Practice, who are doing the real work. And we owe them the tools that will enable them to use their ingenuity and innovation at the local level to solve problems. They’re fighting the good fight every day with our industry partners at construction sites, and they deserve the best we can give them.”
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