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DIGITISING THE CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY
FELLOWS FORUM
IT’S NO SECRET THAT THE CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY IS LAGGING BEHIND ALL OTHER MAJOR INDUSTRY SECTORS WITH DIGITISATION. DOUG MITCHELL, IN PROJECT MANAGEMENT FOR OVER 30 YEARS, DISCUSSES HOW FELLOW PROJECT MANAGERS CAN USE DIGITISATION GAMIFICATION TECHNIQUES AND PROJECT MATURITY MODELS TO IMPROVE OUTCOMES.
What are the consequences of the lack of digitisation across the construction industry upon productivity? Recent academic and industry studies imply that it is directly hampering construction productivity growth. Over the past 20 years it’s now assessed to be lagging behind other sectors by as much as 60%. Productivity experts contend that improving data digitisation in construction is the low-hanging fruit for improving productivity growth.
DIGITISATION IN THE CAPITAL WORKS/INFRASTRUCTURE INDUSTRY
At the most basic level digitisation means using real-time data and reporting so that all stakeholders make better decisions using up-todate information.
Mastt, the software development tool I currently consult to, is a webenabled example of digitisation. It takes already available, but isolated, construction management data and uses digital tools to improve data accessibility, analytics, and usage across major projects. When quality data is made universally available to managers across projects, the prospects of improved outcomes is greatly enhanced.
HEADING TOWARDS BIG DATA
Without having a crystal ball, as the client-side project management industry evolves, I suspect in the medium term it will connect projects with corporate systems and industry standards to create a single-source of ‘project truth’.
However, project managers need to understand the total costs of ownership, project benefits, and other organisational constraints that are described through governance. This system of controls is outside most project managers’ experience so an organisation plus project maturity model must be used to connect stakeholders.
THE ORGANISATION PLUS PROJECT MATURITY MODEL
The maturity model is a framework to measure and improve a project’s contribution to organisational success. The maturity model incorporates organisational systems in a typical capital facilities process. For instance, organisational systems provide the opportunity for software to use big data moderated by highly capable humans for governance and management.
The framework requires key people to define how the organisation will change during and because of this project to establish project health criteria. Health and ill health criteria are used to establish project outputs and organisational success over the entire project and useful benefit of the facilities. Governance, the system of controls, is designed to resolve conflict between now and the future amongst stakeholders in different timeframes.
WHERE DOES GAMIFICATION COME INTO IT?
• Conflict resolution requires evidence-based decision-making based upon processing big data in the software program to run game scenarios.
• The game scenarios use data from other projects and the rules established by organisational constraints and the project initiation document.
• Game scenarios provide the basis for testing continuous improvement.
• The integrated effect shifts the focus of project managers from supervising current activities to making decisions to improve organisational outcomes.
PRODUCTIVITY IMPACTS
The impacts of fully embracing digitisation are different based upon your role and organisation’s relative maturity.
1. Project managers, using real-time automated project management data tools, will initially see time savings in preparing monthly reports along with quicker decisions.
2. This will free the project managers’ time to better organise upcoming activities.
3. More experienced project managers using digital tools like Mastt will be able to run scenarios to better understand their project decisions and potential options.
4. For those who use the Mastt templates, especially the governance templates, stakeholders can use realtime reports that reduces meeting times.
5. Over time, better data is available to improve granularity in performance outcomes by using real-time operations and maintenance data to value project decisions.
6. This data enhances program management continuous improvements through identifying system improvements on repetitive tasks.
7. The maturity framework provides descriptors to project stakeholders on options to improve project outcomes.
8. As the program connections are made both with data, health criteria and templates, portfolio management opportunities are available.
9. Portfolio opportunities included data for resilience, relative waste between project activities based around input cost and utilisation along with discounted cashflow valuations between investment opportunities.
10. Interestingly relative waste is about re-baselining expectations based upon this new digitisation.
11. These improvements are reflected within the maturity model and indicate areas of continuous improvement at the project, program, and portfolio level.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Digitisation, gamification, and the use of organisational maturity models reflects the real world of software synthesising big data, allowing smart people to focus on making project decisions that support better organisational outcomes.
Author: Doug Mitchell CSC FAIPM CPPS is a fellow of the AIPM, Engineers Australia and the Financial Services Industry of Australasia along with being a Graduate of the AICD. He has been involved in project management for over 30 years and is a CPPS and Assessor with the AIPM.
