INFORMATION & COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGY
Real-time decision-making capabilities in construction Software solutions provider for the construction industr y RIB CCS has launched a cloud-based data warehouse called Connect. Used by RIB CCS’s Candy and BuildSmar t solutions, Connect will allow for online information sharing between multiple stakeholders throughout an organisation. Joe de Klerk, head of innovation at RIB CCS
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ith Connect, users can access, process, manage and extract intelligence from the RIB CCS suite of products. All estimation, contract, project contract data and financial data is stored in a central place. This allows for users to gain sight of ever y single aspect of their project, providing one source of truth for an organisation. Connect helps to deliver accurate answers to business-critical questions – anywhere, on any device and in real time. The brainchild behind Connect is RIB CCS’s head of innovation ̶ Joe de Klerk ̶ a former estimator and long-time RIB CCS Candy consultant. These two roles place him in a unique position to understand customer challenges and look for ways to overcome them. With Connect, users can access, process, manage and extract intelligence from the RIB CCS suite of products
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IMIESA May 2021
“While our customers immediately see the value of our estimating solution, Candy, some of the questions they ask got me thinking about how to optimise the data produced by Candy to promote the sharing of information between project sites and offices, and help them streamline operations by enabling real-time decisionmaking,” explains De Klerk. Instead of waiting until the end of the month to run Candy and BuildSmart and consolidate costs, Connect gives users access to information on a daily basis. Therefore, any discrepancies are identified early – before they become major, costly issues. “Many of our companies have operations in different parts of the countr y. With Connect, Candy users at each site can access data anywhere. In this sense, Candy has essentially been transformed into an enterprise system,” notes De Klerk. As part of its offering, RIB CCS has introduced a business intelligence
We built an application to meet our clients’ reallife needs, rather than something we thought they may need. There is not another core, like-for-like solution that consolidates, draws insights from, and reports on Candy and BuildSmart data like Connect does.” (BI) tool – Connect BI – which allows for the dashboarding of information and delivers a ‘project on a page’. “Connect BI gives the user a snapshot of a particular project. Furthermore, all projects can then be consolidated to provide a ‘company on a page’ by consolidating all BuildSmart data,” adds De Klerk. Connect has been launched after a twoyear development process by a talented innovation team within the RIB CCS organisation, around the globe. RIB CCS also consulted its clients regarding the type of functionality that they needed. “We built an application to meet our clients’ real-life needs, rather than something we thought they may need. There is not another core, like-for-like solution that consolidates, draws insights from, and reports on Candy and BuildSmart data like Connect does,” says De Klerk.
