Cutting-Edge Technologies in Construction Projects

STEVE HENDERSHOT

Digital transformation and emerging technologies are laying the foundation of a new era in construction—and challenging project leaders to get up to speed. Today, we’ll take a look at how project leaders and teams are building out their capabilities to use innovative tech to make construction projects safer and more efficient.

NARRATOR

The world is changing fast. And every day, project professionals are turning ideas into reality—delivering value to their organizations and society as a whole. On Projectified^®, we’ll help you stay on top of the trends and see what’s ahead for The Project Economy—and your career.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

This is Projectified^®. I’m Steve Hendershot.

The construction industry’s digital transformation is accelerating, as emerging technologies are adopted more widely. Take building information modeling, or BIM, which creates a 3D digital representation of a built object, from buildings to bridges. A new report from Research and Markets predicts that the global market for BIM will continue to grow by more than 11 percent per year, reaching 25 billion U.S. dollars by 2026. BIM already has made inroads in the building design process, but the report finds it’s now gaining substantial traction on the construction side.

That’s just one of the technologies changing construction—and construction projects—along with robotics, sensors, drones, augmented reality, and on and on. As project leaders in the sector work to stay on top of it all, PMI now offers the Construction Professional in Built Environment Projects certification, or the PMI-CP.

Today we’ll hear from a couple of project leaders who are at the forefront of construction’s tech transformation. Rami Kaibni, senior projects and development manager at Field & Marten Associates in Vancouver, recently earned his PMI-CP certification. He spoke with Projectified^®’s Hannah LaBelle about how the tech landscape is changing construction projects.

MUSICAL TRANSITION

HANNAH LABELLE

Let’s start by discussing the current landscape for technology in construction. What are the top two tech trends you’re seeing in the sector?

RAMI KAIBNI

At the moment, I’ve noticed significant use of building information modeling, which is BIM. It makes it easier to plan and manage execution. The other thing that I’ve noticed extensive use of is prefabricates, which is an eco-friendly way that boosts productivity and maximizes use of materials. It’s similar to producing equipment in a factory and using it onsite, actually. If you have typical sections that you want to build onsite, for example, let’s say the exterior, so you do fabricate these offsite. Sometimes you do them pre-cast concrete, sometimes prefabricates from different materials. Then you bring them onsite, and you install them like a Lego.

HANNAH LABELLE

Let’s talk more about BIM. Teams are using the tech to create digital models that they reference throughout the planning, design and construction phases. And it can even help operations teams once projects are complete. Can you tell me about a project where your team used BIM?

RAMI KAIBNI

We used it on a recent project for a seniors development; it’s a supportive living building. It added value in different stages. So, for example, during the early stages of the project, it helped the team in planning, construction analysis, clash detection, identifying potential hazards and problem-solving in advance of execution. And during execution, it helped with access to real-time data with managing execution and safety.

There was [a] significant reduction in change orders, because when you detect clashes in advance, you manage to resolve the discrepancies beforehand. And the other thing is enhanced onsite safety. There was a significant reduction in incidents, again because when you detect potential hazards in advance, you help resolve them.

HANNAH LABELLE

As you’re looking at all these things that we’re talking about—the impact that this tech had and the value it delivered—how do you disseminate those lessons learned across other teams within your organization? Do you use this as a way to further advocate for greater use of this technology or others across the enterprise?

RAMI KAIBNI

Of course. When we wrap up a project, we have a meeting where we share all the lessons learned, including the technologies and how much value they added to our project, and if they were worth the investment. So we assess everything, and then we put those lessons learned in a certain location accessible for all the organization. And when we have new projects, we also go through the lessons learned from previous projects.

HANNAH LABELLE

Okay. Fantastic. Let’s talk more about adopting new technologies. How do you choose which technologies or innovations to use on projects?

RAMI KAIBNI

Well, first of all, during the initiation, we do review the design intent and basis. Then we do define the best delivery method. From there, we do evaluate how we can use innovations and available technology to carry [out] or improve upon our plans. And this is where we start looking at technology options.

HANNAH LABELLE

With these technology options, how much of the tech would be developed within a company versus seeking tech from outside vendors? And when it comes to working with outside vendors, how do you build those partnerships to experiment with or use new tech on projects?

RAMI KAIBNI

Building software in-house is a very exhaustive exercise. You need to have lots of resources and a specific department to deal with the future maintenance because software needs continuous maintenance. So small to medium-sized organizations tend to purchase third-party software because they don’t have the resources to develop in-house software.

For large, international organizations, it is mixed between developing software in-house versus purchasing a third-party one. They do the cost-benefit analysis, and they come up with the final decision whether to purchase or develop in-house. But there are so many factors that [are] involved [in] this decision, which [are] available resources, added value of the software, long term versus short term. If it’s a software that’s going to be used long term in the organization, it might be worth developing in-house, but if it’s a short-term use, it might be worth investing in a third-party software.

HANNAH LABELLE

So what’s next for technology in construction? As you’re looking ahead, how do you see tech impacting construction projects, say, in the next three to five years?

RAMI KAIBNI

Well, two of the new trends I’ve been seeing lately [are] 3D printing for small structural elements and robotics to carry [out] repetitive tasks, like for example, bricklaying. Now, how this will impact construction projects, it will probably have a medium impact in terms of the construction execution, but greater impact when it comes to construction planning, safety and allowing job sites to be interconnected because so many of these technologies can have real-time data accessible at any time for different projects.

HANNAH LABELLE

As technology is becoming more prevalent in construction, whether that’s on the site, workflows, different things like that, what are skills that project professionals need in order to continue to successfully deliver construction projects as the use of tech on these is increasing?

RAMI KAIBNI

The most important skills for a project manager [are] the soft skills—having emotional intelligence, leadership, effective communication, the ability to solve problems. You know, there will be always problems, even from technology. So regardless [of] how much AI or technology will take over, the presence of the human factor is very important. So these days, the soft skills of a project manager are more important than ever.

HANNAH LABELLE

Speaking of skills, I want to talk about the PMI-CP certification. How can it benefit project professionals in the construction sector?

RAMI KAIBNI

That’s a very good question. The certification does add lots of value to construction professionals due to its tactical focus on tools, techniques and processes in the industry. It is the first industry-specific credential introduced by PMI.

HANNAH LABELLE

How has going through all of those courses and earning the certification changed how you’re either approaching projects, different areas that you’re focusing in on when you’re leading these projects, anything like that?

RAMI KAIBNI

It did in some ways, especially in planning. For example, I learned more about the Last Planner system, about the Obeya room, about other planning techniques. It did help me tweak my approach to planning in some ways. Now, for example, when I put the schedule [together] for a project, I do give more time to planning because I believe the better you plan, especially in construction projects, the more value it will add during execution. We do a hybrid approach when it comes to construction. So during the planning phase, it’s [an] agile approach, and then we move to a waterfall approach when it comes to execution. It’s just the nature of the industry.

MUSICAL TRANSITION

STEVE HENDERSHOT

The construction industry’s embrace of new technology hasn’t always been steady—we’ve seen some fits of hesitation followed by surges of activity, and that progression has presented some challenges for project leaders and their organizations. Hannah spoke about that process with Tim Wark, regional digital director for Australia and New Zealand at AECOM in Brisbane, Australia.

MUSICAL TRANSITION

HANNAH LABELLE

Okay, so, Tim, let’s start with overall tech trends. How has technology changed in construction projects over the last few years?

TIM WARK

In some ways, the construction sector has been slower to adopt aspects of technology because it is so segmented. Part of the challenges we have seen is that designer consultants through to constructors, through to the asset owners and managers, have often been working pretty independently, dealing with very different data sets. And so the lack of sharing data has probably prohibited a lot of innovation and progress forward.

But I think what we’re starting to see now is that all coming together. And I think if you start with the obvious evolution in design from 2D CAD [computer-aided design] design to 3D into BIM, where we start to add in things like cost and scheduling, that’s really now providing the opportunity to actually become a model—what often gets called digital twin—that sits as an interface right across the whole project life cycle, from conception to maintenance operations. So I would really see that as probably the underpinning trend. And then obviously whether it’s more recent things like AI, robotics, or whether it’s things like VR/AR [virtual reality/augmented reality] starting to come in, I see that as the platform that will underpin innovation and technology adoption from here.

HANNAH LABELLE

So what tech innovations have been the most impactful in the construction sector, and which have maybe been the most disruptive or most difficult to incorporate?

TIM WARK

I think we’re just at the cusp of what is the genuine disruption of the construction sector, in which I think we do see model-led delivery at the forefront, and I think that’ll impact in many ways. It will change the whole nature of the life cycle in sharing data where we actually will see a model, a twin, which is there for the whole project and actually then effectively becomes the model to run and operate an asset.

It’s also then starting to underpin emerging areas like parametric or computational design, where we can actually now start to automate part of the design process. So, for example, there was a project we were involved in in Melbourne, a tennis center there, where the design involved the tennis center sitting on top of a car park. And as the design progressed from conceptual to detailed, the car park design would actually change. However, because it was a parametric design for the actual tennis center, as the support pillar locations changed in the car park, the rest of the design of the tennis center could essentially just regenerate itself. And so we were able to do that with one designer as opposed to 10.

The other thing I think we’re starting to see now is, as we start to see the ability to have models which move across the design through to the construction into the operations phase, we start to be able to map that with all sorts of data sources we have. We start to have the ability to interface with VR/AR information. So what you’re seeing can map to what a model would be saying, which is obviously pretty important for things like asset management and maintenance. We’ll start to see sensors being able to feed back information to models, and then I think the trend we’ll start to see the growth of is obviously where robotics, AI goes, which clearly you need a model underpinning that for around how you integrate that information.

HANNAH LABELLE

How are all these new technologies changing how your teams execute construction projects?

TIM WARK

AECOM, globally and in Australia New Zealand, is seeing digital as a growing enabler just for the future of how we’ll work. There [are] really two components to my role and our focus, and one of that’s very much our own internal digital transformation, and then the other part is how that’s changing the services we offer to our clients.

In terms of our own internal transformation, that’s at a number of levels. Clearly, a lot of it is very much focused around our whole design life cycle and process, and a lot of it does focus on how we start to standardize our workflows. Again, as 3D design becomes the standard and we also start to move towards this model-led delivery, standardizing some of those workflows are definitely a part of it. Also, another big part as we move to more and more major projects is really being able to have a digital engineering plan upfront: Who owns the data? What’s the standards of the data? How will we protect that data? Who are the various stakeholders and custodians to that data? So there’s a lot of focus now on getting that upfront, right at the start of a project.

There [are] other areas also we’re focusing on, which is trying to really digitize and automate a lot of our life cycles of various field data collection. Often, we’re collecting environmental data like groundwater monitoring, ground movement monitoring. In the past, it has been done very manually, even pen on paper, but now we’re starting to use commercial platforms. A person can be out on the field with an iPad collecting data. It essentially automates the curation and storing and then subsequent analysis of that data and how that would then interface with the report.

We’re also starting to transition to the future of what does software as a service look like for us? One of the areas that we’re putting a lot of focus on is on things like environmental impact assessment, which typically is a very large report which goes to a regulator. We’ve developed a platform ourselves called PlanEngage, and this is actually a software as a service that allows us to work with any other external stakeholders and also our own internal specialists and have an interactive platform to a) develop the report and then b), once it goes out, if it does go out to the public for consultation, it’s actually a much more interactive environment.

HANNAH LABELLE

You talked about the digital transformation that’s happening internally. What have been the challenges in that process, whether that’s integrating the teams, getting new workflows set, or building buy-in from folks to really embrace new tech, wherever it fits into their projects?

TIM WARK

Being a global organization, it has got a lot of different ways of working, a lot of historical cultures from different parts. Trying to bring that all together, whether it is change transformation which is just happening within one region like Australia New Zealand or whether it is things that are global, it really is as much a cultural shift and winning the hearts and minds as it is the specific technological changes.

We’re coming at it from quite a few angles. Whenever there’s innovation and change happening, particularly when people aren’t quite sure where it’s going to go, people do really respond to those stories, those case studies where they can see success and see the difference that it has made, and they can relate to it.

We’re also doing a lot of training and uplifting of skills. For a lot of people who have spent most of their careers in just 2D design, really lifting their skills as we move toward more 3D design tools and how that works as we move toward model-led delivery. And it is definitely changing the differentiation between what engineers would do and what drafts designer people would do. So that is shifting, too, just in what future roles look like.

The related part of that is also how do we grow an innovation culture? And this is something we’re continuing to learn how to do best for an organization that obviously doesn’t like to take unnecessary risks, but it also realizes that if it doesn’t embrace change, it’s going to be caught out and left behind. And so we are actually starting to create more and more mechanisms—investment, resourcing, ways of managing things like intellectual property, data custodianship—that allow us to try more and more proof of concepts of things. Find the right clients or the right internal projects to pilot with, and then start to look at how we partner or build internally ourselves to really then scale that up.

HANNAH LABELLE

As the technology is kind of touching a lot of different parts of the project life cycle, how are you working with project managers, program managers? Is it training them up on these different technologies? How these technologies might be impacting their workflows? What does that process look like when it comes to the project managers leading these initiatives?

TIM WARK

It’s really dependent on the maturity of the particular technology or change we have. For a lot of small or medium-sized projects, there’s not a lot of fat in the project to take significant risks and risk delaying the schedule or risk deliverables. For ones like that, we would typically only do [it] if we’re very clear on the technology change, we can do a quite clear change initiative and program with that project manager or the program director. For instance, we often do what’s called just-in-time training, where we’ll do the training just before the project starts. In cases where it’s a bigger shift, for instance, really starting to bring in some of these cutting-edge, parametric computational design[s], we tend to only do them on much bigger projects—multiyear projects, much higher margin[s]—[which] just [have] a lot more flexibility to build that into it, and we can take a more steady approach to how will this affect the schedule? What’s the change management plan here? What’s the training required?

HANNAH LABELLE

Given the evolving tech landscape, what skills do you think project professionals need to successfully lead construction projects?

TIM WARK

One of the most valuable skills any of us can ever have is the ability to form good relationships and trust with people because I think whenever change is happening, it’s ultimately those networks and relationships that enable things to happen most. And so I think people who can learn quickly, can build those relationships, can build strong networks will be the ideal program and project managers of the future.

We’re starting to increasingly move toward more and more complex programs and projects that are bringing together more and more sophisticated datasets with more and more stakeholders. And so we can only really manage that when we start to have more sophisticated platforms that support all this. It does require people, I think, who can think outside of the box, not be just stuck in a kind of linear way of thinking but can think big picture, can think laterally, but also know how to pull in experts around them. The people who will thrive most in the next five to 10 years will be those who can adapt to change. That’s something all of us can do better and better.

HANNAH LABELLE

Thank you so much for talking with me, Tim. I appreciate your time.

TIM WARK

No problem. My pleasure.

NARRATOR

Thanks for listening to Projectified^®. If you like what you heard, please subscribe to the show. And leave a rating or review—we’d love your feedback. To hear more episodes of Projectified^®, visit Apple Podcasts, Google Play Music, Stitcher, Spotify or SoundCloud. Or head to PMI.org/podcast.