Hamzah Shanbari has been working to make construction a more innovative and efficient industry for more than eight years as Haskell’s Chief Innovation Officer and even longer as a Virtual Construction Specialist there and Head of Haskell’s Venture Capital Group, Dysruptek.
His book “Paperless Builders: The Why, What and How of Construction Technology,” released in September, offers a road map for contractors of all sizes trying to break with legacy, inefficient workflows that are fraught with threats unnecessary for security, communication and progress. monitoring, and even the very concept of risk management. Shanbari argues that technologies such as digital documentation, design visualization, reality capture, the Internet of Things, robotics and artificial intelligence can improve any workplace. Using Haskell’s proprietary BUILDER(S) framework, Shanbari takes readers through the steps necessary to assess, implement, and thrive in today’s technology-heavy environment.
While Shanbari is certainly not the first, and won’t be the last, to claim that architecture, engineering, construction and even operations can be improved by adopting digital workflows, the your daily experience with how jobs really work comes through. through the text. In defining the “what” of construction, he writes, “remember that scanned documents, static PDFs, and local spreadsheets are not digitization processes. They are paper-like processes in that they work in the exact same way as the paper. They are simply disguised as a digital format.”
He says that the true digitization of processes depends on connecting all stakeholders of a project or organization and enabling true collaboration and transparency.
By defining how contractors, architects, engineers, and even owners can change their processes to work in a truly collaborative way, Shanbari provides an effective roadmap that shows how Haskell has become a thriving contractor of design, construction and EPC for such complicated projects that require this collaboration.
Shanbari is the first to admit that this transformative work is difficult for construction technologists and both suite executives at large contractors and family owners of small businesses looking to grow. In a chapter on benchmarking, he writes, “in this exercise you should choose one process, and one process only, and map it to understand each step, noting who, what, when, and how each step informs why that specific step.”
He also says leaders should use these opportunities to benchmark metrics to determine the overall cost of completing the process in question.
While many of these lessons aren’t particularly new, they do inform with examples from a great EPC and designer like Haskell. There is also a focus on metrics that speak to the Shanbari experience. Plans to implement a technology pilot are emphasized as much as mapping new processes and identifying an opportunity where construction technology can help. If contractors are just automating information requests and change orders, is anything really being gained? Or the designers involved in what used to be a paper-based process?
While the focus on eliminating paper, such as the large stack of drawings with 50 pages per discipline, in most construction trailers around the country, may seem very limited, Shanbari effectively expands it to a way of thinking that many in construction don’t even do. they recognize that they are rooted in their processes. Having the process derive from deliverables like 3D models and AI iterations is a better starting point, in many cases, than 2D sheets of paper.
Shanbari argues that this is where the real transformation of construction comes from, what Steve Jobs called thinking differently.
Hamzah Shanbari leads innovation efforts at Haskell, a design and construction firm based in Jacksonville, Florida. It focuses on exploring and implementing new technologies and methods for the AEC industry. The Paperless Builders is available on Amazon.com and wherever books are sold.
