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The adoption of new technologies requires everyone to buy, said Danielle O’Connell, principal director of emerging technology for Skanska USA, the North -American Arm of Swedish builder.
The contractor uses what O’Connell calls his eight-step plan, a technology roadmap that presents critical movements to help him value and integrate products. With it, the company carries out actions measured to climb new solutions, find out cases of use and maintain everyone on the same page.
Here, O’Connell talks about the immersion of the construction on his approach, as the firm softened the wrinkles in the process and the tips for the youngest builders seeking to climb technology on their own.
Publisher Note: This interview has been published for brevity and clarity.
Construction division: What is the eight -step plan and how does Skanska usa use?
Danielle O’Connell: Our eight -step plan is our technology activation process.
The process begins with the identification of the problem we try to solve. In many ways, this comes from a project team that says they are really struggling with this thing, or maybe they have been talking to a seller or visiting a conference and were exposed to something they thought could solve a problem in their project.
In other cases, my team, the emerging technology team or others in our organization are seeing things that they think can have an impact.
The first step is to identify the problem and then find out what to do. From there, we delve into each of the sellers we are working with to understand the makeup of their company: what does his solution, what problems he solves, data protection and cybersecurity questions.
Danielle O’Connell
Permission granted by Skanska USA
Once we have these things, the next step is to pilot a solution in a project. Throughout the pilot, we remain connected to him to understand how he goes.
You usually see riders that are at least one year or the duration of the project to understand the operation of tools. We will make the registration frequently with them, get comments and then make decisions and recommendations to the business around what the solution looks like.
Could you give an example of technology that you have evaluated through this framework?
So, CMBUILDER, a construction logistics platform, was one of the first sellers we evaluated through this process. The team to our Redouncing Laguardia Airport B The project came to us and said that they found this new tool for 3D logistics.
We usually use Bluebeam for 2D logistics today. And if I think about how many of our superintendents, our project managers, our operations staff is now able to use Bluebeam to do this 2D logistics, CMBUILDER is a web -based platform that allows them to now make 3D logistics.
The team brought CMBUILDER through this process. And after they passed the whole evaluation and we kicked off the pilot, looked at several different projects, received comments from the team and decided that this would make sense.
We obtained the purchase of our COO, so it led us to launch a business agreement with CMBUILDER and put this tool into the hands of those people who really needed to communicate logistics and phase and how we would work in the workplace throughout the project.
What road blockades did you find to have to iron?
There are always changes in the process. With the spirit of continuous improvement, we are always looking for ways to improve it. We have adjusted the system and the questionnaires over time to ensure that we do not put too much burden on the sellers, as they happen.
It is a long process and we realize that they fill these questionnaires and send them again, and there is a team at the end that reviews them.
I would say that one of the things we have done to help improve and communicate -why this process is important is to talk -as if we are talking about bringing risk -labeled subcontractors to our jobs.
If a small and medium -sized builder wanted to implement something in their pile of technology, what advice would they give them?
I would tell them to go slow and work in their different departments.
I think one of the things we did not do well in the past is this collaboration between the legal team that reviews the language of the contract and what it means to be a business partner, for example, with all the different aspects of the computer equipment, such as understanding the fulfillment that we must follow for the general requirements of data protection of the European Union or the California Privacy Rights Law.
It would encourage them to see how these tools also fit their pile of global technology. Spend time to understand and communicate -you do about the process.
