Brandon Oliveri-O’Connor, Senior Director of EMEA, Procore, outlines what real-time insights can be accessed and used to gain visibility of an entire construction life cycle as well as overall business performance. 

You only need to look at the last year to see that the construction industry isn’t afraid of embracing change. The adoption of groundbreaking technologies that have disrupted, accelerated and catalysed innovation have enabled many companies to continue and improve upon how they work.

One area emerging to help construction companies make better-informed decisions is through measuring visibility of performance— that is, real-time insights which can be accessed and used to gain visibility of an entire construction life cycle as well as overall business performance.

With construction companies and their projects producing mountains of data and insights just waiting to be used, it’s time for the industry to put all to good use, as only then can more informed decisions be made. Real-time insights are crucial to a business’ success. For instance, they can show how many days a particular trade takes to resolve snags and help project managers identify the best partners to work with in order to maximise profits—helping to deliver the best quality of work, and avoid delays.

So, how can real-time insights be accessed and put to good use? It’s all about finding a way to better connect stakeholders, processes and data in a way that is clear and insightful. To achieve this, the industry needs to move away from siloed systems, towards platforms which can connect the dots and offer value. Only then will the industry be able to work smarter and unlock the greatest level of performance.

The benefits of accessing and using real-time insights are endless. In fact, our commissioned research found that every manager, on average, saves nearly a full day’s work (4.5 hours) each week, while businesses as a whole save £256,000 per year. In contrast, those without visibility of performance lose 3.5 hours each week, at a cost of £265,000 per year.

But, the advantages of real-time insights are not just focused on time and money—quality and safety are also two areas which can be improved. Almost half of those surveyed (49%) registered fewer defects and 47 per cent felt visibility helped support their compliance with standards such as ISO 9001/45001.

Using platform technology to reinvent traditional construction processes for tasks such as snag lists or RFIs can help companies to gain a competitive edge. BW: Workplace Experts is an example of a company that has done this well, using a single platform approach to build a bank project information which they can use to draw insights from to inform future project decisions.

For Conack Construction, one of Ireland’s leading construction firms, and a participant on the high-profile Cherrywood project in Dublin, leveraging real-time insights through a platform has helped the firm extract valuable insights from static data. Brid Mullane, CDE Manager says: “By implementing a CDE platform company-wide, we have been able to ensure that all data collected is accurate, timely, and encompasses the whole scope of our projects. We can then analyse the data, predict outcomes and make informed real time decisions to best suit the requirements of that project.”

Download Procore’s latest research report, ‘What gets measured gets managed’ visit www.procore.com/en-gb/ebooks/what-gets-measuredgets-managed

Given the wealth of benefits real-time insights provide, it is no surprise that construction companies are striving to achieve a clearer and more accurate visibility of performance. It’s time to look to the future as we head towards a new era of smarter construction. The adoption of the right technology to gain access to and use real-time insights will transform the construction industry—making it more efficient and profitable. Thanks to saving time and money and boosting quality and safety, hospitals may become less expensive to build, houses more time-efficient, and schools more cost-effective. A brighter future of construction is a brighter future for everyone.