Software + Tech
The Case for Interoperability
Tom Stemm, Vice President and Category GM of Construction Integrations at Trimble
No one can deny the complexity of construction. There are a million moving parts, a variety of stakeholders, and a number of vital details that need to be accurately tracked and managed–from material sourcing to labor availability to controlling costs–in order for projects and the business to be kept on track. While many contractors have adopted various forms of technology to help manage and streamline project delivery, most of the software systems don’t automatically share data with one another. Instead, teams typically have to maintain manual steps in their workflow to import and export data across systems, or they simply use some systems for certain tasks and other systems for other functions, never integrating the data because it’s simply too much work. This is particularly burdensome on large projects when one of the stakeholders insists on working within their software system of choice, leading to different systems that each tell a different story about where a project or the business stands in real time, leading to duplicative work, diminished productivity, and profit fade. Interoperability gives contractors the ability to fix this by automating the flow of data between different systems without effort from the end user so that it’s consistent and all stakeholders can work off of the same information in real time regardless of how (or where) it’s entered. It also allows for project governance to be centralized and coordinated to the preference of the controlling stakeholder, often the general contractor or project owner. Data integration is an important means to achieve interoperability by programmatically connecting data together, at both the project level (between project stakeholders) and the company level (between internal systems).
Contractor Hensel Phelps understands the challenges and opportunities inherent to interoperability, having tackled it both internally and externally in recent years, including working with Trimble. The company has learned a lot from their experience, which could be helpful to other contractors who are just starting their interoperability journeys and are interested in understanding the different paths that can be taken, along with their associated benefits. An Internal Push to Synchronize and Optimize Data Hensel Phelps didn't have a software development team until about five years ago. Before that, there were no in-house capabilities, which is pretty common as most general and trade contractors don’t have in-house software teams. Instead, they usually work with third-party consultants who integrate their data for them. This can be a difficult model to use because once you build a custom integration, you’re stuck maintaining it. Consultant staffers can easily come and go so the person who originally helped you may no longer work there, leaving you to undergo a new discovery journey, which can be expensive and time-consuming. At the time Hensel Phelps was first looking at the issue of interoperability, their primary ERP–Viewpoint Vista–was on-premise, and their project management system– ProjectSight–was in the cloud. They didn’t automatically connect, as the cloud was still just a glimmer in people’s eyes and not actively used by most contractors. Hensel Phelps was struggling with the fact that multiple stakeholders were having to enter details twice–once in Vista and once in ProjectSight–which was time consuming and prone to human error. They wanted to minimize the number of times that people had to interact with the same piece of data, while also enabling people to only have to use their system of choice. For field staff, this was ProjectSight. For office personnel, this was Vista.
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csengineermag.com
NOVEMBER 2023
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