No More White Elephants: Digital Tools That Work
Soilbuild's Gerald Ho shares his secrets of how to evaluate, buy & roll out construction software - the right way.
“To err is human. But to really foul things up you need a computer.” - biologist Paul Ehrlich
Contractors are racing to improve their productivity to preserve profit margins amid rising costs. Digital tools and software platforms are a pathway to eliminating thousands of man-hours of clerical work, while also improving safety, quality, compliance, and reporting.
That is… if you can get that pesky software working just the way you want it to.
Especially for builders who are at the start of their digitalisation journeys, the risk of losing time and money on poorly scoped, poorly selected, poorly implemented, and poorly used software is high.
To help you avoid those traps, The Contractor spoke to Gerald Ho, who is both Project Director and Head of Digitalisation at Soilbuild Construction Group and member of the SCAL Productivity and Technology Committee, about how to select, buy, and deploy digital tools effectively. As with all companies going digital, Soilbuild has had some resounding successes, but also plenty of bumps and bruises from lessons learned the hard way.
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How to Start Ah?
Soilbuild established a digitalisation committee, helmed by Gerald Ho, but also comprising the Head of Safety, BIM Managers, IDD / Digitalisation Engineers, and department leads from Structure, M&E, Architecture, and others to ensure that technology procurement decisions considered multiple trades and varying perspectives.
“We set out to solve our own problems,” Ho explained, “which is an advantage of having the committee comprising of the people on the ground.”
Soilbuild, which had previously deployed disparate systems - sometimes even using different solutions per project - acutely understood the need for a Common Data Environment (CDE) to unify its data and establish a single source of the truth.
The committee established a list of must-haves for their CDE and quantified the costs of the status quo: the direct costs of manually handling processes, along with the indirect costs caused by using disconnected systems that don’t interact with each other.
Their choice of CDE was a critical starting point.
Selecting the Right Vendors
When it comes to selecting vendors, Ho’s team evaluates each option based on functionality and cost. They also canvas colleagues who may have used the software, gathering firsthand insights before making a decision.
Several vendors are typically invited to pitch their solutions, using one specific project as the benchmark. This helps the team see how the software performs in a real-world scenario before a solution is deployed across all projects.
In almost every sub-category of built environment digital tools, there are now dozens of vendors offering software and IoT solutions for contractors.
SCAL’s Productivity and Technology Committee, with exceptional support from Mr Michael O’Connell and the team at Gammon Construction, has collated many of the available offerings into a market map:
Tailoring Software vs. Tailoring Processes
A common temptation is to modify software to perfectly match existing workflows.
Ho, however, cautions this isn’t always the right approach. Leading software vendors often have decades of experience and have synthesized learnings from hundreds of clients.
While software should meet your core needs and align with your company’s structure, it’s often worthwhile to adopt some of the best practices already natively built into the workflows of proven solutions. Extensive customization can come with a steep price tag and may not always yield better results.
Making Digitalisation Stick
One of the biggest risks in any digitalization project is creating a “white elephant”—expensive software that’s bought but is poorly adopted among team members and never fully utilized.
Gerald Ho stresses the importance of sustained executive commitment. With support from the top, digital initiatives can be rolled out successfully.
To ensure adoption, Soilbuild adopts something of a carrot-and-stick approach.
The first focus is on training and educating end-users how the digital tools can make their jobs better. Most solutions are deployed to only one site first, for hands-on evaluation, and only when they’re a proven success are they deployed across all projects.
“The beatings will continue until morale improves.” - Monty Python
However, there are times when a “less gentle” mandate is necessary to spur change. For example, Ho recalls a focused effort which led to harmonization of file naming conventions under ISO 19650 across the business. This was a substantial project initially, but eventually became second nature to the company as better habits were formed.
The process of encouraging and driving adoption extends into the board room.
Dashboards and real-time data, showing everything from financials to critical paths, begin to replace PowerPoints chock-full of manually collated data. The centralised availability of this information creates a virtuous circle where head-office leadership directly experiences the value of the digital investments, spurring further efforts to integrate data sources with the CDE.
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Going Digital is a Journey
From the starting point of zero, contractors usually evolve their digital capabilities through a series of three steps:
#1 Simple Solutions to Expensive Problems
For contractors just beginning to digitise, Ho advises starting with areas where the impact is most immediate—anything related to safety, such as permits to work, and to quality are strong candidates for digitalization.
One of the highest returns on investment comes from digitizing paper forms. Many records, like inspections and non-conformance reports, need to be kept for years and must offer traceability.
Digital solutions streamline this process and reduce the risk of errors, while ensuring that records remain accessible and secure even after the project’s TOP.
Moreover, public sector construction projects valued at $3 million or more now require companies to adopt Mature Workplace Safety and Health technologies. These include Electronic Permit-to-Work systems (ePTW). Through ePTW, teams can seamlessly submit and track permit applications, facilitating faster approval times and reducing the administrative costs.
For smaller contractors, the tech solutions chosen are often disparate pieces of software.
#2 All Roads Lead to Rome
As contractors grow to larger scale, and the number of adopted solutions proliferate, the importance of software interoperability, systems “speaking” to each other, grows.
Users begin to experience the overload of having to log into many different systems, and the inefficiencies of gathering and collating data from multiple sources.
For Soilbuild, the ability to unify all data sources in their CDE is a key buying consideration.
#3 Better Mousetraps
Finally, contractors may outgrow the native capabilities of their CDE in certain areas.
Gerald Ho and his team made a decision, for instance, to eventually upgrade both their ePTW and their scheduling software to more specialized solutions. The trick to doing so successfully was maintaining the integrity of the CDE as the single source of the truth by integrating and connecting the new software.
This allowed the team to benefit from the more feature-rich offerings of niche software, while not compromising on having a central view of their activities.
Wrap Up
Digitalization isn't a quick fix, but with careful planning, the right tools, and strong commitment, contractors can streamline operations, cut costs, and enhance project outcomes.
Ho’s final advice to contractors looking to digitize is simple: know exactly what you need. Avoid the temptation of chasing shiny new technology for the sake of it. Focus on solving real problems and adopt tools that fit the long-term needs of your business.