WAYS OF GETTING CONSTRUCTION TECHNOLOGICAL IDEA

Technology is becoming an important part of our lives, and engineering projects are adopting these innovations.

Technology adoption in the engineering industry has been enormous. The industry has seen some transformation in how projects are executed and managed. Over the years, lapses in productivity gap and lack of tech adoption has been the reason for some construction companies downfall.

Therefore, it is important that companies explore innovative ideas.  These are some of the best way you can get inspiration for innovative ideas;

• Organic Crowd sourcing ideas internally.
• Emerging Tech : This implies Keeping an eye on trending tech in the wider industry.
• Safety, quality, and schedule:  Applying design principles to examine how project teams struggle with safety, quality, and schedule issues concerning that technology.

After generating these ideas, the company should subject each idea through a framework to access its viability in the market. A very good framework Bechtel uses is called a “six-step framework” used to determine which tech idea should be adopted;

• Ideate. Crowd sourcing new solutions and approaches.
• Evaluate. Finding new technology to see if it has the potential to improve quality, cost, safety, or schedule on a project.
• Prototype. If the tech seems it can offer value, Bechtel will advance the idea and test a prototype.
• Pilot. Once the idea is proven to work and has potential to offer value, it is rolled out on a project and used in parallel with old processes. Successes and failures are monitored closely to determine if the new idea adds value.
• Implement. If the pilot succeeds, the idea is slowly rolled out to other projects where it will continue to be monitored and evaluated.
• Deliver. From these new concepts and ideas, Bechtel’s goal is to deliver 30% improvement in schedule and 20% reduction in costs.

So far, Bechtel has taken more than 2,500 new ideas through the six-step framework. This has resulted in approximately 100 instances of matured innovation being deployed across their projects. The list of implemented ideas includes varied efforts: from use of drones, to robotics, augmented and virtual reality, new mobile applications, and new physical piping components.

Example of which is the Bechtel project that required frequent audits and quality checks within confined spaces which presented a serious safety hazard, so instead lowered a 360-degree camera into each space and live-streamed the video to a tablet.

Bechtel is one of the most respected global engineering, construction, and project management companies.