Mobile Technologyin Construction

Current status, best practices & tips to getstarted in 2017

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Brief

Catching Up to the Speed of BusinessThe construction industry is among the least digitised.

State of Technology in 2017As the speed of business has accelerated over the past few years, one industry has notably lagged behind.

The Mobile World - Considerations for AdaptationMobility hit a milestone this year, as more people worldwide accessed the internet via mobile device than on a desktop.

Benefits of Mobile on SiteThe productivity gains from having a well-connected workforce have been evident for many years.

What Are 'Ruggedised' Devices?A construction site is not a friendly place for fragile devices. What you need to know about ruggedised devices.

Implementation Booby TrapsWhat to avoid in implementing mobile apps.

5 Tips and Best Practices for Transitioning to MobileFor any company looking to introduce or expand their mobile usage, here are five tips to help you get more out of yourinvestment and still operate securely:

Steps to ImplementationMobile first.

Next StepsLet APE Mobile help you kickstart your productivity in 2017

Contents

The construction industry is moving into a paperless digital age, fuelled by advances inmobile and cloud technology. How will your company navigate this new landscape ofproductivity gains and data breach pitfalls?

In October 2016, for the first time ever, combined mobile and tablet web usageovertook traditional desktops. Workers are increasingly becoming untethered fromtheir physical workstations, and the construction industry is no different.

This piece will outline the shifts occurring, the impact on the construction industry andthe opportunities this presents. Conversely, not acting now will hand a competitiveadvantage to your peers in the medium to long term.

Brief

Catching Up to the Speed ofBusinessThe construction industry is among the least digitised.

As a result, the current system for managing construction projects is broken. That'sjust one of the urgent messages that arose from construction executives, managers,estimators and project managers in the 2015 Construction Industry Survey, sponsoredby On Center Software.

Cecilia Padilla, CEO of On Center Software, said the survey identified some of thebiggest problems facing construction firms but also suggested how to fix them.'Collectively this data paints a picture of the struggle that today's constructionprofessionals are having with yesterday's tools, and their concerns for mitigatingcostly errors through adoption of new technologies,' she added. 'The money madeduring estimating and takeoff can easily be lost in the field due to errors that occurwhen multiple sets of plans are maintained on various types of media. It wouldappear that the industry is banking on the inherent error reduction through the "onetruth transparency" of cloud technologies to solve these problems.'

Nearly a third of respondents (31 percent) said they had plans to move takeoff,estimating and project management processes to the cloud in the next 12-24 months.The key drivers for this decision to adopt more business automation involvedintegration of office systems, better collaboration among teams, more reliablecommunication channels and reduction of in-field errors. For many of those samereasons, eight out of 10 have already deployed mobile devices for smarter bidding andto facilitate on site project management. Required paperwork, like permits, JSAs,incident reports, inspection checklists and audits, are being replaced by much faster,more streamlined digital versions that connect to office systems.

State of Technology in 2017As the speed of business has accelerated over the past few years, oneindustry has notably lagged behind.

Work no longer involves going to the office, and increasing computer power of cloud-based apps has untethered smartphones. You no longer need to sync up your mobileworkstation with your home PC, because all the data you need is in the cloud.Naturally, putting all of that responsibility into a handheld device has come with somedownsides.

It was perhaps inevitable that security and freedom would come into conflict. Theeasier it is for authorised users to get the information they need for site work, themore vulnerabilities there are for unauthorised users to exploit. Research by Ernst &Young found that half of all lost or stolen mobile devices are never recovered. Becauselost or stolen devices are responsible for about a third of data breaches, constructionfirms are increasingly facing a serious problem in protecting their private data.

On average, information workers are carrying three or more mobile devices in thefield. That sets up potential safety hazards if employees become distracted by theirmobile devices. On the back end, it suggests that demands on cybersecurity in thefield will be tripled, while the attacks against the business network continue to growin intensity. This trend is simply a reflection of the larger role data security is playingfor enterprises in every industry. Currently, 46 percent of contractors say they operateunder a mobile security plan, which has increased by 15 percent over a year ago. Oncecompanies make sure that people have a safe work site and security is beingmanaged appropriately, the gains more than make up for the costs.

The Mobile World -Considerations for AdaptationMobility hit a milestone this year, as more people worldwide accessed theinternet via mobile device than on a desktop.

The gains in real-time data access and instant remote input has been critical for improvingthe percentage of projects brought in on time and under budget. Seventy-six percent ofconstruction professionals say that daily field reports are the top use for their mobile tech.For two-thirds of those surveyed, the most common task was collaborating between fieldand office staff; involving sharing customer and job information. The third most commonuse was collaboration on drawings, photos and documents.

The result has been a huge boon for project managers, who are seeing fewer errors in thefield due to reworks. In the past, inadequate or slow information sharing led to too manyreworks, which 65 percent of construction professionals identify as the number one causeof cost overruns. Instant communication with field workers and the ability to share image-rich documents has increased project efficiency and regulatory compliance. Now, foremencan launch comprehensive reporting tools for faster turnaround and decision-makingbased on real-time analytics. They are also able to share essential integrated data amongstpreviously disparate systems and users at different organisational levels.

Construction companies are seeing reduced errors because paper documents don't need tobe recopied or manually entered into new systems. A single point of storage for the mostcritical documents assures that they will be 100 percent identical and easily accessible fromremote locations. This lowers printing costs and speeds up the time to response, ensuringmore accurate and timely compliance with regulations and contract terms.

Here at APE Mobile, we have seen customers dramatically reduce the time their site staffspend on data capture and paperwork, with one customer seeing their site supervisors gofrom 44% of their time on paperwork, to 16% with the data immediately available to allthose on the project.

Benefits of Mobile on SiteThe productivity gains from having a well-connected workforce have beenevident for many years.

A construction site is not a friendly place for fragile devices. Managers in constructionwho want to expand their mobile reach normally seek out options for speciallyruggedised devices. The most common way to do that is to reinforce a standard devicewith a heavy-duty case. The gold standard for a heavy-duty mobile device is one thatmeets the Military Standard 810G certification. This takes into account potentialbreakdowns due to temperature variation, shocks, excessive dust and water damage.No add-on case alone will bring a regular device up to those standards. Mostcompanies do not select rugged cases, but options include Panasonic ToughPads orxTablet.

With the price of devices reducing, particularly running Android or Windows, manycompanies are choosing to provide standard devices with cases and then replace oncedamaged.

What Are 'Ruggedised'Devices?A construction site is not a friendly place for fragile devices. What youneed to know about ruggedised devices.

Ever worked in a company that spent months gathering requirements then delivereda piece of software that didn’t really deliver on it’s promise? But it cost a fortune soyou’re stuck with it! This is occurring less and less but is still too common. Thebusiness problem remains unsolved during the whole process and the solution doesnot completely fix it. The misconception is that analyzing all requirements delivers thebest result but you can’t understand how people will use software….until they use it.

For larger companies, there is a balance between letting business teams chose thetools that solve their problems, and controlling apps centrally to prevent anunmanageable plethora of apps propagating. The ideal middle ground allows for lowcost experimentation out in the business and IT involvement when usage spreads andmanagement is required.

Implementation Booby TrapsWhat to avoid in implementing mobile apps.

1. Take incremental steps…quickly.The cloud enables you to select best of breed software and deploy & test in a heartbeat. Gone are thedays of building one big custom system - by the time it is delivered, business requirements havechanged and your competitors are ahead.

2. Integrate your dataUse APIs to integrate your new mobile apps and data with your existing office software, like ERP,accounting and customer management tools i.e does the app play nicely with others?

3. Pilot then roll outPick a project to pilot the software, choose the team members and define what success looks like.Then roll out if the benefits are realized. Most larger companies will let business units trial softwarebefore involving IT = show potential business benefits first.

4. Control your devicesEnterprise Mobility Management (EMM) platforms manage both security on the devices themselvesand the apps/data so you can lock down the device to certain apps and manage access levels tocorporate data.

5. Enable offlineAny apps that field workers rely on must be able to support offline access. There will likely be areaswith intermittent internet coverage due to remoteness of location or blackspots indoors, and youcan't afford to delay work due to unreliable connectivity.

5 Tips and Best Practices forTransitioning to MobileFor any company looking to introduce or expand their mobile usage, here are five tipsto help you get more out of your investment and still operate securely:

A mobile-first approach is the best way to prepare your construction company for thechanges occurring in the market. Start by considering how to streamline your businessprocesses using technology. What are the quick wins? Identify the biggest problemsyou want to solve now, then leverage the solutions available to you today and get outthere and test them. There are plenty of current processes that can be improved sofocus on these first, then move on to workflow changes that require more changemanagement. The new apps for construction are designed to be super easy to use(=for the less techy) and are becoming as intuitive as consumer apps. When was thelast time we read the ‘user guide’ for an app we downloaded!

Remember, in today’s cloud based world, there will be specific solutions that solvespecific problems really well and you can connect them together to have ‘one system’instead of silos of data. Previously the only option was to buy one big solution that did80% of what we needed then ‘customize’ to fill in the gaps and connect up theplumbing. And then try to bend the system to our needs as the business evolved overtime. Flexibility and speed are your new best friends.

Getting new technology in the hands of users early on means that you’ll learn quicklywhat works and what doesn’t. It’s the acid test and the feedback loop from selecting atrial technology through deploying to user feedback is now days/weeks rather thanmonths/years. Add to that the reduced cost of all those expensive IT projects we lookback on (cringe) and the case is compelling.

Steps to ImplementationMobile first.

Next StepsLet APE Mobile help you kickstart your productivity in 2017

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