Construction tech enterprise rollouts—advice from the experts

At OpenSpace, we’ve helped many customers successfully implement and scale our reality capture technology, and we’re always eager to hear how other industry experts are approaching their tech rollouts.

So we brought two of those experts to the table—James Eaton (Head of Digital Delivery at McLaren Construction Group) and Angelos Nicolaou (CEO at SEKTOR)—to hear their best practices for minimizing challenges organizations face when introducing new tech (reality capture and beyond), driving adoption, managing change, and scaling enterprise-wide. They both are in the business of avoiding wasting money (and we mean big money) on technology that never gets adopted.

This blog post summarizes the conversation Tamas Borodi from OpenSpace had with James and Angelos. We highly recommend watching the complete webinar for every nugget of advice, brought to life with real-world examples.

What to consider before jumping into a company-wide implementation

Tamas asked our panelists what factors they look at to determine if a technology solution is a candidate for implementation across an organization. James explained that step one is to look at the underlying process of what you want to improve:

• Does your company already have a defined process for the problem you’re trying to improve with technology?
• Bring in the key stakeholders right away to either define or refine the process, and to outline the future, improved process. If you implement a solution without involving stakeholders, they’ll feel like the tech was “done to them,” rather than being done with them—stakeholder involvement guarantees better results.
• Get your stakeholder requirements done before you start evaluating tech options.

Angelos agreed it’s important to clearly understand the job you want a new solution to do for you. He often sees companies buy a technology because it’s the trend, rather than truly understanding the actual job they want the platform to do. You can only be ready to roll something out enterprise-wide when you’ve clearly defined what the software solves for you.

We very often find that companies buy technologies because it’s the trend, but they don’t really think about “what is the job that I’m hiring this product to do for me”?

Ensuring a new solution supports your objectives

Before you can drive adoption of a technology, it needs to support your overall business strategy and objectives. In short, the tech should lead to profit. Angelos shared that a technology should always result in profit, whether by increasing revenue or improving efficiency. Data shows that technologies can increase productivity and output by 25-30%. If the solution you’re considering isn’t adding up to that kind of savings, you need to find out why.

When building a business case for a new construction technology solution, including getting buy-in from the board, ask how the tech will:

• Reduce your risk.
• Increase overall productivity.
• Protect your profit margin.
• Help with compliance and legislation your organization is facing (e.g., health and safety, the Building Safety Act in the UK).

Choosing the right vendor

You’ve done your due diligence in defining the problem you want to solve and your business objectives. You involved all the stakeholders. You know what type of technology solution fits the bill. So now you’re ready to choose a vendor—a big decision that must lead to adoption. James and Angelos have strong feelings about making the right choice. To start, a smart approach is to look at best-in-class providers for the problem you’re trying to solve.

• Launch a formal request for proposal (RFP) process with clearly defined requirements. You can do this in two phases: long lists, then short lists.
• Integration—take a look at your entire tech stack. A new technology must fit into your existing tech stack, so engage your IT department to ensure a new tool integrates well with your other tools. Be sure your IT requirements are very clear.
• Do you trust the people on the other side of the table? More than a vendor, you should look for a trusted partner. Are they transparent and a cultural fit? If you hit bumps, your requirements change, or their roadmap changes, you need to have confidence the company will be with you all the way.
• Run a pilot. Running a pilot puts the new tech to the test. Rather than confine a pilot to your tech/innovation team or the C-suite, make sure your end users are involved from the start. They’re the ones who can pressure test if the tool is easy to use, and therefore easy to scale. Any solution that’s too complex for the end user will sit on the shelf, and fail. James shared that when you have delighted end users, you don’t have to worry about much else!

You should be buying best-in-breed for what you’re trying to solve, and then make sure you get the integration right with your tech stack.

Top challenges of technology implementation

Angelos and James stress that securing management buy-in from the start is paramount, and maintaining their engagement is critical. Senior leadership should continually communicate with their teams, reiterating the importance of using the new technology. Even when you’ve chosen a solution that’s easy to use, change can be challenging, especially for experienced field team members who have successfully delivered projects in the past.

But change is key to remaining competitive, so ensuring senior management is on board and that they’re communicating value is important for implementation—and adoption. Your total cost of ownership includes adoption, which you should account for from the start.

Some companies don’t think about the adoption piece when they buy a new technology. You have to think about the total cost of ownership, which includes adoption. If you don’t account for that from the beginning, you are destined to fail. And that’s why digital transformation [across all industries] has a 70% failure rate.

For any enterprise rollout:

• Define a set of key performance indicators (KPIs).
• Report up to the board level on adoption and feedback.
• Look at league tables to compare adoption and drive further engagement.

Keeping the momentum and scaling your technology

To keep the momentum going, be sure you have people who will own the relationship going forward with your vendor. This team should meet with your vendor regularly, e.g., monthly, to review your KPIs, reporting, and discuss any issues. (A vendor who is a true partner will be on board with ongoing check-ins, open to feedback, and sharing what’s on their roadmap.) Plus, this team will be a crucial resource as you scale. You can’t simply push a button to roll out a technology enterprise-wide, so have enough people resources as you grow. James shared that by following those best practices, McLaren was able to scale OpenSpace to 34 live jobs across the business within 8 months.

You have to talk within your own company. Talk upwards and with the end user. Build a relationship with your enterprise partner, where you feel you can have an open dialogue, all the time. They’re not just a provider of a service. They’re a true partner.

Tamas asked Angelos and James their top tips for ensuring a technology is scalable:

• When your technology solves an obvious problem, it makes it easier to scale. The best way to demonstrate the potential value across your organization is sharing how the technology is solving the problem where it’s rolled out already.
• Adhere to your governance framework. When you’ve set a benchmark for using a technology (e.g., capturing your jobsite weekly or running scheduled reports), be relentless in measuring the benefits and following the framework.
• Keep communicating the benefits of the technology. Remind people about the process you were using before, and why it’s better now. Hone in on the values that are important for different stakeholders:
  • Internal drop-in sessions for user feedback.
  • Slack/Teams channel for sharing experiences and knowledge.
  • Inviting someone from a project that’s using the tech to talk to the team who will be implementing the solution.
• Learn from experience. Gather your stakeholders and have each person share their challenges and what worked. Document these learnings.

Measuring success

What metrics or KPIs should organizations track to get a pulse on the success of a tech adoption? Angelos and James shared these examples and bits of wisdom:

• Is the technology increasing your profitability?
• Is the new technology making you more productive? Are you managing more projects with the same amount of resources?
• What are your adoption numbers, and are they matching up to your benchmarks? It’s ok if your benchmarks aren’t perfect—the important thing is you are doing those measurements and creating conversation. You can refine benchmarks as time goes by, based on discussion and new learnings.

James stressed that you don’t need to over-analyze. In fact, he said, “If people are talking and getting excited and animated, you’re probably ok!”

Learn more and get in touch

For the full conversation on how to roll out new technology solutions across your enterprise, you can watch the webinar on-demand anytime: From pilot to enterprise solution: How to successfully roll out new technological solutions across your projects with McLaren and SEKTOR.

If you’re interested in learning about implementing OpenSpace for the first time, or expanding in your organization, let’s chat!