Month: August 2018

Making good profit margins whilst contributing to improving the social infrastructure, by protecting the environment and respecting the people who work for you, is what Lean approach in the construction industry brings you. Lean construction is excellent in managing the construction process and achieving the project’s goals by eliminating waste. Lean construction is also capable of enhancing sustainability in construction thus the quality of life. If you are operating in the construction industry, what are you waiting to take the leap forward and make a step further.

About Lean Construction in the construction space

A growing number of construction firms are embracing the Lean methodology that emphasises on maximising value for the customer while minimising waste. The approach is simple and attractive in an industry where budgets, timeframes, and safety are all critical. Lean is about designing and operating the right processes and having the right systems, resources and measures to deliver things right first time. Essential to this is the elimination of waste – activities and processes that absorb resources but create no value. Waste can include mistakes, working out of sequence, redundant activity and movement, delayed or premature inputs, and products or services that don’t meet customer needs. The primary focus is on moving closer and closer to providing a product that customers really want, by understanding the process, identifying the waste within it, and eliminating it step by step.

Applying Lean Principles  in the construction industry

The lean principles can only be applied fully and effectively in construction by focusing on improving the whole process. This means all parties have to be committed, involved, and work to overcome obstacles that may arise from traditional contractual arrangements.

1. Eliminate waste

Defects: Defects are anything that is not done correctly the first time, resulting in rework that wastes time and materials.

Overproduction: In construction, overproduction happens when a task is completed earlier than scheduled or before the next task in the process can be started.

Waiting: The most common scenario that leads to waiting in construction is when workers are ready, but the necessary materials needed for the work to be completed have not been delivered or the prerequisite prior task has not been completed.

Not Utilising Talent: Workers on a construction project have a range of skills and experience. When the right person is not matched to the right job, their talent, skills, and knowledge go to waste.

Transport: The waste of transport happens when materials, equipment, or workers are moved to a job site before they are needed. It can also refer to the unnecessary transmission of information.

Inventory: Materials that are not immediately needed are considered excess inventory. They tie up budget,  require storage, and often degrade when not used.

Motion: Movement that is not necessary, like the distance between workers and tools or materials creates the waste of motion.

Over Processing: Over Processing happens when features or activities are added that have no value to the client. Ironically, this often occurs when taking steps to eliminate the other types of waste.

2. Precisely specify value from the perspective of the ultimate customer

The traditional approach to construction focuses on what the customer wants you to build – what’s included in the plans and specifications. Lean construction, on the other hand, recognises that what the customer values are deeper than that. It isn’t just about what to build, but why. Truly understanding value from the customer’s point of view requires a different level of trust, established very early in the planning phases of a project. Lean construction brings together all stakeholders including the owner, architect, engineers, general contractor, subcontractors, and suppliers. The project team not only delivers what the client wants, but they provide advice and help shape expectations throughout the project.

3. Clearly identify the process that delivers what the customer values (the value stream) and eliminate all non-value adding steps

The ideal state of a Lean construction project is a continuous, uninterrupted workflow that is reliable and predictable. The sequence is key in construction, you can’t start building the frame until the footings are set, for example. Clear communication between all parties is essential to achieving flow. When one part of the project gets behind or ahead of schedule, it is essential to let everyone know so that adjustments can be made to avoid the wastes of waiting, motion, and excess inventory.

4. Make the remaining value-adding steps flow without interruption by managing the interfaces between different steps

Once you have a clear understanding of value from the customer’s point of view, you can lay out all of the processes necessary to deliver that value. This is called the value stream. For each activity, the necessary labour, information, equipment, and materials are defined. Any steps or resources that don’t add value are removed.  Let the customer pull – don’t make anything until it is needed, then make it quickly.

5. Creating reliable workflows depends on work being released based on downstream demand.

Lean construction recognises that this is best done by those performing the work, often subcontractors.  Participants communicate and collaborate closely with each other to determine the schedule of tasks.

6.  Pursue perfection by continuous improvement

The belief that it is possible and necessary to continuously improve processes and eliminate waste is the heart of the Lean philosophy. Opportunities for improvement are identified and acted upon during the project and applied to future projects.

The construction industry is not immune to the tendency to stick to old ways and resist change, but the many benefits of the Lean approach are compelling more and more firms to take on the challenge. When projects come in on time, on budget, and with exactly the value the customer expected, everyone involved is better for it. At DigiConsult we encourage collaboration as the first step towards Lean construction.

Enterprise Command and Control (EC3) platform tailor-made for large premises setups by DigiConsult, a unique offering for the property sector in Mauritius and beyond. It addresses energy challenges in an automated manner and delivers intelligent controls with the predictive and preventive maintenance of electrically-driven assets. It gives real-time updates if an air conditioner or other device is malfunctioning/consuming more electricity, and is powered by advanced machine learning algorithms and helping your premises to be energy efficient and more, so reducing the electricity consumption and cost of your premises.

Opting for an EC3 platform for live data

With an executive dashboard at your disposal displaying your daily energy consumption data along with your premises occupants detailed breakdown, covering every corner using energy in real-time, offers you myriad opportunities to reach optimum energy efficiency.

If in real time you can figure out a faulty issue in your Air Conditioning, the issue can be resolved on the spot, this reduces the surplus energy that the device would have consumed if the fault was to be discovered in hours or days after. Therefore prompting such alerts by the EC3 dashboard in real time has a significant impact on your electricity bill. This also ascribes your premises to green initiatives etiquettes along with sustainable benefits.

The dashboard offers a multitude analytics data and key metrics ranging from monthly consumption, seasonality, average daily and the list goes long depending on your premises size and areas of operations.

Real-Time energy monitoring; the roadmap towards energy efficiency

More sophisticated real-time and minute-level monitoring are key to provide a comprehensive view of the electricity spent within an infrastructure, as they allow fine-grained understanding of how your devices are currently performing and how it is expected to behave in the near future based on historical data.

• Monitoring anomalies
• Electrical meters provide measurements of consumption for most electrical components of premises; with the right data sets, intelligent software can go one step further and uncover what physical measurements will not tell you. Load demand periodicity, deviation from operational baseline and expected behaviour, signs of equipment failure, accurate Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) variations and other key performance metrics are examples of insights that will be invaluable when deciding to balance processes and energy.
• Making smart energy decisions based on conditions in the past is difficult and expensive, given that energy has been wasted for the entirety of the reactive period. Real-time monitoring allows Facilities managers to better manage and analyse the vast amount of data being gathered from their buildings and point out where inefficiencies are occurring – shortening the reactive period significantly and saving significant amounts of energy.
• Identifying recurring patterns and correlations – Another category of data analysis enabled by high-sampling metering is that of non-intrusive load monitoring (NILM). NILM systems are designed to monitor the current and voltage waveforms of an electrical measurement to estimate, in software, nature and energy consumption of electrical components switching on and off on that specific circuit. Correlating real-time variations of the servers’ overall load demand with measurements of the servers’ individual computing power levels provides essential information for software load monitoring.
• Single source of truth: Energy management is relevant to many departments as the latter have their own priorities. With many parties involved, you risk miscommunication, redundant work, and conflicting information. With EC3, there is a single dashboard.

• Engage Occupants and Facilities Technicians: Facilities technicians can be taught how to use a web-based dashboard that provides energy data in intervals, immediately identifies deviations from normal usage patterns, and tracks low-cost energy saving measures through its “communicator” tool. Access to interval data will help the technicians having a better understanding of how energy is used, and problematic areas are revealed and can be resolved more quickly. The immediate feedback loop will allow Facilities technicians to identify trends, respond quickly to equipment malfunction alerts, make changes, and see impacts in real-time, resulting in optimal energy savings.
• Using data available in real time enables Facilities managers to adjust HVAC, lighting, electrical distribution systems and other systems based on information gleaned from the system. Users can, at a glance, see system-level inefficiencies and pivot operations quickly to optimise energy use. This can help ensure that real-time adjustments of the systems are having the desired effect and help further influence behavioural changes over time. The data is presented in a way that’s easy-to-use and digest through interactive graphs, visualisation charts, modules and comparisons, helping Facilities managers avoid data overload.

As applications and infrastructure change dynamically, an EC3 will automatically deliver visibility into what is happening in the IT environment of your premises. Are you an existing premise or planning a new construction, DigiConsult brings you a tailor-made solution adaptable to your premises irrelevant of the sector you operate. With latest technologies application; Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Data Analytics, we promise you an efficient sustainable enterprise decision making. Contact us on +230 2331636

Drones are an innovative solution to deliver sophisticated analytics, provide a visual progress report, and allow worksite managers to track, map, survey, and manage projects easily. Plenty of construction professionals have already chosen Drone to take their projects (and efficiencies!) to the next level. It is your turn to take the leap and reap the valuable benefits with aerial image capabilities as a useful tool for successful construction companies.

Drones in construction

Industries ranging from agriculture to entertainment and media are taking full advantage of the benefits drones offer. One of the most rapidly growing sectors is infrastructure development which includes construction. With technology developing faster than ever, building sites of the future are likely to look very different to today. Drones have successfully been used to provide an objective view of a site’s development, which is particularly useful when disputes arise regarding a timescale not being met. Construction contractors see valuable benefits from using of drones into their business.For builders, an aerial view made possible with a drone allows them to better develop work plans, track progress and monitor and check for problems along the way. Drones are, after all, cheaper than flying manned aircraft.

The Valuable benefits of Drones in construction:

1. Marketing and Sales – Marketing and sales for construction companies require the use of photos and images. Getting aerial images required most contractors to hire an aerial photo company to take shots of a finished project. Drones allow contractors to take pictures of projects that are both finished and in progress.  These images are then incorporated into the company website or other marketing materials. Contractors can also take pictures of projects they are submitting proposals to show a different perspective for their client.
2. Project Management – Professional sports have used game films for years to analyze how teams move on the field. Contractors can use drones for similar purposes. Roofing contractors can see how their projects are set up and how their teams run during projects. General contractors can analyze how their resources are moving on the entire construction site. Opportunities for changes are realized by analyzing different perspectives.
3. Project Assessment – Successful projects start by analyzing construction sites before the work begins. Looking at projects from the actual surface of the project is one perspective. Reviewing the project from an aerial perspective may open up new insights. The new knowledge can generate new ideas of how to manage a project right from the outset.
4. Estimating – All good projects begin with a quality estimate. Contractors look for different solutions on projects that can help them be competitive. Estimators overlook these advantages when they have limited perspectives. The use of drones can give estimators a different look at a project. They increase their chances of bidding more accurately and more competitively.
5. Due Diligence and Evaluations – There are a lot of times when contractors cannot check for problems in a safe manner. This is particularly true with exterior contractors. Roofing contractors, masonry contractors, and others may need to access difficult areas to determine the source of a problem. This may require extensive setup to access these areas. Drones may allow these contractors to access these areas effectively to get the answers they need.
6. Aerial Infrared Scanning – Technology continues to march forward at a rapid rate. New infrared technology has been developed that will allow operators to complete infrared scans of buildings and structures using a UAV drone. The drone is equipped with an infrared camera capable of taking infrared images of the target.

Smart Cities and real estate premises have a huge bank of data, which are not being intelligently deployed. At DigiConsult, with its EC3 platform proposition, a unique and consolidated approach of integrating existing and future technologies of your premises ingesting data from nearly any source in real-time is an opportunity to use data intelligently. An EC3 dashboard connecting all data available on your premises on a single screen in real-time creates possibilities to deploy the data into meaningful metrics to render premises more efficient and in making informed decisions in a timely manner.

Ingesting Data from Nearly Any Source in the Real-Time by EC3

Within these mountains of log data lie valuable information that can dramatically improve your business performance. The EC3 platform powered by Data Analytics provides timely and actionable insights, derived from log data, which not only helps solve operational, security and compliance challenges but also provides critical business information.

In a shopping mall, an EC3 platform can provide the owner and other operational teams with live information / figures about the energy usage, waste generated, asset management, tenants’ details, marketing, green initiatives, security and allied systems and other associated matters with more adds-on as per the client’s specific requirements. An intelligent management information tool of your premises will elevate the level of efficiency with sustainable business etiquettes and better decision-making with instant response capabilities.

In an era of continual technological innovation, property owners should not be missing the opportunity to adopt Property Technology “PropTech”. Real Estate projects and anything related to premises should consider operations-related intelligence to achieve long-term sustainability throughout the building/asset lifecycle To make it happen, an EC3 dashboard is the first step in achieving operational efficiency and the data available on the dashboard have myriad usage possibilities. What sets it apart is the use of intelligent technologies and its ability to achieve integration and management of the clients’ assets and the services provided – utilities, security systems, fire-protection systems, public health systems, and field devices from other systems.

In addition to collecting and analyzing the data gathered in real time, EC3 also ensures that emerging technologies such as Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, IOT, and others will allow Smart Cities, real estates, and other premises to speed up the response time to its users and more so, enhance the quality of decisions taken through the correlation of data from various systems.

Benefits and Advantages of EC3

Transformation of what previously was just a massive collection of raw data into manageable operational insights, can have a direct impact on business performance with an EC3 platform.

• Provide an early warning about problems in premises and infrastructure
• Illuminate root causes of network or system failure
• Enable early discovery of security breaches and compliance issues
• Provide insights into application metrics and behaviours, and many more

Better uptime through dramatically faster issue resolution: Real-time Interactive Analytics enables enterprises to accelerate troubleshooting and root cause analysis. For example, the ability to find that a new exception has occurred 100 times in the last 2 minutes among hundreds of thousands of other uninteresting operational log lines lets you identify and solve the issue as soon as it starts occurring.

Higher productivity through better infrastructure operation: Uncover deeply hidden problems causing infrastructure failures. As an example, identifying a specific router configuration change that is causing applications to experience failures, in turn causing hundreds of end users to sound an alarm enables you to focus on the actual problem rather than chasing down countless dead-ends.

Better products through deeper application analytics: Enable enterprises to gain a richer perspective of application behaviour. The ability to gain instant insights into how a new feature is performing, what the customer adoption of that feature is, and if there are any unforeseen issues with that feature enables you to better understand how your products resonate with your customers. Development, marketing, and sales teams within the enterprises can leverage this insight and build better products, market them more effectively, and have more efficient sales.

Better brand through better security and compliance posture: Real-time Security enables security teams to more quickly and precisely uncover security issues before they cause damage.  The ability to detect a deviation in a behaviour of a user or a system can shine a light on a compromised user account or a server owned by malware that is about to spread. Detecting and acting on security and compliance issues could mean a difference between public image/reputational risk degradation and a stable, trusted brand.

Competitive business through easier adoption of new computing paradigms: Data can be collected and analysed from physical or virtual infrastructure within on-premise data centers. The ability to have the same level of visibility, no matter where the infrastructure lies, enables companies to leverage new computing paradigms, lower their costs, and gain business agility.

Better management of resources: The dashboard provides you with data about energy usage and patterns; you can have insight about the premises energy consumption on a daily basis or a detailed analysis about the hourly energy consumption trends of the different premises’ occupants. If a device is malfunctioning, the analysis can prompt out defects/failures. The same applies to waste management and water management and other utility services.

Better maintenance of equipment: All your plant and equipment and other assets’ maintenance can be easily tracked for faults and future servicing requirements. Failures of equipment can be minimized, rendering your premises up to quality standards and matching customers’ and markets’ requirements and thus uplifting your brand level.

The data processing and correlation feature that an EC3 platform offers can be used as per your requirements to achieve operational efficiency together with sustainable business. As applications and infrastructure change dynamically, an EC3 platform will automatically deliver visibility into what is happening in the IT environment of your premises.

Are you an existing premise or planning a new construction, DigiConsult brings you a tailor-made solution adaptable to your premises irrelevant of the sector you operate. With latest technologies application; Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Data Analytics, we promise you an efficient sustainable enterprise decision-making. Contact us on +230 2331636.

A few years ago, artificial intelligence (AI) was just a story you find in sci-fi novels. Today, it is a reality we live with every day, from our news feed to our online shopping software, AI is no longer a fanciful concept of the future. It is now something we experience and benefits from today. Zooming in to the construction industry, the data generated in construction sites is growing. AI is where machines exhibit their own intelligence through using algorithms to solve problems using inputted data. Data generated from images captured from mobile devices, drone videos, security sensors, building information modelling (BIM), and others have become a pool of information.

Utilisation of AI and robotics  in construction

• Planning with equipment: Artificial intelligence is used in the creation of construction plans. Autonomous equipment is considered as AI as it is aware of its surroundings and is capable of navigation without human input. In the planning stages, AI machinery can survey a proposed construction site and gather enough information to create 3D maps, blueprints and construction plans.
• Administrative roles: Once construction has begun, AI is being used to manage the project and control tasks. For example, workers can input sick days, vacancies and sudden departures into a data system and it will adapt the project accordingly. The AI will understand that the task must be moved to another employee and will do so on its own accord.
• Construction methodology: AI database systems are now helping to inform engineers on how specific projects should be constructed. For example, if engineers were working on a proposed new bridge, AI systems would be able to advise and present a case for how the bridge should be constructed. This is based on past projects over the last 50 years, as well as verifying pre-existing blueprints for the design and implementation stages of the project. By having this information to hand, engineers can make crucial decisions based on evidence that they may not have previously had at their disposal.
• Post-construction: Once buildings have been constructed, whether they are used for commercial purposes or it is a development of new houses, AI systems can be used inside the structure.

The added value Change AI brings to Construction

With the availability of data, AI-based applications have been finding more utility in construction.

Generative Design- Generative design is a form-finding process that can mimic nature’s evolutionary approach to design. Computer scientists have found ways to aid the building design process. It usually starts with clearly specifying the design goals and then explore innumerable possible permutations of a solution to find the best option. It becomes clearer with an example.

Risk Mitigation – Risk evaluation and mitigation happens every day on a construction site. There are hundreds of subcontractors working on different trades simultaneously; there are thousands of issues which get created and managed and everything is changing constantly.

Safety– Construction safety is the number one priority across all job sites. The BIM 360 IQ focused on understanding the behaviour and context around safety issues and then bringing it to the attention of safety managers. The IQ application automatically scans all safety issues on a job site and attaches a tag to them indicating whether it could lead to a potential fatality. Emerging Trends of Artificial Intelligence in Construction

Safety sensors-  The internet of things has automated our home to make our home more energy efficient. Similarly, the internet of things is automating job sites to make them safer. Wearable sensors with abilities of identifying the location of your workers and provide any alerts if a worker slips or falls.

Drones- Deploying drones and drone mapping software such as DroneDeploy drastically cuts down the time to gather accurate surveys maps and aerial images of a job site. This can be used to track progress without having to be on the job site. Additionally, the aerial images provide project managers with an additional perspective to identify issues and conflicts they may not view from the ground.

Autonomous vehicles– Major tech companies and car manufacturers are developing self-driving vehicles. While Uber and Google conduct pilot projects of self-driving cars, Caterpillar has released a line of autonomous mining equipment used for dozing, drilling and hauling.

Robots– Following autonomous vehicles, robots have started to infiltrate our home (hello Roomba) and the construction site.