Electronic dreams

An engineering consultant estimated that he saved £15 000 on his firm’s costs on an £8m building for BAA. The savings were not made by cutting corners or paring down staff, but by eliminating the use of paper and using electronic datafiles to store and transmit drawings and other documents.
If an engineer can save that much money so easily, why does 90% of the construction industry keep information on paper – as a report published a couple of weeks ago showed? And it is not just contractors, the industry’s traditional Luddites. The survey included architects, QSs, and M&E and structural engineers.
The Barbour Index report, called The Sourcing and Exchange of Information across the Building Project Team, highlights several reasons for the slow evolution of IT as a useful tool for managing building projects. In particular, the report blames the low level of interoperability across the industry.
Matthew Bacon, BAA’s head of process and technology, echoes the findings of the report. He pictures IT usage in the construction industry as “a bit like a comet, with a good number at the front end exploiting technology, but a huge tail stretching right back to mediocrity”.
His views are backed by Owen Luder, an independent consultant, non-executive director of Jarvis and former RIBA president. “On a big project, the first thing you should do is set up a network. Then, make sure everyone, including the subcontractors, is plugged in. If a query arises, it can be dealt with very quickly,” says Luder.
Another reason for such widespread mediocrity is lack of training. Bacon agrees that the lack of compatible systems is an off-putting issue, but he suggests that training and discipline in electronic data storage can smooth out the process. “The disciplines of data management are not understood,” he says.
That extends to the way architects and civil engineers are trained. Research and innovation director at WS Atkins, Tim Broyd, says the two professions learn different symbols and terminology, which only perpetuates incompatibility. “I remember my first civil engineering lecturer,” he recounts. “He said ‘you’re not going to end up like those architects who spend twice as long to learn half as much’.” Beyond the cultural barrier is the contractual equivalent of the right to silence: the Barbour report points out that parties working on a project, from the architects to the specialist trade contractors, are wary of sharing information that may later be used against them in a court of law.
There are the beginnings of change in this area driven by the Movement for Innovation – a series of projects to demonstrate how the Egan recommendations can be achieved. To be included in the scheme, each project sponsor must agree to their results being made publicly available.
New ways of working are difficult to instil in such a diverse and fragmented industry. The reason the comet in Bacon’s analogy has such a long tail is because, as Graham Watts, chief executive of the Construction Industry Council, says: “There are thousands of small firms on the building side often run by individuals that have not gone through university. They are practical people who don’t understand IT because they are too busy getting on with doing the job.” Such employees do not get the time or the opportunity to find out what IT can do for them.
For a smaller contractor, buying a computer can be an intimidating ordeal. The Federation of Master Builders is hoping to enlighten small builders who are unfamiliar with the technology, but realise that there are systems on the market that would make their lives easier.
Ian Davis, director-general at the FMB, said the federation is investigating the possibility of offering training sessions for small contractors that do not know how to articulate their computer needs in such a specialised world.
But the construction industry is not hopelessly behind. The report found that more than half the professionals across the country had increased their use of computer systems in the past year, and 60% have also increased their use of the Internet over the same period.
Eighty per cent of architects and engineers have access to information in electronic format, stated the report, and about 40% of project teams surveyed have access to electronic information from their desks.
Industry bodies are also aware of the need for improvement. Don Ward, chief executive of the Construction Industry Board, admits that the use of IT is “patchy”. But he points out that the Construction Best Practice Programme has set up an initiative to investigate areas in which IT can improve construction processes. The programme will then draw up a handbook to guide firms on how to implement the findings.
Alan Crane, chairman of the Construction Confederation, admits that there is more that the confederation could do to encourage IT use. But he also says that the industry has come a long way in the past four years, particularly in using e-mail.
Clients such as BAA are also driving change by encouraging the use of IT. The firm is setting up a web site containing project information, accessible to all BAA’s framework contractors.
WS Atkins’ Broyd likens the move from paper to electronic files to the transition from imperial to metric units. Both forms were used in parallel until the general public was comfortable with metric. Broyd is convinced the paperless office will exist but says it will take some time for the industry to loosen its grip on hard copies and have the confidence to rely solely on electronic systems.
A wholehearted embrace of IT will come once the cost savings are widely recognised. If the consulting engineer on the BAA project saved £15 000 in paper costs, the benefits should eventually be self-evident to all project parties – particularly given the slenderness of most firms’ profit margin.
As Broyd says: “Change comes as a result of crisis. The motor industry and other manufacturing sectors have changed because they have been threatened.
If we don’t do things in a different way, we will lose profit or market share – or our existence.”