The adoption of technology is a team effort: Skanska Exec

The adoption of new technologies requires everyone to buy, said Danielle O’Connell, principal director of emerging technology for Skanska USA, the American branch of the Swedish manufacturer.

The entrepreneur uses what O’Connell calls his plan in eight stages, a technological addition roadmap that has critical movements to help him assess and integrate products. With him, the company takes measured actions to set up new solutions, find use cases and keep everyone on the same wavelength.

Here, O’Connell speaks with the construction of its approach, how the company has smoothed wrinkles in the process and advice for small manufacturers who seek to evolve by themselves.

Publisher’s note: This interview was published by Brivity and Clarity.

DIVE construction: What is the plan in eight steps and how does Skanska USA use it?

Danielle O’Connell: Our plan in eight stages is our technological activation process.

The process begins with the identification of the problem we are trying to solve. In many forms, which comes from a project team which says that they really have trouble with this thing, maybe they talked about with a seller or visited a conference and were exposed to something which, according to them, could solve a problem on their project.

In other cases, my team, the emerging technological team or other members of our organization see things they think may have an impact.

The first step is to identify the problem, then determine what to do. From there, we go deep with each of the sellers with whom we work to understand the composition of their business – what their solution does, what problems it solves, data protection and cybersecurity issues.

Once we have gone through this kind of thing, the next step is to drive a solution on a project. Throughout the driver, we remain connected to understand how it goes.

As a rule, you see pilots which are at least a year or the duration of the project to understand how the tools really work. We will register frequently with them, will obtain comments, then we will make decisions and recommendations to the company around the scaling of the solution.

Could you give an example of technology that you have evaluated via this frame?

Thus, Cmbuilder, a construction logistics platform, was one of the first suppliers that we have evaluated thanks to this process. The team to our Redevelopment of the Laguardia B airport terminal The project came to us and said that it had found this new tool for 3D logistics.

We usually use BlueBeam for 2D logistics today. And if I think of the number of our superintendents, our project managers, our operations staff can now use BlueBeam to make these 2D logistics, Cmbuilder is a web platform that now allows them to do 3D logistics.

The team brought Cmbuilder throughout this process. And after having passed the whole evaluation and we launched the pilot, we examined several different projects, obtained the comments of the team and decided that it would be logical to set up.

We obtained the support of our COO, which led us to deploy a company agreement with Cmbuilder and put this tool in the hands of these people who really needed it to communicate logistics and phasing, and how we would get around the site throughout the project.

What obstacles have you encountered you must have repelled?

There are always changes in the process. In the spirit of continuous improvement, we are always looking for ways to improve it. We have changed the system and the questionnaires over time to make sure that we do not devote too much burden to the sellers during these.

It is a long process, and we realize that they fill these questionnaires and refer them, and there is a team on our side that examines them.

I would say that one of the things we have done to help improve and communicate on the reason why this process is important is to talk about it, as we are talking about causing risky subcontractors on our chances.

If a small and medium-sized manufacturer wanted to implement something in their technological battery, what advice would you give them?

I would tell them to go slowly and work in their different departments.

I think that one of the things we have not done well in the past is this collaboration between the legal team that examines the language of the contract and what a business partner means, for example, with all the different aspects of the computer team, such as the understanding of the compliance that we must follow for the general requirements of data protection of the European Union, or the California Rights Act.

I encourage them to see how these tools are also part of their global technological battery. Spend time to understand and communicate on the process.