Using Construction Analytics to Minimise Risks and Delays to Your Projects

Forward looking contractors that digitise their construction management process see immediate benefits in the reduction of time spent on manual administrative work and shortening of decision making cycles. However, there is still persistent pressure to continuously optimise their day-to-day operations and increase productivity. To achieve and exceed their project key performance indicators (KPIs), more and more contractors are looking at leveraging the digital data they have on hand. What really sets apart a construction management platform is its ability to track and present data in an insightful and intuitive way that allows key stakeholders to stay abreast of projects and company’s performances. It should also allow contractors the flexibility to configure and track specific project metrics that are established by their clients and company’s ISO requirements.

Contractors see three key benefits of adopting a data driven strategy towards their construction management processes.

1. Construction analytics and real time data collection that helps to:
   • Reduce time spent on data collection and compilation
   • Improve data accuracy and minimising human errors
   • Shortened decision making cycle
2. Ability to set, measure, and track projects’ and contractors’ performances based on a quantifiable set of KPIs
3. Mitigate risks and minimise delays by establishing a set of lagging and leading indicators for trend analysis

Collect and Analyse Construction Data in Real-Time

Without a construction management platform to streamline and automate the collection of project data, contractors waste a lot of time on manual compilation and data clean up. They spend more time scrutinising pockets of information in isolation and manually correlating insights, which is a tedious and unreliable means of monitoring a project.

At Hubble, we are committed to bringing you comprehensive access to all your mission critical data in real time via construction analytics. Hubble’s Safety and Quality dashboard modules help contractors to manage their safety and quality assurance processes more efficiently than ever. Hubble allows you the flexibility to customise how you want to collect and organise your data – based on every aspect of the project. From permit to work applications to defect reports, these data can be displayed on a dashboard for you in real time, which helps you to track and make decisions in real time based on actionable metrics.

Set, Measure and Track Projects’ and Contractors’ Performances Based on a Quantifiable Set of KPIs

You cannot improve what you cannot measure and you cannot score what you cannot track. It is important to set, measure, and track your project and contractors’ performance using a data driven scorecard approach. In terms of project and contractors’ performance, there are four key metrics to measure:

1. Time
2. Safety
3. Quality
4. Cost

It is critical to complete your project on time. Delays in projects can often be due to bottlenecks and delays in the rectification and approval process. For e.g. A Permit to Work (PTW) is required for the commencement of high risk activities. However, given the complex multi-level approval process, it is not uncommon for workers to sit around the worksite doing nothing while waiting for approval to be done. Delays in defects rectification approval can also lead to delays in projects, which results in KPIs not being met.

Hubble’s real-time dashboard allows you to configure and set metrics that are aligned with your project’s KPIs. This is tracked in real time and provides you a quantifiable method to score the performance of your project and contractors. For e.g. Hubble digital dashboard allows you to track your KPIs for Permit to Work (PTWs) and Toolbox Meeting (TBMs), and provides an overview of all PTWs and TBMs conducted across the project by date as well as a breakdown of all types of permits and meetings conducted. Viewing insights into toolbox meeting and permit statuses on the dashboard allows project managers to monitor progress in safety processes and check in on the relevant contractors where necessary, removing roadblocks in the construction process before they impact the project at large.

An overview of the dashboard for toolbox meetings (top) and permit to work (bottom) modules

The safety inspection dashboard can also dive deeper by reporting both inspections conducted and any safety issues that remain unrectified, alerting managers of the number of problems that are potentially high risk to the project and need immediate attention.

An overview of the safety inspection (advanced) dashboard

The Quality Management dashboard offers insights to the quality inspection conducted and organises defects by status, type and reasons for reporting. This allows managers to identify the most commonly occurring work defects and resolve them in an earlier stage of work. With the degree of precision that the dashboard’s reporting of problems allows, managers no longer have to worry about combing through the workflow endlessly in hopes of pinpointing the source of issues or delays.

An overview of the quality management dashboard 

Some of the most popular metrics that are being tracked by contractors on Hubble include:

1. Time taken to rectify a safety issue
2. Number of workers who have not attended TBM
3. Number of PTWs with incompatible works
4. Number of PTWs that are revoked
5. Time taken to rectify a defect
6. Contractors with the most defects
7. Most common defects by reasons
8. And many more!

By providing a clear overview of a company’s operations, Hubble’s dashboard maintains the highest level of accountability across projects and allows problems on site to be identified and mitigated in the most timely fashion.

Mitigate Risks and Minimise Delays by Establishing a Set of Lagging and Leading Indicators for Trend Analysis

Hubble’s belief in access to insight and trend extends to being able to identify leading and lagging indicators, allowing early identification by the companies to get to the root cause of the issue via construction analytics. This allows contractors to be proactive instead of being reactive – prevention is better than correction.. However, it is extremely difficult if not impossible to develop trend analysis without having a digital dashboard to help you automate the analysis of the key trends.

Two of the most important trends in safety management include:

1. Accident Severity Rate (ASR), which measures the number of Man-days Lost Due to Workplace Accidents and;  
2. Accident Frequency Rate (AFR), which measures the frequency of Workplace Accidents

These statistical indicators serve as a useful gauge of your company’s Workplace Safety and Health (WSH) performance and should be included in your WSH reporting. For some, it is preferred to present the data as frequency rates as this helps with comparing against previous performance, your long-term safety targets and national averages.

Other important safety trend lines include the number of near misses over a defined time period, which could often be a leading indicator for potential accidents on site. This could be caused by an ill-disciplined safety culture on-site that must be addressed immediately.

Leverage the Power of Construction Analytics to Improve Productivity in Construction

Combined with the ability to share insights with all relevant stakeholders, Hubble’s dashboard enables transparency across the entire construction value chain by providing analytics and performance summaries to all. From reporting on project-wide statistics to daily real-time updates on assigned work and project milestones, the dashboard offers you the precise insights you need to best manage your project and company.

Find out how Hubble can help you gain insight and improve your company’s performance here.