Data-driven dashboards, and related remarks and alarms, makes potential problems visible as early as from their early signs, so that they get noticed. This enables even predicting if a project will face problems and it can be addressed before the situation escalates. Without the situational awareness, the project would progress without reaction and it may be as late as in the final financial statement, when the team notices that actually, the project didn’t bring any revenue. For these reasons, data-driven knowledge that is well put together, always up-to-date and easily available for everyone who needs it, when they need it, is extremely valuable for any company in the construction industry.

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Leading with data – at the center of all activities

Situational awareness is becoming the center of all activities and decision-making for all parties in construction projects, and steps are being taken forward around us as we speak.

Data is collected on construction projects from a constantly growing number of sources related to, for example, quality, schedule, and budget. This data is used to form real-time, digital dashboards for different company needs. As various applications and technologies develop rapidly, it doesn’t make sense for us to focus only on a single application. Instead, we want to stay open to what sources we collect our data from.

If the data that comes in is of poor quality, the data dashboards will inevitably be poor, too – “garbage in, garbage out”. Therefore, also good processes and ways of working are needed to go with the data tools, so that the created data is of high quality and reflects the truth of the situation. These combined, the data-driven situational awareness becomes of significant importance.

Situational awaresess actually quite a complex entity. Let’s take the schedule management process, for instance. How does the company want to manage its schedule planning? How about production management? It takes careful considering of the tools used for planning and monitoring, of how the data created in the tools is processed and visualized, and how this data is shared, in one hand, with the company management team and, in the other, the construction site. This entity must be thought through as a whole.

Data-driven situational awareness and reporting sometimes get mixed up. Reporting, for one, means manually creating a description of the situation and sending it for those who need it. Data-driven dashboards, then, are automatically filled in using the data brought together from various systems so that no human has touched it in between. Whoever looks at the dashboards can be sure that the data is valid, and that the situation on the sites truly is what the dashboard says.

Situational awareness

The more data sources we have to form the data dashboards, the deeper our understanding becomes on what is happening on the site. Already today, it is possible to predict issues on a construction site that would normally surface to our understanding some months later. They’re impossible to see by visiting the site, but the data speaks its own, ruthless truth in situations where it shows same trends as in earlier construction projects that ended up struggles. Seeing this early enables providing help for the site and fixing the issues before they escalate.

Data-driven dashboards are truly the next big thing – the way to lead sites – for all construction companies. Let’s roll up the sleeves and see how we can help each other out in making the best out of it.