In this video, Sakari Pesonen focuses on management practices that produce data, that is, where the data comes from to the situational dashboards that play such an important role in ensuring high quality and reliable throughput in construction projects. Management that produces data is a complex entity and it’s importance isn’t always understood. Succeeding requires both digital tools, which is relatively easy, and management practices that merge into them seamlessly, which, in turn, is a lot harder. With the right know-how, these two for a perfect combo at the construction site.

Creating situational awareness fails if the data is bad. And the data is bad if the site management is forced to use given tools and practices at the site, says Pesonen. The data must come from the daily site activities, like it was complimentary. The site supervision isn’t interested in producing data for others, they just want to do their own job right.

So you need two things. First, the digital tool that is used at the worksite, the source of your data, must be super easy to use. The same way as we get our carpenters the best tools, we should also give the site managers the best digital tools, like the schedule management tool Sitedrive. This is because if the site management doesn’t feel the tool helps them do their job, Pesosen claims it’ll inevitably fail. The second thing is that even a good tool alone isn’t enough. The data producer, the site, needs to be given sound practices for how to make use of the tool. It’s only by combining these two – the tool and the practices – into a balanced entity, that you get the site to produce quality data and from there, situational awareness.

You can stop lying to them site managers.

Often in development projects in construction companies, when you manage to create something new, you take it to the construction site and make sure to tell there that it won’t cause anyone any extra work. Unfortunately, the site managers tend to have heard those words at least 10 times before. So how about forgetting the lying, banging your head against the wall, or trying to pull yet another mission impossible? You can do that when you have technology and software development know-how combined with true construction know-how. On this one, you definitely want to trust Pesonen.