For many years, the construction industry has been moving towards digital transformation. Even in the last year, the pace of change has accelerated, and we've seen teams rapidly move away from siloed and analog ways of working to more connected, data-driven processes.
Still, the complexity of multiple tools and point solutions has become overwhelming. In fact, 29% of construction business leaders state that they store data on too many different platforms, according to a recent report from Autodesk and Deloitte Access Economics.
With so many platforms to manage, firms can struggle to capture enough structured data that will provide meaningful insights for their projects.
And while the rise of digital solutions and innovations (hello, AI!) can help firms optimize project design, schedules, costs, and can help firms optimize project design, resource planning, and costs, data centrality and continuity is required to fully unlock these innovations
Digital-first solutions, coupled with a robust data strategy, can help firms navigate today's construction landscape. This will become increasingly important, particularly as challenges around procurement, the construction supply chain, and labor persist. Companies need the right tools and processes to maintain efficiency, minimize delays, and ensure project success.
Achieving all of that starts with having a connected design and construction platform.
A design and construction platform integrates design and construction workflows into a centralized source of truth. Instead of multiple point solutions, a design and construction platform brings together project data in one place —including that foundational, early design data.
This makes it easier for every stakeholder, both internal and external, to analyze information and collaborate with team members. For example, Saunders Construction uses a single design and construction platform[GP7] to capture client feedback during projects, which has led to a 1,800% increase in client participation during the review process compared to previous methods.
With a real-time view of project information and progress, teams can better allocate resources and make more informed project decisions. Plus, using a platform ensures information flows across the entire project lifecycle, so teams, processes, and information are integrated from the very earliest design stages through construction project closeout and operations.
Construction teams face several challenges when planning and executing a project. Left unaddressed, these issues can lead to costly delays, budget overruns, and compromised construction project quality.
Let's explore them more closely below.
With projects moving at such a rapid pace, updates and changes can easily slip through the cracks. Teams often must deal with missing information when sharing and receiving files, delaying project progress.
Project differences also make it hard to standardize data capture across projects, so establishing consistent protocols and practices becomes increasingly difficult. In fact, the average construction company captures 11 different types of data, but only captures, analyzes, and makes decisions based on three types of data.
Stakeholders are trying to complete their work on their own timelines and protect their teams, often without a shared focus on prioritization. In some cases, teams are hesitant about sharing data or work in progress with other firms.
Navigating conflicting priorities can be tricky. On the one hand, stakeholders must maintain control over their deliverables; on the other, they must align with the project's collective goals to ensure cohesion.
When teams have disjointed workflows and data silos, they resort to implementing manual workarounds or requesting for additional information.
The average construction leader spends 11.5 hours per week researching and analyzing the data they need to do their job. The unnecessary back-and-forth requests and data searching can lead to wasted resources—i.e., time and money lost.
This challenge pertains to hurdles around adopting a new construction platform. In many cases, people aren't open to transitioning to new workflows and processes. This could partly be due to a lack of technology resources internally—less than a third of construction businesses say they have a centralized data team, with teams commonly operating in silos.
What’s more, teams that promote integrated and collaborative workflows can experience pushback because of the perception that connected design and construction have a higher upfront cost.
Such resistance leads to prolonged implementation times and decreased productivity—not to mention missed opportunities for improved project outcomes.
A robust design and construction platform can help teams work faster, cut down on mistakes, and collaborate better. But a platform is only half the story—it's truly about how the people on your team are using and benefiting from it.
Now that we've covered the fundamentals of a connected design and construction platform, let's explore the benefits of adopting one.
Integrating design and construction means bringing in stakeholders early in the process. Instead of having design and construction folks work in a linear process, a connected platform facilitates seamless communication and teamwork, which can yield profound benefits as the project progresses.
Early collaboration paves the way for smarter decisions and well-thought-out plans, which ultimately help you save time and reduce costs.
As Deloitte's 2024 Engineering & Construction report points out, companies that want to recover cost increases should consider “Engaging with customers early in the project life cycle for better decision-making and planning, thereby expediting design choices and enabling advanced procurement of raw materials.”
Designing with construction in mind allows teams to tap into the insight of experienced onsite leaders. Those in charge of building a structure—like the superintendent—can weigh in on designs and comment on constructability. This leads to a smoother building process and less rework.
For example, when The PENTA Building Group was constructing the first-ever Formula 1® racetrack in Las Vegas, trade workers discovered an existing electrical duct bank inches from where they planned to add a manhole.
By using a single platform for design and construction, everyone could see the RFI that came in from the design team, allowing them to shift the new structure to the left and avoid rework.
With rework accounting for an estimated 4-6% of total project costs, reducing it can lead to substantial savings and more efficient project completion.
A connected design and construction solution makes it easy to share data and standardize workflows. Since everything lives in a centralized [KS8] source of truth, teams can access up-to-date information, reduce errors, and improve overall project planning.[KS9]
According to a recent report from Autodesk and Deloitte Access Economics, 80% of construction businesses have room to improve their data capabilities. But improving data use pays off: construction companies that are data leaders report a 50% increase in average profit growth rate compared to beginners and can expect a 2.7 percentage point increase in expected average profit each year compared to beginners.
If you plan to adopt a connected design and construction platform, here are the top factors to consider.
One of the most powerful elements of a design and construction platform is its common data environment (CDE)—a repository that centrally and securely houses all project data, including drawings, models, contracts, specifications, and more.
A CDE is a single source of truth that all stakeholders can rely on. It promotes stronger team collaboration and ensures everyone works from the same information.
A common data environment also keeps data from multiple project phases in one place, thus minimizing data loss and giving team members everything they need to operate, no matter where they are in the project.
In addition to integrating data and teams, your construction platform should also connect your project phases and workflows to minimize any data loss as the project progresses from one stage to the next. This should apply to design and construction all the way through turnover.
The quality of output and data in the early phase of the project (like design) dramatically affects the work done during the construction stage.
"What we are realizing is that one way to head off unexpected changes is to have a robust design review process," says Manu Venugopal, who oversees Construction Data and Analytics for Autodesk Construction Cloud.
"Today, many general contractors that I talk to have teams devoted to reviewing design documents and drawings and identifying potential problems and solutions in a more collaborative environment."
It's also important to remember that project phases aren't always linear. With numerous stakeholders involved, going back and forth often comes with the territory. Bi-directional design and construction tools can help manage this complexity by enabling construction-informed design and providing project controls based on design outputs.
Set your sights on a connected design and construction platform that makes data federation possible. Data federation is the process of gathering data from multiple teams and converting it into a unified format for easy viewing and sharing. It uses a virtual database to aggregate data from various sources, transforming it into a common model to provide a single, cohesive view.
Data federation allows design and construction teams to collaborate with one another while maintaining their standards and retaining project data.
Even the fanciest solution won't yield results if the end users aren't adopting the technology. In order for your design and construction platform to work, it needs to be simple and intuitive.
Folks on the construction site are there to do the work, and technology shouldn't add complexity to that. Meanwhile, those at the office need a simple design for the field because office users won't get the data they need if no one inputs the information.
You'll get more value out of the software when your teams actively enter data into it, so the tools required to do so must be simple to use.
Your solution should simplify collaboration by equipping teams with communication tools spanning multiple project phases. That way, stakeholders stay connected throughout the entire project. Streamlined communication tools also provide greater levels of transparency and accountability, which means fewer misunderstandings, quicker resolutions to issues, and improved overall project outcomes.
Data is only as valuable as the insights you can derive from it. While your platform needs to collect data, that's just the first step. It should also help you extract actionable intelligence that you can use to identify, quantify, and mitigate risk.
When choosing construction management software, features like analytics and data visualization are essential. It's also ideal to have a system that uses automated machine learning and artificial intelligence to analyze data and surface trends and risk factors even before they turn into major issues. In fact, construction data leaders are seven times likelier to be using artificial intelligence or machine learning than data beginners.
While the technical side of a solution is essential when choosing a design and construction platform, the relationship you have with the company behind all that shiny tech is equally important.
This is one of the things that sets Autodesk apart from other solution providers. We strive to cultivate long-lasting partnerships with construction firms, and we're constantly innovating alongside our clients.
Autodesk helps contractors and owners make better decisions about their projects by engaging early and often in construction-informed design, planning resources from historical and dynamic data, and developing a shared data strategy to provide individuals with relevant and up-to-date information to build with confidence.
To do this, teams have access to:
Autodesk Construction Cloud creates a shared environment for design and construction workflows, paving the way for smoother communication, effortless data sharing, and, ultimately, better project outcomes.
Want to learn what makes a construction data leader from design through construction? Download this exclusive report from Deloitte Access Economics and Autodesk.
If you’re ready to see a design and construction platform in action, check out this interactive tour of Autodesk’s unified platform to discover how a truly connected construction platform can set you up for success.
