Enterprise Digital Strategy for Construction and Facilities Management

Managing complex infrastructure and transforming outdated facilities comes with a range of challenges, from safety issues to space management and ever-increasing compliance demands. Further, the ability to effectively oversee facility projects, provide a transparent controls environment, and deliver adequate reporting on tasks and goals is essential to success.

Access to accurate and integrated enterprise-wide data and analytics, which underpin portfolio decision making, expedited and scalable delivery capabilities, risk management, and daily operations, is key to overcoming these challenges, reducing risks, and delivering capital projects and portfolios with confidence.

Challenges with Complex Infrastructure Portfolios

Oftentimes, facilities management project owners and program managers get overwhelmed with multiple streams of work, including diffuse and divergent project development, maintenance, renewal, and disposal actions. In working with clients with complex infrastructure portfolios, we have found that portfolio performance can suffer if the following challenges are not meaningfully addressed.

Greater reliance on organization assets and resources – Project success relies on expertise and resources across the entire organization, such as IT, finance, asset management, communications, and leadership. Everyone must have the information they need to contribute.

Project controls, monitoring, and reporting – Transforming data into information is essential. Organizations must measure, manage, and report on volumes of quantitative data. Today, this is best done with increasingly complex project management tools, requiring expertise in data architecture, data analytics, and data visualization.

Ever-increasing project complexities – No longer is ROI the measure of go/no-go. Successful projects must be evaluated against competing priorities and projects; stakeholder expectations like sustainability are increasingly driving design/scope considerations.

Stakeholder engagement and communications – Whether compliance or permitting approval, or driving change to support operationalizing project deliverables, early engagement and timely communication are essential to success.

Sustainability and resiliency – Projects that are not engineered to support sustainable and resilient business operations may not attract investors or gain stakeholder and executive support.

Using Technology to Improve Facilities Life Cycle Management

Challenges with complex infrastructure portfolios can result in cost overruns, safety incidents, fines, penalties, schedule delays, and frustrated stakeholders.

A robust digital strategy that is designed to collect, integrate, and report information can help executives align capital spending to strategic intent, deliver more technically complex projects on shorter timeliness, and avoid expensive, time-consuming mistakes. Additionally, the organization, its stakeholders, and those it serves can benefit from better customer experiences, automated and augmented operational processes, and workforce upskilling opportunities.

Carefully building a digital environment that can support intelligent automation can have a tremendous impact on an enterprise’s overall capability to continuously improve facility infrastructure and, in turn, support the organizational mission.

Successful digital strategy design considers the digital maturity of an organization as it relates to tools and technology, understands short-term and long-term goals and objectives, internal and external stakeholder impact, possible limitations to adoptions, and the pathway to full integration. Starting with a roadmap that defines tangible gains and augmented value, a holistic digital strategy can be delivered that will flex with organizational goals, budgets, and changing technologies.

Comprehensive digital strategy planning includes:

• Determining high-level business requirements for life cycle asset management
• Conducting an in-depth analysis of relevant business processes through interactive sessions with key personnel; evaluating currently available tools and systems and identifying gaps
• Developing a digital strategy roadmap that sets direction and phasing for adoption
• Developing the business case and justification to undertake investment in digital systems
• Outlining future-state technology architecture to deliver on the business case and initiatives
• Developing vision, mission, and communications to support the start of change management
• Supporting system selection or integration analyses, as needed

The complexity and scope of these tasks requires a complementary program management approach that effectively organizes the integrated team, facilitates collaboration with the appropriate construction and facility management offices, and enhances the overall quality, consistency, and timeline of the effort.

A clear, comprehensive, and actionable project management plan that outlines the approach, schedule, key personnel, monitoring/quality assurance mechanisms, and communication plan for each task is critical. Routine check-ins assure visibility into progress and deliverables.

Critical to success is to gather and focus teams across the construction and facilities management continuum by:

• Identifying key functional stakeholders that will be impacted, their business processes requiring digitalization, and how progress and success will be measured
• Considering end user insights to help build the strategy and justification
• Determining achievable technology end state and the integration needs, including technology architecture and business process management tools
• Evaluating existing legacy systems to determine whether modernization, replacement, or retirement is the most appropriate approach to automation
• Prioritizing the implementation of new software systems based on business needs, potential impact, and integration feasibility
• Discovering the “must haves” in your operating environment to enable compliance, data privacy, and any regulatory and cyber security requirements
• Imbedding organizational and cultural perspectives into a robust change management plan

The Path to Successful Construction and Facilities Management

Challenges with facilities management and planning are common across a range of organizations, from health systems and hospitals to government agencies and life sciences companies. While each organization faces a unique set of obstacles, clearly understanding your current situation and organization’s capabilities is key. An intentional digital strategy can help project owners, managers, and leadership seamlessly communicate, execute projects aligned to timelines, avoid mistakes, and achieve portfolio goals.