Anyone who has ever done home renovation will know the value of a good tool. I still recall one particularly galling evening fighting with a hammer drill, trying to prep the concrete surface in my basement for a subfloor. The store-bought drill just wasn’t up to the job, and I was driving myself crazy trying to get a handful of holes drilled when we had hundreds still to do. Luckily, my wife persuaded me to rent a larger unit and the whole job was over in minutes. The right tool can make a seemingly-impossible task quite manageable.
The same goes with industrial construction projects and the use of Advanced Work Packaging (AWP). You CAN do AWP with basic tools like spreadsheets, but I certainly wouldn’t recommend it. Most people start there because it is familiar. We all know how to use a spreadsheet, and how to do basic calculations. When tasked with work packaging on a project, it therefore becomes the logical place to start, because we can internalize the requirement and learn on the fly.
The issues with this approach relate to the sheer volume of data involved, the time and effort it takes to produce and manage the packages, and the very high likelihood of human error. It’s like using an abacus to do complex sums instead of the calculator app on your phone – chances are you will get lost part way through, take a long time to reach an answer, and quite possibly get it wrong.
None of this should be taken as a rebuke to those currently performing these tasks, or an attempt to tell anyone that they are doing something wrong. Digitalization is the concept of taking existing processes and doing them in a more structured, stable platform. We aren’t necessarily changing the ‘what’, just the ‘how’.
Not everybody is trying to use spreadsheets for work packaging. Some older tools have existed for years in this space, typically involving installation of a thick client onto your computer and a vast array of data manipulation processes to be fully functional. These solutions, while good in their day, have been rapidly replaced by modern tools like O3 which are web-based, can consume data from all of your other project tools, and are designed to support all construction disciplines (rather than just pipe and steel).
These dinosaur products are well on their way to extinction as their producers realize that they are unsustainable in the face of modern competition, and the ever-expanding AWP user market recognizes the value of a more agile and wide-ranging approach. These are the AWP software equivalent of 1930s racecars being left behind by 21st century automotive power and design – they looked good and led the way years ago, but they just aren’t up to the task anymore.
Finding a modern solution can be somewhat overwhelming, especially when there are multiple providers out there who all claim to do the same thing. Much of what is on offer is vapor, which can be hard to distinguish from the genuine article. To help with this, O3 has produced a document listing the major functional requirements for work packaging that you can use as the basis for assessment and selection of a qualified vendor. This was released as deliverable six in our AWP Implementation Toolkit, which can be found on our website.
Don’t be fooled by pretty pictures and canned demonstrations. Getting the right AWP software will be critical to the success of your AWP implementation and maturity journey. Make sure that you know what you need, and that what you are being offered can meet those requirements. When you step away from the dinosaur approach, partner up with a modern solution that can accelerate your AWP maturity and take your construction execution to the next level.
