In all our presentations, we find ourselves referring to O3 as a “battle-tested” solution for AWP. But what does this mean?

The concept of something being “battle-tested” really just means that it has been used for its intended purpose. A great many thoughts, ideas and inventions look great on paper, but when you try them out and put them in a real-life situation they often fall apart.

A Prussian military officer famously said, “No plan survives first contact with the enemy”, though Mike Tyson may have said it better when he refined it to “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth”.

The same thought can be applied to AWP software. A product can look great on paper, or on a glitzy PowerPoint presentation. Lots of big words and catchphrases can be used to make it seem more appealing and more tangible than it is. Pre-recorded graphics and screenshots give the illusion of a fully operational tool. You are convinced that it will solve all your AWP problems.

But then you start to implement it, and the harsh light of reality filters in. Things don’t work the way they are meant to. The tool doesn’t link to the rest of your suite. It does some of what you need but the rest of the functionality was, shall we say, inferred. By the time you realize that you have been sold something half-baked, you have significant sunk costs and are often too committed to turn back.

You then spend the next year helping your vendor to develop their tool, using your time and ideas to refine a product that you thought was complete when you bought it. You might endure this process, or you might give up and try something else. Either way, your AWP program will take much longer to reach maturity and your project performance will suffer in the meantime.

That’s why O3 puts so much focus on our solution being “battle-tested”. It has been rolled out on over 500 projects. We have had more than 20,000 people using the software, and every one of them has invariably tried to break it in a new and interesting way.

Lessons have been learned from each of these implementations, so by the time you start using it you are already benefiting from all this feedback. Most importantly, we listen to our clients so that we understand their needs, their AWP process, and their pain points. We update the software every two weeks, and each update is available to all clients.

Battle-tested means you don’t have to be anyone’s guinea pig or developer. You can jump straight into AWP execution and accelerate your maturity journey.

The next time someone offers you AWP software, check the history. Ask for references. Ask how many projects it has been implemented on. Check the version history, so you can see when it was first rolled out. And if the first client success story was last month, or the original (first) release of the software was within the last year or two, make sure you consider that in your selection.

AWP is here to stay. More and more Owners, contractors and EPCs are seeing the value. And with that will come an inevitable surge in vendors offering AWP software. Make sure the one you choose is “battle-tested”.