How O3 Is Making the Contractor’s Job Easier in the Field

Contractor clients are using O3 to manage work packaging for their day-to-day jobs and to increase project performance on the job site.

Some of the challenges O3 has seen Contractor clients encounter on the job site include:

• Handling a large amount of manual processes
• Collecting lagging information/reports/PDFs (meaning they are out of date by the time they are printed)
• Collaborating across disciplines and stakeholders
• Accessing critical information, that is often stored in spreadsheets, different data systems, whiteboards, sticky notes and in people’s heads
• Getting an accurate understanding of the stats and progress of each work package and how the project is performing against scope and schedule

O3 has seen Contractors manage risks on their projects by using our suite of solutions. They do so through the risk log. Risks are identified and populate the risk register and then the risks can be managed directly in O3. As risks changes over time, new risks can be identified at any phase of a project. O3’s intuitive and elegant UI gives anyone with access and proper permissions the ability to update and add risks at any point on a project. O3 has also seen contractors use our risk log during quarterly risk update meetings where teams will review the outstanding risks, define causes, consequences and build preventive and recovery action plans. These actions can be assigned to members of the team to ensure risks are properly mitigated.

Contractors are also using O3 to create Installation Work Packages across multiple disciplines. O3 makes creating IWPs simple and consistent by only allowing admins the ability to control them. So, if a contractor has access, they can easily create an IWP within O3. The admin also has control over how much info is required when creating the IWP. It is also very simple because O3 inherits many fields already included in the CWP that was used to create the new IWP.

O3 was first built on the idea of managing constraints. Contractors have begun using O3 to manage constraints on their jobs through shared ownership of work packages. O3 empowers them to clear constraints. This level of autonomy is still being adopted within the industry at large, and some owners feel more comfortable confirming work packages are cleared of constraints. O3’s workflow configurations support contractors’ ability to clear constraints while giving owners the level of oversight they are comfortable with. Specifically, O3’s approval workflow requires the owner’s approval before being approved for execution.

To go further, O3 has had contractors manage the workflow of constraints by creating consistency in the type of constraints across different work packages. O3 automates this by creating the predetermined constraints with an assigned due date during the appropriate phase of the work package.

Contractors are also using O3 to overcome field mobility issues. O3’s mobile application proves an easy to use form with a handful of clicks on an iPad that collects and syncs the data to the cloud. The data is immediately accessed via the web application where users can quickly see the data through our out-of-the box graphs, charts and reports. By using O3 contractors can capture data in real time for time on tools and allows for the most accurate decisions to be made.

O3 is making data mapping much easier for Contractors as well. O3 addresses the issue of accessibility and eliminates the need for multiple excel spreadsheets. O3’s cloud-based platform gives anyone access from anywhere in the world with real-time data. O3 also exposes any errors that already exist in the data.

Contractor clients have vastly improved the ability to work package management with O3. The entire process and expectations are simplified because O3 automates a large part of work package management. A contractor will know what is expected of them every step of the work package life cycle. If the work package has a status of “in development” O3 will give them a list of items to check off to determine it has been developed. Once they check off each item, the work package will automatically transition in the nest status where they will have a list of constraints assigned to other users to complete. O3 can tailor workflows to match any project and configured it to any of the nine work package types that we support.

Adapting to change can be hard for any organization. But O3 has seen most Contractor clients take on the challenge because they have realized the many benefits in doing so. A specific example we have seen recently is around change orders on documents and drawings. Project engineers created a “design change notice” (DCN) in O3 and set it as a predecessor to the drawings it is affecting. The number of drawings varies but setting the DCN as a predecessor automatically creates a constraint on all those drawings and puts a hold on these drawings. As these drawings are corrected, the constraints can be cleared one by one, removing the hold. O3 also provides the option to clear the constraint on all drawings at once if the DCN is completed. This inherently reduces time to complete these changes and reduces miscommunication.

O3’s solution suite is purpose-built for construction and addresses many of these challenges in the industry in addition to managing training and education across multiple companies, global task management, modern project management that supports an agile (or ever-changing) environment, work packaging for the job site and standardizing Advanced Work Packaging from concept through commissioning for the entire organization. 

​O3 supports a “crawl, walk, run” approach, the solutions built upon each other as the company grows maturity across their AWP or agile methods programs.