Achieving 98% Faster Reporting with Speckle
Aaron Atkinson is a regional BIM Manager at John Sisk & Son Ltd. He is responsible for scaling existing technologies and best practices and exploring new ways of working to increase productivity. In this presentation, Aaron talks about improving progress reporting using Speckle.
Introducing John Sisk & Son
John Sisk and Son Ltd is an international engineering and construction company recognised by the industry for BIM and Engineering. They work mainly in Europe and the UK, offering a lifecycle approach to construction across a diverse range of sectors.
Innovation is at the heart of the business as it continuously explores new technology to foster a visionary mentality by challenging themselves and supply chains to be creative and innovative to build a better world.
The Future of Construction
“What global pressures do we need to respond to? What kind of legacy do we want to leave behind?” Aaron challenges the audience to think about these questions and introduces the following components:
- Interconnected network. This is a vital component to connect people, products, and data. This allows for human connectivity and concrete offerings where collaboration has no limits with collective potential. Exchanging ideas, and expertise is important to deliver better designs and buildings.
- A sustainable construction ecosystem. Such a system is not merely a collection of structures. It also cultivates the notion of conscientious management. It enhances the quality of the built world to embody commitments and minimise environmental impact.
- Improved connectivity. The construction process merges with the efficiency of operations management, not just a switch integration but a strategic alliance. The exchange between multi-disciplinary teams is a relay of knowledge that leads to consistent enhancement where operations insights feed back into the construction methodology, creating a feedback loop.
The John Sisk & Son team is continuously working towards these principles to shape the future of construction.
Project Spotlight: Wembley Park
Sisk is slashing embodied carbon and optimising off-site-manufactured components in its latest job at Wembley Park. This project is the team’s first development built on the northeast spot of Wembley Stadium, where they already completed nine projects. Each project has been delivered on time and within budget, thanks to the knowledge and learning passed on and circled around.
Watch the SpeckleCon recording for more details on the project:
The approach described in this video unlocked many opportunities to reduce waste and transportation emissions continuously.
The Challenge: Off-Site Monitoring
“We faced a challenge: How could we effectively monitor 1,700 precast panels with data from different suppliers?”
Everything was happening off-site: engineers, site managers, and project managers would spend a lot of time establishing and updating trackers in siloes. It was a time-consuming task resulting in lots of Excel trackers (which took days to do), and it would mean going to the manufacturing location and getting word-of-mouth progress. This process was inefficient, and the team wanted to move away from a horizontal reporting process (various pieces of information sitting in different locations) towards a more vertical process (data feeds into a central hub). This is where Speckle stepped in.
The Solution: Enabling Automation with Speckle
By taking the field data and standardising the Quality Assurance (QA) process to align with the production process, the team was able to achieve higher levels of efficiency and productivity.
Speckle and Power BI
Harnessing an object-based version control system for 3D data allowed the team to track changes within the 3D model and Speckle Connectors, especially with Power BI. This allowed them to think outside the box when reporting their BIM data. This level of data connectivity led to the production of a dashboard that monitors the advancement of off-site construction, delivery, and installation.
Other data, such as carbon measurement and life carbon assessment (LCA), have also been measured, which encouraged the team to ask questions about carbon output and internal efficiencies while using real-time data.
The Results: 98% Faster Reporting
Speckle enabled the John Sisk & Son team to access comprehensive updates of the facade progress by turning data into intelligence. The work done has been awarded an Excellence in the BIM and Digital Construction by London Build and a shortlist nomination to the London National Building & Construction award.
Using Speckle as part of the project yielded tangible benefits:
- 72% faster configuration in comparison to traditional methodology
- 98% faster reporting by harnessing BIM data for automated task reporting
“Taking a report time from days to mere minutes by automating tedious consuming tasks and thinking about connecting our data differently, we’ve seen great benefits in cost savings, reduction in risks, and enhancement of visibility and decision-making. Accessing these tools and real-time insights enables us to do a better job,” says Aaron.
What’s Next
This project enabled Sisk to look at trends and get underneath the skin of its BIM data, understand the challenges it faces, and learn lessons in finding improvements for driving values. So, where is the construction industry going? Speckle allows Sisk to unlock data to establish a more connected network, leading toward a sustainable construction ecosystem and improving connectivity.
“Speckle opened the doors for us to use more of the information that we generate through our projects to unlock modern processes that align with our modern methods of construction,” says Aaron. If you're curious about other Speckle applications, head to our SpeckleCon playlist for more stories.
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