Skanska USA Building Inc. - Constructing Efficient Jobsites with Tablet PC Technology
Background: Nationwide Construction
Skanska USA Building Inc., a unit of Sweden-based Skanska AB, is the third largest provider of construction services in the United States, with annual revenues of $4.2 billion. The company manages a wide range of building projects, from small renovations to large-scale commercial structures.
Until 2003, Skanska-owned regional construction companies operated independently. To minimize overhead costs and help build a national Skanska brand, the company began to consolidate. Part of this consolidation involved the elimination of overlapping software applications that managed finance and project data, among other business functions. In total, Skanska replaced more than 100 specialized applications with just 12. However, another challenge still remained: How would Skanska deploy this new software to best serve the needs of the company and its staff on job sites?
Challenge: Inefficiencies in the Field
At any given time, Skanska operates 500 to 2,000 job sites around the country. Because 75 percent of Skanska’s workforce is in the field, effective communication among partners, supervisors, and construction workers is crucial in order for projects to be completed on time and within budget. To report on project progress and problems, supervisors would complete paper-based forms and fax them to the appropriate office from on-site trailers, and then await guidance on a situation, delaying each project’s timeline. Over the course of each project, up to 700,000 paper documents recorded everything from safety inspections to blueprint changes.
Skanska decided to reduce the inefficiencies of its paper forms with a new process for faster decision making and real-time information gathering at its job sites.
Solution: Equip Mobile Employees with a Mobile Office
The company created what Chris Stockley, Skanska’s senior vice president and CIO, calls a “walking office:” an on-site wireless local area network connected to servers at Skanska’s corporate data center, running both third-party and custom-built applications and accessing web services to retrieve data.
To put the “walking” capability into its “walking office,” Skanska considered a variety of mobile devices, including laptops, which were too bulky for efficient use at a construction site, and PDAs, which weren’t powerful enough to run the company’s specialized software. Skanska researched tablet PCs and found the best of both worlds – the mobility of a handheld device and the power of a full-sized PC – to be even better with the tablet PC’s ability to use ink-enabled software. After field testing, Skanska chose the Motion Computing LE1600 Tablet PC because of its View Anywher® screen, light-weight design, and durable carbon fiber chassis – an ideal combination for an outdoor work environment.
Skanska uses the Motion tablets to monitor project management and job site safety. Skanska’s Injury-Free Environment Scorecard software helps the company collect site safety data and analyze safety trends. The software is ink-enabled, allowing supervisors to input safety data directly into the application while performing inspections. That data is then automatically stored in the IFE Scorecard so corporate managers can have a daily snapshot of project progress and safety.
Results: Adding an Extra Workday Each Week
With Motion tablets, Skanska now is experiencing a 20 percent increase in productivity on some projects – an extra workday to each week – according to an internal audit. Using tablet PCs, workers access plans and reports and mark-up worksite drawings anywhere. Problems with building plans or construction that used to take days and weeks to resolve now are cleared up within minutes.
Motion’s tablet PC technology has enabled project teams to be out “managing projects, not manning fax machines or waiting around for decisions to be made,” said Stockley.
In addition to time savings, Skanska has seen safety benefits from their implementation of Motion tablets. Skanska’s IFE Scorecard running on the tablets keeps the awareness of an injury-free environment in the minds of all Skanska employees -- from subcontractors to laborers to project managers. Before the technology was implemented, Skanska didn’t have a unified process for measuring job site safety. Now, they are using the IFE Scorecard to aggregate safety information from project sites around the country in a manner that executives and safety directors can track daily.
Skanska employees are finding their own uses for the Motion tablets on job sites. Employees who found laptops too bulky and cumbersome for the job have embraced the tablet PCs and are incorporating them into their everyday routines. Some employees have attached cameras to their hard hats to photograph potential safety issue spots on-site and automatically download them to the tablet. This function works in conjunction with the IFE Scorecard to keep job sites safe and create records of needed improvement.
Motion Computing’s tablet accessories also play a part on Skanska job sites. Employees are armed with Motion Bump Cases, which protect the tablet from bumps and scratches, while adding minimal weight and bulk. Workers carry their Bump Cases on the job site with a shoulder strap, which frees up the hands while still having the tablet readily available for use.
Skanska plans to expand its Motion tablet PC initiative across all the company’s job sites in the United States. Skanska expects this mobile technology will continue to make the company’s operations more efficient, improving project management and project completion rates.
“We’re not only changing how well we work as a company, we could be changing an industry,” said Stockley.
