Comprehensible Distribution of Training and Information to Proliferated Users

By Sam Lamonica, CIO & VP Information Systems, Rosendin Electric, Inc.

The technological growth curve concerning the construction industry has seen a tremendous elevation in the last few years, as the result of fast-paced technological adaptation. The large-scale incorporation of technology comes as an indicator of the dominance of Tier II firms in the Architecture Engineering and Construction (AEC) sector, until recently. However, with large enterprises focusing more on acquiring growing markets, the spotlight is on such firms, signaling a shift concerning authoritative prevalence of Tier II firms.

Consequently, the bigger players are functioning at a faster rate to develop strategies and roadmaps for integrating these disparate offerings, by eliminating or reconciling overlapping in functionality.

Following this, these strategies are combined into a cohesive set of tools, and support programs which are redefined with respect to their existing programs. In yet another major development, the AEC sector, of late, has been witnessing high-level mergers and acquisitions by technology providers.

Yet another trend, In-House Mobile App Development is shaping the way players in the AEC space provide efficient and relevant tools for their field users. At our company, two in-house apps were successfully developed so as to provide our field users with improved capabilities for pre-construction planning and material tracking, and will be continuing with development of mobile app programs unique to our environment. Our affinity for technology development has gained a profound interest of our stakeholders from Operations team, transfiguring them into a technology evangelist for imminent future.

Holistic solutions are the need of the hour

The industry’s most critical challenge should be information mobility, a concern daunting the industry. The on-going exploitation of technology coupled with the on-site requirement of information in the construction sector has paved way for information mobility to manifest itself as a concern. The industry is abundant with different vendors, solutions, devices and connectivity methods and it remains a challenge to integrate and support them. And, with the adoption of 3D modeling through Building Information Modeling (BIM) tools, the size of files and the need for collaboration between many different partners makes this an even more difficult challenge. Here at Rosendin, we have employed various third party solutions to curtail this overwhelming challenge, but none of them have yet provided an unabridged solution.

Contemporary Challenges facing the Industry

Full scale deployments of new technologies or enhancements to existing programs tend to be a significant challenge facing the industry. With over 200 active large-scale jobsites, and hundreds of smaller jobs to oversee, it remains a cost prohibitive, defying task for our Operation team to educate the distributed users on programs and technology enhancement. To subdue this challenge, we are forthcoming with multitude of cost effective solutions, with the help of our training department, to allow a comprehensible distribution of training and information to masses.

In this technology driven era, Silicon Valley is witnessing an unprecedented increase in the competition level in job market. Big organizations and eminent Start-ups have pilfered many of our top-notch technology players in an instant. To prevent this from happening in imminent future, we are working in collaboration with our managers to formulate a complying strategy to keep our best employees in place and motivated.

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