Guest Editorial
Yes, I Know We Are Different, But...
By John G. Voeller, P.E.
For decades, the engineering and construction world has fostered a basic urban myth that must be eradicated for the industry to truly improve itself. That myth is that we are somehow so different from other industries that we cannot use the techniques, tools or processes that others have spent billions refining to a razor edge. Specifically, the manufacturing world can teach us so much, so quickly that we must rush to partner with the best of breed in that domain. Efforts like the Lean Construction Institute are superb transplants, but it is one of many that could be accomplished. Let me be specific.
The overall life cycle of engineering and construction is actually a small subset of the total life cycle of a facility. If we look at manufacturing, a plant life cycle can easily be mapped to a product life cycle. In this vein, the E&C cycle portion is in fact a portion of the supply chain of the plant. Traditionally, the similarities have been disavowed by many. A typical statement would suggest that manufacturers procure raw materials, pieces and components and do not have the significant complication of procuring "engineered equipment". This was used by many to either avoid or constrain our potential achievements in leveraging B2B concepts. The reality is that manufacturers outsource assemblies from steering systems to dashboards to electric seats that are just as complicated and specific as skidded filtering systems or turbine generators.
The billions of dollars and millions of person-hours consumed by manufacturing in optimizing the entire life cycle from conception and design through procurement and production scheduling to assembly and delivery are too similar for E&C not to study them with intense interest. That has been true for some time, but the motivation just escalated with recent announcements by key systems makers.
Now or within a year, all major software providers will offer portal interfaces. A portal is not a simple web-enabled interface, but a unique environment that allows personalized and spontaneous assembly and presentation of information from any internal source or the web. In its fullest implementation, a portal also allows one to drag and relate information without regard to source or format and to export any subset one might want in the neutral format XML, the global interchange format that is transforming businesses. What this now means is that even more of what we might borrow or learn from manufacturing's enormous knowledge base is available and it is even easier to access and learn.
This will combine with another trend we must watch carefully. Software of the past was self-contained executable programs, each running in their own space. Today's best programs are actually selected objects with behaviors that are brought together to work in a certain way or in a particular context. Instead of a hard-coded set of steps designed to anticipate what will occur, we will have collections of objects and actions which will observe the situation and utilize each other as needed to fit the circumstance and address the needs. This was the dream of object-oriented thinking when it was invented two decades ago. But it is finally coming to fruition and the effect will be that objects and agents from any software firm can react and work with those of any other in a heterogeneous soup that looks much like humans working together in teams.
The impact for E&C will be the opportunity to combine the best of dozens of applications in combined efforts with no programming or customization in the classic sense so that industry or region or market sensitivities or preferences can be better managed. A look at the most recent E&C offerings from SAP will give the reader a glimpse of the intense impact of this transformation. SAP has been legendary for closed minded, rigid, not-invented-here thinking. It has now transformed itself into a "let's play nice with Oracle, Microsoft, Primavera, Intergraph, Autodesk, PTC or anything else". They finally realized they cannot do it all and others are better at some things. This caterpillar-to-butterfly metamorphosis is just one of many we will see from others.
Another example speaks to our future. Manufacturing is mature, but it is not resting on past successes. Many advanced firms are embracing complexity theory for production planning and resource scheduling. This is an area that has immense potential and the E&C world should pursue discussions with providers and researchers in this area as they grow and refine their tools. The effects can revolutionize the management of projects and their resources, materials, money and risk.
A national effort on transplanting of such ideas is needed and the way is paved with the opportunity by a unique coincidence. A gentleman who was pivotal in the modernization of manufacturing at the national level is now heading an organization capable of acting as a linch pin for such transplantation efforts. The group is called FIATECH and the man is Ric Jackson. FIATECH allied with CII, OOF, CERF, IIEC, BFC, and the Sloan Foundation For Construction. Regardless of which industry group your E&C or owner organization might have membership, encouragement of knowledge transplant and learning efforts between E&C and other industries can bear exceptional fruit for us all.
About the author: John G. Voeller, P.E., is Senior Vice President, Chief Knowledge Officer and Chief Technology Officer of Black & Vetch, a large international engineering firm. He can be reached at voellerjg@bv.com.
The CSRF newsletter is published for SPECTEXT® subscribers and others involved in design and construction. To obtain your copy of Creating a Common Language®, please contact the CSRF Support Center by telephone at 1-877- SPECTXT or 410-838-7561 or you may e-mail us at supportcenter@csrf.org
Copyright 2005, The Construction Sciences Research Foundation, Inc. Updated July 9, 2001
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