The Data of Value

In November 2021, I attended the Digital Construction Week at the London Excel. As expected, it was full of vendors covering the broad range of technological solutions for the modern-day construction challenges – post-modern ERPs, on-site snagging, AI process and an autonomous dog called Spot fitted with LIDAR.

However, one presentation delivered by Ian Nicholson from the Construction Innovation Hub enticed my Data Architecture brain. The presentation, titled The Value of Data, was based on the Construction Innovation Hubs Value Toolkit. The Value Toolkit is a government-backed initiative designed to change how the construction industry thinks about and measures value. The Toolkit is a Framework for construction industry decision-makers that assists in navigating the metrics of holistic value measurement across the entire lifecycle of a project, programme or portfolio.

In 2018, the Construction Leadership Councils published the Procuring for Value report, which defined key drivers to move away from the industry's historical approach of looking at procurement solely through the lens of cost – instead of considering other values (people, environment, societal) during the procurement process. Considering this report and other national policies, the Construction Innovation Hub created the Value Toolkit.

With the tools, processes and guidance defined in the Toolkit, organisations can consider national, regional and organisation policies to develop SMART targets for their desired blend of values. These SMART targets can be applied at all the stages of the delivery of the project to ensure that the selected value continues to be delivered – design, tendering, operations and after-care.

An example of the values and their priority to a project or an organisation is shown below:

Reference: Construction Innovation Hub Value Toolkit Priority Radar Chart

Considering the outcome of COP26 and the wave of businesses signing up for climate change initiatives such as Race to Zero; the Value Toolkit had me thinking about how will we as an industry measure these metrics – how we will collect the data to support our claims that we are delivering this value. Another point mentioned during the presentation was that the targets should be ranges or based on continuous variables (e.g.y% to x% of materials were recycled) – not binary outcomes (e.g. Project Was Compliant). The idea behind this is that you can adjust your focus to ensure that all your prioritised values can be delivered.

The Data Architect and Statistician in me started to work my way around the radar chart and began to consider what data sources would I need to measure these values, what type of targets or metrics would be set:

Natural

• How do I measure Air, Water, Land and Climate? The Internet of Things and sensors to measure the air, water and soil quality before, during and after construction. Or am I relying on third-party consultancies to perform that for me across all my sites? Is it a new activity for the site teams as part of the morning Safety, Environment and Environment inspections?
• How do I measure the quantity of materials wasted or diverted from landfills? How do I get suppliers to provide specifications for the products installed that align with the organisational values? Are we talking about an evolution of B2B data transfer that moves away from the order-invoice approach and into the tender values?

Social

• What is my approach for measuring the social value delivered by my project? Collecting data on individuals can be a minefield and can be very subjective if we rely on individuals to provide input on their experiences or views.
• Measuring equality and diversity is performed by many organisations now to support their Gender Pay Gap and internal reporting – however, is it shared through their supply chain. We, as an organisation, know that we have x% of BAME individuals and y% of females in our workforce, but do we know that about our subcontractors – can we quickly ascertain a valid number without sharing more data? How do we measure how successful we are in enrolling more apprentices or provisioning employment opportunities for people in the project, supply chain or local area? How do we measure or monitor?

Human

• How are we helping the local community where our projects are based? Are we hiring contractors locally, and are they employing apprentices that help alleviate unemployment and create opportunities for the future?

Produced

• Cost, of course, will remain a key driver – the fine line between profit and loss still must be considered, and we continue to collect and analyse data on cost – however, the cost will have to be one of the levers that are tweaked to deliver all the values desired by an organisation. More expensive materials may make the final product more sustainable, more costly subcontractors may employ more apprentices or be based in the site's immediate surroundings.
• Quality - I have spoken before about the need to systemise quality processes to fully understand QAQC compliance and processes. Once again, the need to build it right the first time becomes a priority if that is the value we are aiming to achieve.
• Life cycle costs are another consideration – the cost-effective nature of the ground and air source heat pumps, for example, mean that affordable housing could link nicely to more affordable living costs at the expense of more expensive construction.

In summary, the move from cost first to values first will help organisations deliver better value outcomes not just for projects but hopefully for local areas and the world. However, we will need to collect and share more information and data to measure accurately and honestly. We will need to consider the methods and practices of sharing this information which differs from today's requirements. With this in mind, we need to consider a Data Architecture that can evolve to enable these data needs. Without data to back up the targets, how do we question if the value will be acted upon or is just a statement. We need to consider Integration as a critical enabler for businesses to have the information to deliver value that pays the bills and heals the world.

Find out more

More information on the Value Toolkit can be found at:

https://constructioninnovationhub.org.uk/value-toolkit/

More information on Sempre Analytics and our Connected Construction mission can be found at:

https://www.sempreanalytics.com/industries/housebuilding-construction/