The ink is drying on data sharing agreements between S3AEC and some local construction associations in Ontario. S3AEC an AEC company immersed in the professional development space for years providing construction industry workshop development and facilitation sees a natural evolution moving to digital paperless certificates for course completion and an ability for workers to efficiently store, retrieve and share on demand as needed.
“Our goal is to link workers with educators directly, replicating the data to employers for their records with administration functionality as well, and ultimately as the network becomes more robust; enforcement authorities reporting becomes streamlined through a common data set that is actually mobile instead of fixed to any multiple number of institutions or companies. All in an effort to solve the problem of data drop between the four stakeholders in a mobile construction environment”, explains Derek Smith, creative officer of S3AEC(t), the technology group owned by his firm. S3AEC has presented the concept to BuildForce Canada already, and will be presenting in much more detail the relatively low key project to the Gold Seal Committee in Ottawa in late January.
The COCA COO Committee has been presented with information on the solution, and is currently deliberating involvement right across the province. “We have been developing the idea in concert with our support group in London including Techalliance Regional Innovation Centre at Western University and our mentor, the co-founder of Carproof which uses an almost identical business model , of capture, store and report, but we have kept a low profile until trade marks were all in place and channel acceptance established. If you can build a Facebook or LinkedIn profile, we are confident that workers will use this app, what’s more, we are keeping in mind wearables and tablet dashboard use, as things are evolving so quickly in the digital mobility space, and certainly will be the norm in 5 to 10 years.” explains Smith. The app and dashboard are non-partisan and do not distinguish between management or safety training, the evaluation of applicable training will continue to lie with enforcement and governing authorities.
Over time however, as data is collected it is anticipated that many additional features will become available to workers, employers, trainers and authorities. One of the key features out of the box for the app and network will allow individual users to find training nearby using Google Maps, register through the trainer website, and when completed the training, provide instant learning experience feedback to the trainer on the system. The second key feature will allow any worker arriving on site, to share their secure data with site supervisors to validate compliance with safety or other regulations day by day, week by week or as required by the site.
“Historically it has been up to employers to collect and validate a workers training, re-train in duplicate sometimes, but as the employer retains that data, and a worker at any level, management or on the tools moves around, combined with the number of jobs in an average career on a steep rise, the data gets lost, misplaced or simply dropped and becomes expensive to replicate. Imagine during the interview stage, instantly validating a candidates credential that was uploaded directly from the trainer a few months prior. Now we have re-engineered an outdated process by creating an innovative solution leveraging available technology with an eye to the future”, says Smith. S3AEC(t) is also looking at ‘blockchain’ as an up and coming disruptive technology aimed at the financial services sector, for use in construction industry business processes in an effort tear down database walls prohibiting the evolution of digital business processes throughout the construction industry.
“I watched it happen with BIM, right in front of our eyes, the entire industry stumbled over itself to be able to build mass acceptance of Building Information Modeling, while fantasies of lawsuits over model ownership, what database holds what? Where has it come in 10 years, still at a stage of discipline purpose built models residing in multiple databases on a project, with very few in the industry looking at cradle to grave process”. That needs to change soon, we are being left behind. While there have been process advancements, when you look at construction relative to bio-med or financial services, we are way behind”, explains Smith.
S3AEC(t) is a performance management group driven to create innovative, measurable, and sustainable improvement to industry through the re-engineering of business processes. By combining expertise in technology and strategy we work around a philosophy of starting with a small idea and accelerating systematically, scaling with our clients and customers needs.
