AEC Business Podcast Looks Ahead With ProjectReady CEO.
Before ProjectReady started making waves across the AEC, Joe Giegerich’s company Gig Werks, a Microsoft Gold Partner helped businesses with their Microsoft 365 systems integration. And while his portfolio was across many professional services industries, it didn’t take long for certain trends to emerge, particularly within the AEC. This realization led to Joe to reach out and have many meaningful conversations with industry leaders who were on the hunt for innovative solutions to address the industry’s growing challenges around labor, workflows, security, safety, and litigation. Soon thereafter, ProjectReady and the emergence of the Integrated Data Environment (IDE) was born.
“ProjectReady’s intent was to bring the vast array of project data together, in context, , and apply process over those various platforms where critical project information resides,” Joe told Aarni Heiskanen, Finnish construction innovation agent, during a recent episode of the AEC Business Podcast. “We came to understand that the actual value of project information management required that the extended project team need to collaborate on project information, securely in a way that was easy to interact with. And from the beginning, our work with clients in services, the value that the M365 stack represented and its need to be part of that solution. But as the product evolved and our understanding evolved, we understood that a focus on M365 wasn’t enough. We had to create workflow driven, integrated data environment that included systems like the Autodesk construction cloud, procore, bluebeam, etc to to work together, so people could work with project data across a wide variety of systems and platforms”
Power To The User
Over the course of the 20-minute interview, Joe noted that there have been wonderful advancements in technology and data collection over the years, but he noted a disconnect between these technological advancements and their useability.
“You can collect all the data on earth, but if people [don’t] have a way to relate to that information and bring it together in context, there’s no way to collaborate on it, make sense of it, or drive the value from it.”
The goal of ProjectReady is to empower users – to connect the data coming in from all areas of the organization in a highly-usable fashion.
Rising to the challenges and opportunities of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act
Over the next year and beyond, the AECO will continue to feel the challenges that accompany the growing pains of digitization. Moreover, because of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the timeline associated with this piece of legislation, the pain felt in this area will likely be compounded because of the need to get projects up and running quickly, regardless of the fact that the construction industry is already facing a labor shortage.
“Every opportunity also has its challenges,” said Joe. “The two big ones I see with the ramp-up of the Infrastructure Bill are, ‘do you have enough talent,’ and ‘can you get things going in a way that’s accurate and doesn’t, in fact, increase risk?’”
“How do you bring all that information together in a single context? How do you set up all those systems (i.e. Autodesk Construction Cloud, Procore, SharePoint, Bluebeam, Box, etc.) quickly? How do you secure those systems? How do you synchronize that data? How do you manage transmittals, and the like?” asked Joe. And, to take it a step further, how do you address these questions while making the best use of your people and the advanced skills they bring to the table?
Joe says solution to these questions lies within ProjectReady and the program’s ability to automate processes across platform, streamline security, and synchronize data.
One ProjectReady customer, for example, has more than 600 people working at any given time on one of the largest projects in North America. Over the course of the project, Joe explained, employees and vendors will come and go and managing the security and synchronization of the project’s data manually, across multiple teams and platforms, is time consuming and adds exponential risk. To address this challenge, ProjectReady found a way to automate governance and security protocols. By using ProjectReady in the context of this project, Joe said, the customer benefits from improved security, better time management of the organization’s top talent resources, fewer hours spent on brute-force collection of information and its management, and access to built-in governance designed to significantly reduce the long-term risk of litigation.
Change: The Only Constant
Over the next year, Joe said ProjectReady will continue to invest in the ongoing development and evolution of the product. He is also looking forward to building on existing relationships in the marketplace and developing new partnerships to drive greater value for current and future customers.
“It’s a constant work-in-progress,” said Joe. “Not because you got it wrong, but because you can always get it better. We plan to stay very focused on that.”
If you would like to listen to Aarni’s full interview with Joe, click here. Or, if you would like to find out learn how ProjectReady is helping drive digital transformation across the AECO, check out this article.