On Nov 13, 2019 in Seattle chatting over a couple of pints of IPA, Pete and I were strategizing on what steps we should take in engaging a specific client with innovation in construction. The approach of presenting a technology based solution to the staff to the central headquarters we both agreed would not work. Why? Because any good idea would be a wasted effort as the corporate bureaucracy would attempt to take over the idea to preserve their fiefdoms of power and control on how things should be done and many other reasons.
Even the executive at the client who we both know agrees coming in as an outside innovator will not work. So we shifted the problem to what could we pitch as a budget that would get approval for an innovation project in the field far away from corporate. Being isolated for innovation works as demonstrated by Xerox PARC, Lockheed Skunkworks, and many other stealth developments.
When an innovative project gets big, keeping the bureaucracy away is a significant investment in budget and resources. So, we asked what is the problem that needs to be solved that the bureaucracy would ignore. That is what got us to see another path to take, but we did spend a of time on what I will call the well worn path.
This worn path is built over decades of what has worked in the past in what you do in the present and future. We started down this path in 2015 and looked at what we could do better. Build a mobile android app with AWS could services. We used a graph database approach to create the relationships with the data, and after using various AWS services, our developers built their own graph database in 2015. In 2017, AWS announced its graph database Neptune which we would probably use now, but those SW developers have long moved on to other efforts.
In 2017 is when we had everything in the Mobile app done which we called “Elysios.” It had been tested at one of Chris Heger’s construction projects. We had all thumbs up to go forward. This is the version that we discussed with one of the clients Pete, Chris, and I know of as one of the innovative teams in data center construction.
But the presentation did not go well. After two weeks of reflecting, the reason why it did not work became clear. The problem is the assumption of workers wanted innovation in construction is invalid. Many people are like 70 year old people who want to keep driving a Ford pick up truck, or Chevy, or Dodge. They have habits, behaviors which are the way they do things. This means even if a Mobile app is perfect and free, there will be signification number of workers who will not use the Mobile App Elysios. There needs to be a critical mass of users across all the trades to create a useful amount of information to support innovation. Even if 10% are not using the mobile app and they are in critical functions it can compromise the team’s innovation.
On that day on Nov 13, 2019, nine years after Pete and I connected on LinkedIn we figured out the better path. In Summer of 2020 is when we tested the concepts on a test group. A small group of UW construction management summer interns were presented the ideas, and they loved it. We cheated a bit in that we used Fortnite as a way to explain the different paths that could be taken.
Chatting with these summer interns gave us so much insight on the potential of taking the other path.
