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Construction Giant Skanska Using Cloud As Foundation For Growth

Oracle

Even though digital pioneers aren’t pounding on construction companies like they are in other industries, Swedish building giant Skanska knows it must go high tech in a big way—adopting smart sensors, cloud-based data analytics, green building design, robotics, and the like.

“We’re really on the brink of doing what other industries have done—using technology in a much more production-oriented way, and including that in our offerings,” says Peter Bjork, Skanska vice president of information systems strategies. “At Skanska we believe that putting technology into what we do can change the market.”

Founded in 1887, Skanska is one of the world’s leading project development and construction groups, with expertise in commercial and residential projects and public-private partnerships. It entered the US commercial property development market in 2009 and plans to expand further into the US this year, emphasizing quality, green construction, work safety, and business ethics. It employs 60,000 people across Europe, the US, and Latin America.

Skanska traditionally has owned its IT infrastructure, much of which has existed in silos because the company maintains operating units worldwide, and because most of its work processes, such as sourcing materials, are local.

Cloud-First Strategy

Today, however, the company is starting to adopt cloud technologies to compete more effectively on new bids, attract the right kind of engineering and construction talent, and make its employees safer and more effective at construction sites. “Our current strategy is cloud first,” Bjork says.

For example, a cloud-based data analytics application, Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service, is helping Skanska manage information about its business, Bjork says. There is also a potential to include such information as the cost and availability of components, building energy efficiency and production of pollutants, and total cost of ownership for the contractors during the bidding process. Its next step would be to provide owners with information about the value of their buildings before the first spade hits the ground.

Such analytics lead to the use of more-energy-efficient building materials and “less hazardous chemicals” during construction, Bjork says. Skanska is now using a type of moss on building rooftops that purifies rain water before it goes into the drainage system, and it’s implanting beehives to help pollinate flowers in the area. “The only way to do those kinds of things is to get involved with our customers early in their process, understand their goals and use our experience and knowledge to influence the way things are designed,” he says.

Analytics is also used in Skanska to build internal business cases for expanding into certain geographies and market segments, by taking a wide range of economic indicators into account, Bjork says.

The company is also embedding more technologies into its buildings and other infrastructure. Those include sensors in buildings that regulate energy consumption and sensors built into roadways that can be used for a variety of purposes. For instance, Skanska is involved in a pilot project for self-driving buses and trucks in Sweden.

Skanska also sees the opportunity to replace a lot of dangerous manual work with drones, robotics, and other forms of automation. For example, for some projects the company is using drones instead of dispatching workers to stand on the shoulders of highways with surveying sticks and tripods. The outcome is faster—days instead of months, Bjork says—and the risk of accidents is much less.

The company also is testing the use of robots to bend rebar embedded in concrete, and the use of mobile, cloud-based technology to keep workers out of danger on construction sites. “Building sites have a lot of heavy equipment such as cranes and bulldozers, and holes in the ground, and we can use technology to warn people when they are in a danger zone,” Bjork says.