Hard numbers and facts are often what precipitate and drive change. Shakers in the construction industry, for example, know well the 2017 McKinsey study that blames a $1.6 trillion gap in potential earnings mainly on the industry’s reluctance to adopt new technology that could help bridge that.
And in the name of data, practitioners agree that once a particular technology is in place, it must show demonstrable benefits through actual metrics. “Anecdotal stories don’t drive change,” said David Wilkinson, senior industry strategy manager at Autodesk, on a recent media call. “This is the era of big data and big data will drive decisions and change. How will we drive performance in an industry that doesn’t really have performance metrics?”
Wilkinson asserts that once the industry has benchmarks, it can better see opportunities to drive it forward. “Without performance indicators, we’ll continue to be average,” he said. “We need objective standards to understand what ‘good’ looks like.”
7 process-based indicators
With those questions in mind, Autodesk recently commissioned Dodge Data & Analytics to identify and quantify seven key performance indicators (KPIs) of construction. Steve Jones, Senior Director of Industry Insights, at Dodge Data & Analytics, said that because construction is based on bids and projects, rather than on production or products, it is “notoriously difficult to effectively manage performance.”
What, then, is worth measuring, that is valuable to reducing risk and improving performance? And, further, how do companies establish forward-looking KPIs, rather than the more common backward-looking ones that are reactive rather than proactive?
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