Integrated Automation Platforms in Project Management Improve Efficiency
Every so often a headline pops up with oh-so-shocking numbers from the infrastructure industry; this many projects delayed, that much cost overrun, these many millions lost because of failed or stalled projects, and so on. Statistics will be cited about disastrously expensive manpower and rocketing government spend on infrastructure etc., and it all sounds very sad, but the fact is that nobody is actually shocked.
Every city-dweller is familiar with the sight of a half-complete flyover that's been 'under construction' for the last three years, or a potholed highway that needs 'repairs' after every monsoon. What is really sad is that though there is a solution to all these delays and overruns, it's difficult to implement them because the industry still relies on manual project management methods. To put it in another way, the infra industry is under-automated and therefore impossible to standardise, monitor, or regulate with lasting effect.
In two decades of working with engineering organisations I've seen the industry's challenges and stressors up close. I've seen the missed deadlines that could have been easily avoided if the project manager had been alerted about the deviation before it snowballed into a delay. I've seen budgets spin out of control after a couple of equipment orders went awry because of a glitch in the supply chain (from which the budget couldn't recover because the profit margins were so slim). I've seen failed quality standards despite managers working overtime, and I've also seen underutilised manpower despite the bulk of budget going to manpower. So, what's the solution? It’s Integrated Digital technology.

To be fair, EPC is no stranger to software. CAD has been used in design for decades, email, office management, spreadsheets, and project management for almost as long. In recent years, we've even seen the rise of engineering-specific collaboration and data management tools like EDMS and the like. So why do we still have the problems? Because the software isn't integrated. Each application works in isolation, more or less, and it takes human effort to transfer data from one process to another, say from engineering to construction, from procurement to admin, from construction to any one of the many project stakeholders. Although at the micro-level, some processes and functions are automated at the macro-level, the bottlenecks continue because the inefficiencies have been masked, not resolved. Worse, it takes precious manpower to run and maintain each software system. And so, ROI can't be assessed objectively, even while the cost and disruption is glaringly obvious. The cost-benefit ratio simply doesn't ring true. No wonder EPC organisations are hanging back.
What's to be done? I'd say the first step is to acknowledge the unique nature of construction projects. Unlike the manufacturing process, which is essentially linear, the construction process is like a living organism with every organ working independently but as part of the larger whole; sometimes in parallel, sometimes in sequence, sometimes both. In this analogy project information (drawings, memos, schedules, budgets, reports, invoices, etc) are the project's 'blood' and the information management system is the circulatory system. If this circulatory system could be digitised, imagine how much 'healthier' the entire organism would be. (And how much happier we, the end-consumers of all those infra structures would be!). Because that's how EPC companies should view digital tech - as problem-solving, enterprise-level, business investments, not good-to-have tools to be squeezed into a departmental or project budget. The role such tech should play in EPC is holistic transformation towards the organisation's present profitability and future growth, not piecemeal improvements here and there.
Take planning for instance: with an integrated digital platform you'd get a secure common environment where everybody worked as a cohesive unit driven by the same process and using the same data, in real time. You'd be able to plan tasks and dependencies quickly, allocate labor, equipment, and materials effortlessly, and make decisions with confidence and near-zero dependency on manual 'intelligence'.
And if your system was really well-integrated, that is, your planning process was connected with other processes like budgeting within the same software, you'd be able to identify pivotal tasks that influenced the project timeline and prioritise them. You'd even be able to address issues like land-acquisition, site preparation, design approvals, and other construction pre-requisites before they became stumbling blocks.
A Case Study
Meghalayan Age Limited, a state government company in Meghalaya, focuses on developing and maintaining bankable infrastructure projects in the tourism sector. Their initiatives include building 5 accommodation units with a total of 148 rooms and 78-room rural accommodation units across seven villages to promote eco-tourism. Additionally, they are constructing 114 km of connecting roads and the Shillong Viewpoint Ropeway project, which features a 0.95-kilometer ropeway.
Meghalayan Age Limited employs the Wrench SmartProject PMIS, which integrates project schedules and provides dashboards and S-curves for visual progress tracking. This ensures robust project monitoring to meet timelines and quality standards, along with meticulous engineering oversight to address technical requirements.
All of which is to say: an integrated digital system lets you plan and monitor construction work not just faster but more effectively because it feeds you the right data to begin with. This would let you work proactively instead of reactively - the ultimate gamechanger. You could anticipate delays before they happened, and set up contingency plans and recovery strategies to get back on track quickly.
Don't forget safety. We've all read the tragic stories of workers getting killed on infrastructure projects. A digital system helps avoid such tragedies by enforcing safety protocols, that is, making it impossible to proceed unless the protocols are followed. A digital system cannot be tricked, forgotten, bribed, ignored - think of the advantages! Plus, it goes without saying in the post-Covid period that digital communication and coordination mechanisms are far better and the reason why cloud-based collaboration is on the rise in every industry.
These are but a few examples of how integrated project management has the potential to change the industry at its core. But they're all just different facets of the fundamental point, namely: that automation creates efficiency by optimising (not replacing) human effort and should therefore be welcomed with open arms by any organisation seeking to improve its project delivery record. My hope is that the EPC industry will accelerate its adoption of integrated digital technology, recognising it as the only way to solve its systemic inefficiencies at the root instead of symptomatically.