ISG Construction app promises £1m savings following trial at UBS London HQ

Contractor ISG has been trialling a new construction app that it claims will save construction managers up to 1.5 hours a day on site and equate to a £1m saving in non-productive time.

The company is about to release the findings of an experiment it conducted at the new £125m headquarters of UBS at 5 Broadgate Street. The 12-storey building has three trading floors and will house up to 6,000 people.   

The Construct app was trialled on the 700,000 sq ft project and produced a daily administrative saving of 1.5 hours per employee, around 25% of their time.

This is the first time the app has been piloted on an entire project. ISG has been working with Tech City developer Construct Technologies on the project.

The app works as an information and process management system for on-site construction work, aiming to make sites completely paperless and greatly reduce costs and inefficiencies. The app makes sure managers have all the information they need to hand and therefore save time on trips back and forth to the office.

It makes all of a company’s forms, processes, tasks, snags, drawings, files and programme details available instantly on a user’s mobile device or tablet. This ensures that they always have the latest information available to update at all times. It also works when a user is offline.

By tailoring itself to the way teams already work, it reduces the need to learn new processes and systems.

The app works as an information and process management system

While there are other similar construction time-saving apps in the market already, according to the developers this has been mainly confined to aspects such as making a site paperless with snagging or health & safety apps. With Construct it covers all aspects of a company’s information and process flows in a project.

Matt Blowers, managing director of ISG’s UK fit-out business, said: “We took an ambitious approach when we trialled the Construct app on one of the UK’s largest ever fit-out projects at 5 Broadgate – but the results clearly demonstrate the wider capacity for this technology to ratchet up productivity and save the industry hundreds of millions of pounds.

“The built environment sector has been languishing behind many other industries when it comes to improvements in productivity, which has risen just 1.4% in the past 20 years. This trend cannot continue into the future and we’re absolutely committed as a business to explore every new technology and working methodology that can help us raise our game and that of the industry as a whole.”

Anthony Erwin, founder of Construct Technologies, explained to CM: “Basically the app is a one-stop-shop for an entire complex project. There are several other apps out there, but they are mostly for snagging.

“There’s no other app that does everything for construction managers and progresses information. Filling in forms, any workflow, gives access to all information and sign off.”

He added: “This app is all about the data, and will help companies gain insights into their productivity and how better to complete a project.”

The app was originally launched around 12 months ago, but Construct Technologies is aiming for a wider rollout in the next year. The basic charge for the app is £30 per user a month, however this can be adapted for different companies and individual projects.

As well as ISG, Erwin said they have been working with a number of smaller construction companies and he hoped to expand the app’s services in the future.

This article first appeared on Construction Manager.

The app is a one-stop-shop for an entire complex project. There’s no other app that does everything for construction managers and progresses information. Filling in forms, any workflow, gives access to all information and sign off.– Anthony Erwin, Construct Technologies