2019Case19BAMIreland

72 L EAN C ONSTRUCTION I RELAND A NNUAL B OOK OF C ASES 2019 Case 19 – BAM Ireland Operating successfully for over 60 years, the bedrock of BAM’s success has always been an understanding of our cl ients’ needs and a wi l l ingness to deliver innovative solutions that ensure cost savings and surpass environmental expectations. BAM Ireland is the top Civil Engineering company in Ireland, and in the top 2 of the country’s largest construction businesses. Operating across all construction sectors and throughout the complete project lifecycle, our principal activities are bui lding contract ing and civi l engineering in the public, private, and PPP sectors. Other activities include faci l i t ies management , proper ty development, and rail infrastructure. It i s BAM’s mi ss ion to bui ld sustainable environments that enhance people’s lives by enabling the right people to capitalise on state-of-the-art knowledge, resources , and digi tal technologies, whilst also providing solutions across the total construction l i fecycle for BAM’s cl ients and generating maximum value for its stakeholders . We are a member operating company (OpCo) of Royal BAM Group of the Netherlands, a stock market listed PLC answerable for performance, which has a turnover of € 8Billion and employs approx. 23000 people worldwide. At BAM we are building the present while creating a sustainable future for all. C O M P A N Y W E B S I T E OVERVIEW & BACKGROUND TO THE LEAN INITIATIVE This case study explores how Artificial Intelligence (AI) deploys Lean culture to the construction environment. BAM Ireland recogni ses the value of innovat ion and that cont inuous innovation and improvement through technology is the path to our success in the future. Three years ago, BAM Ireland was selected as part of the pilot for a new software from Autodesk on thei r then f ledgl ing “B360 Next Generation” platform. During this pi lot , BAM Ireland’s Digi tal Construction Team worked closely with Autodesk’s developers on the application that has now been released as “B360 Construction IQ”, Autodesk’s application of AI for the construction industry. AI is becoming more commonplace in our everyday lives, and it is behind many of the technologies like predictive text that we may now take for granted. Construction IQ utilises “Machine Learning” and “Natural Language Process ing” across the BIM 360 platform to identify high-risk issues that impact cost, schedule, quality, and safety, as well as to identify patterns across the project por t fol io. Identification of patterns within our projects has enabled us to more readily identify some of the sources of waste in our existing processes and to then act as a tool to monitor any implemented improvements. LEAN INITIATIVE UNDERTAKEN – LEAN THINKING, TOOLS, TECHNIQUES www.bamcontractors.ie AUTHOR Simon Tritschler Lean Thinking Lean thinking at BAM Group is being applied in the more traditional context of Lean manufacturing. For example, BAM Nuttall in the UK operate a road sign manufacturing division that runs the full range of Lean tools for their daily operations, including, for example, 5S, Value Stream Mapping, Morning meetings, and Kanban. Additionally, there are several internal Six-Sigma exper ts , Lean handbooks and working groups. Yet despite our best efforts, the adoption of Lean within the construction industry is still playing catch-up with manufacturing in the adoption of Lean culture. There is a growing trend toward Design For Manufacture and Assembly (DFMA) – al so known as “Of fs i te Manufacture” – where the construction industry is moving from tradi t ional ons i te construct ion to factory construction, logistics, and onsite assembly, along with all the benefits this will bring. We already utilise offsite manufacture for modular construction, for example in bathroom pods, and companies such as Ikea and Katerra are currently offering complete finished structures as modular solutions. But we are not there just yet – until we have taken that journey, the majority of our projects are still traditionally bui lt and this means that not al l of the Lean tools developed for manufacturing are directly applicable to construction. The Lean fundamentals of removing waste and increasing value are, however, completely applicable, and we must start from these fundamentals to ensure that the tools we implement develop in line with our needs and the needs of our customers. Tools In our entry to this publication in 2018, we went through the application of BIM as a means to introduce Lean thinking “indirectly” into the construction workplace. COMPANY OVERVIEW