Balfour Beatty turn to AWS & Procure on Digital Transformati

When British-based construction giant Balfour Beatty’s ongoing expansion began to slow, the company found itself butting up against a wall – not of brick, as one might expect, but of paper. In an increasingly competitive and modernised marketplace it discovered it had reached a point at which paper-based construction processes could take it no further.

Jeff Pistor, Director, Construction Technology, Balfour Beatty asked the pertinent question: “What was our work like before the internet and cloud? To put it simply, a lot of paperwork. But today, everything has changed.” 

Through big data, AI and digital technologies, Balfour Beatty has transformed productivity levels, made workplaces safer, and also driven progress towards both its own and its customers’ carbon reduction commitments.

It began its transformation back in 2018, when it established a so-called ‘data lake’ – a secure, central repository of data and information from across Balfour Beatty. 

Today, it uses this to power its digital toolset, to bring supply chain partners into its digital ecosystem and to generate the real-time data it needs to manage and deliver works, safely and sustainably.

The change project now supports the automation of mundane tasks and processes, allowing its people to focus on the kind of creative and skilled work that technology cannot perform. 

Balfour Beatty’s transformation partners were Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Procore Technologies.

Procore’s scalable cloud-based construction management platform aggregates, organises and clarifies project data in a collaborative virtual space that puts everyone on the same page. 

Carrie Griffiths, Procure’s Global Strategic Customer Success VP, says that “as soon as Balfour Beatty brought us in we determined exactly what their needs were: to remove all of these inefficiencies and have everyone working from the same data.”

Add to this AWS’s cloud solution, and Balfour Beatty was able to access real-time project data, and enjoy decision-making fluidity and actionable project analytics. 

“Digital processes keep Balfour Beatty nimble and innovative while lowering risk across the portfolio,” Griffiths adds.

Chris Bober is Worldwide Go To Market Specialist for Amazon Web Services, but at the time of the Balfour Beatty project was AWS Global Partner Lead, Engineering Construction & Real Estate.

“Thanks to the cloud, Balfour Beatty can easily spin-off hundreds, or even thousands of servers in seconds,” he says. “With AWS for operations management, we were easily able to intervene on the construction side.”

Kasey Bevans, CIO Balfour Beatty, says that going digital has “made our lives a lot easier”. 

She adds: “When we were working on documents, responses could take weeks. They then had to be transferred to the right people to study and validate them. It was far from efficient. We knew there had to be a better way to do things. 

“Thanks to Procore and AWS, we have faster access to information. 

We can now better understand the health of our project.”

She adds: “We selected AWS as our cloud service provider because they are one of the leading players in that industry. We also learned AWS is technology-agnostic, so no matter what systems or tools or technology we were working with, AWS would be able to integrate with it."

Bevans stresses that not all of those involved in product development and design come from technology backgrounds, but rather, are people “who understand our industry”.

Jeff Pistor explains that, in real terms, this understanding was focused around reducing the time Balfour’s people spent on administrative tasks. “If they can go home 20 minutes earlier every evening, then we have succeeded. These are the changes brought about by the digitalization of construction sites.” 

On a final note, Kasey Bevans adds that, at a time that the construction world is entering a new era “Balfour Beatty is proud to lead the way”.

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