Clare Kovacs is the National Digital Rehearsal Lead at MWH Treatment and Chair of BIM4Water.

From both an organisational (MWH Treatment) and Water Sector (BIM4Water) perspective; a big challenge they have faced has been how to communicate information to the majority in a format that is understandable, engaging, intelligent and accurate.

Digital delivery is an enabler to realising this, through the power of visualisation and data and analytics, it drives innovation and collaborative working practices.

She explains more in the following guest blog.

As an organisation we looked at our internal systems and processes and realised we, like most followed a traditional engineering contractors’ format, regarding the way we presented information, how we delivered things like site inductions and even the human resources we were hiring. And as expected we achieved the same outcomes as most of our competitors. A pivotal moment came when we decided that digital would sit at the centre of project delivery from project initiation through to handover. MWH Treatment saw the value, benefits, and efficiencies this could enable us to realise. But with it came the challenge of change management and digital transformation, this comes with time, and patience. Over a period, the organisation has navigated their way through these key phases:

  • Defining a clear vision
  • Defining a clear Strategy
  • Deploying tactics
  • Establishing leadership
  • Driving and adopting collaboration
  • Understanding accountability
  • Deploying people led digitalisation

The success has come from recruiting the right people, investing in dedicated offline resources to drive adoption and support our engineering and operational teams. We have invested in recruiting individuals from alternative career backgrounds in support of driving trans-engineering diversity. This includes investing in individuals from gaming and development, manufacturing and productisation, data scientists and visualisation backgrounds.

Having a clear digital delivery approach mandated across all projects, has allowed to understand, and invest in the training requirements of both our engineering and operational teams. Digital adoption requires the right support framework, if a digital tool is deployed and it is not utilised in the first week it will fail to gain further traction.

It is important to create a need from delivery for a given digital tool or process. One positive disruptor challenge we set ourselves was to review how site inductions are presented, delivered, and received on our live sites and how can we get digital tools out to those with boots on the ground. As background research we identified that site inductions were being delivered in an analogue format. The content of the induction was unengaging and showed mark ups of site layouts flagging key information points. The culture and the behaviour of the site induction process was disengaging and did overcome challenges of language barriers, reading and writing abilities and other neurodiversity issues. But fundamentally we needed to ensure that whatever the solution to digitalise the induction was remained true to being a health and safety mandatory induction.

Our proposed solution was mView+ an interactive, visually engaging digital site induction tool. The vision was to communicate a project in its entirety in one place at the right time, empowering individuals with the information to make smarter safer decisions as they step out on site. This was achieved by repurposing the wealth of project data already developed for better outcomes. And what it resulted in was making every individual on site feeling informed, directed, and invested in.

mView+ utilises a gaming engine to take a combination of 3D and 4D models to show phases of works to match the real time site activities, including the changing temporary works and risk landscape. It layers environmental, health and safety and operational interface data whilst clearly flagging logistical routes on and to site, safe working zones and critical safety details such as first aid points, defibrillator locations, routes to hospital; all the safety information that would be stored away in a Construction Phase Plane. It has mandated checkpoints and a quiz at the end to validate ones understanding of the content delivered.

What was achieved was a new lease of energy and engagement, feedback from individuals were that they felt like they knew the site already before walking out, they could understand the risks in a new context and had a broader understanding of what other contractors were doing at the same time and therefore could communicate in a more informed way. We provided a tool that gave clarity of scope, clear roles and responsibilities and a sense of pride in what each individual person’s piece of work was achieving for the wider project.  This highlights the value and shift in culture and behaviour that can be achieved through digital applications. It also shows the importance of pulling together project data to provide individuals with a holistic view of the project, so they are better equipped.

To summarise, review the data readily available and identify opportunities on how to utilise information intelligently for better outcomes. Start on a small-scale positive disruptor, which has the pull from engineering and operations and deploy with the right support framework. Benefits and behavioural changes are achieved by investing in digital delivery. Remember it’s the right tools and the right time for the right people. Use visualisation to unlock innovation through effective collaboration.

Clare Kovacs is the National Digital Rehearsal Lead at MWH Treatment. She has a strong background in project delivery, across all facets of water industry engineering projects including project management, planning, digital rehearsal and construction, with a broad and in depth understanding of the project lifecycle. Clare previously chaired the BIM4Water 4D task group before being elected as Chair of BIM4Water in June 2022.