Infrastructure construction firm McConnell Dowell has selected Orange Business Services to design a customised, smart and scalable IOT solution to enable construction sites to collect and report on real-time information.

Data to be gathered and processed includes that which pertains to heavy machinery utilisation and asset tracking, to enable smarter decision making for operational efficiency, time saving and cost reductions.

According to a media statement released by the companies, the construction industry faces significant business and technology challenges. These include equipment and skilled labour shortages, increasingly short project schedules and rising costs of infrastructure delivery.

IOT will allow construction sites to leverage real-time data feeds to tackle these issues head on.

Co-innovation led Orange and McConnell Dowell to co-create use case applications from innovation and ideation to platform deployment.

“Orange created a flexible, scalable IOT platform to collect, report and visualise real-time information over a private IOT network, focusing on digitising manual and paper-centric processes and removing manual tasks from the construction site. Prior to this smart approach, McConnell Dowell could only access reports that were manually collated from physically captured data, which was both time consuming and inconsistent.”

With the Orange IOT platform, McConnell Dowell can now access multiple devices and sensors collecting environmental data and measure asset utilisation spread across construction sites to harvest data.

This is then sent across a LoRa low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) to the company for analysis, correlating with other environmental data.

Via real time dashboards, McConnell Dowell can collect telemetry data such as machine movements and track assets onsite allowing project teams to assess efficiency of machine use and report on individual asset utilisation.

McConnell Dowell can also track material such as concrete panels from the manufacturer through transportation and installation. On site they can then identify each individual panel and take smart decisions, avoiding incorrect placement, rework and project delays.

More use cases, business applications and new construction site roll outs are planned across the business.

“Infrastructure delivery costs are rising by 8% per annum. Efficient project management directly impacts our business performance. We are focused on embedding technology in our processes and Orange Business Services proved to be an ideal innovation partner. We are now working jointly to develop solutions that can be used at various project locations for different use cases. Together, we are future-proofing our business through agile, scalable and smart solutions that streamline business insights,” said Rhys Craigie, Alliance Systems Manager, McConnell Dowell.

Kevin Griffen, Managing Director, Australasia, Orange Business Services, said: “We take pride in working with organisations who lead their industry in driving digital transformation and continuous innovation. McConnell Dowell is revolutionising the way infrastructure construction projects have been managed over the decades. We look forward to co-innovating with them to drive robust IOT-enabled ecosystems for large scale projects that touch millions of lives globally.”