LaGuardia Airport Terminal B has been a success for Skanska and the Port Authority. Photo courtesy of Skanska USA Building Co. and Raise Robotics

Skanska USA Building Co. has an eight-step tech enablement process that it uses to evaluate all its new technologies, which it deployed in the construction of the LaGuardia Airport Terminal B redevelopment in New York City. Skanska selected cmBuilder, a platform that offers interactive site simulations, and rolled it out to its entire team to put it through its paces.

Danielle O’Connell, Skanska’s senior director of emerging technology, says one problem for a contractor as large as Skanska is that several teams will all want to use different tech platforms.

“Are we still using this tool? Who’s using it? Where are they? What projects are they on? Things like that,” she says. “This has helped us get a better idea of who’s piloting what and where. [The eight-step plan] allows us to connect teams across the country who may have similar challenges, and then they can talk to each other.”

Danielle O’Connell

Skanska piloted the 3D logistics platform on the LaGuardia Airport project and got positive feedback from the pilot, allowing the company to secure internal approval to expand the wider use of cmBuilder across multiple projects.

The eight steps in the Skanska method are fairly straightforward: define a problem; check for sanctions or roadblocks to using new technology; funding and pilot approval; vendor qualifications; contracting, pilot kickoff; pilot evaluation and an organization-wide recommendation.

“Then we are thinking about scaling—another reason this process is in place is to look at what makes sense and does it only make sense for a certain project type in a certain geography,” O’Connell says. “Is this something we want to scale across the enterprise?”

Skanska says cmBuilder was a local success because many of the functions used by the teams working on the project were previously on PDFs that could be united in a web-based platform more accessible to project stakeholders.

“The whole idea was to democratize this 4D logistics planning; we’re using 3D models, and we were potentially using animations to show phasing and logistics and communicate what’s happening around the job site,” she says.

After feedback and communication with the vendor and the teams, cmBuilder was adopted and rolled out to other projects. There was immediate buy-in because logistics was a pain point across the board.

“Megaprojects that are multiyear offer an opportunity to do R & D on technology,” Skanska Vice President of Emerging Technologies Michael Zeppieri says. “This is a low margins business … technology is still perceived as an additive cost, and it can be very hard to justify … unless it’s one of these projects that are already in that headspace of trying something.”