It’s easy to see how digitalisation has changed so many aspects of our personal and business lives. When was the last time you picked up the phone to order a taxi, for example? Quite a while, I would be willing to bet!
However, it’s worth reflecting how far behind our industry – the construction and cranes sector – is when it comes to digitalisation. By this, I mean the use of digital technologies to change a business model and drive new revenue and value-producing opportunities. It is the process of moving to a digital business.
So why do I say our sector lags behind? Before I started my own digital business, MyCrane — which offers an online crane rental platform, among other things – I did a lot of research on this topic. I was startled by the extent to which we are collectively missing out by not investing more in digital.
Valued at $10 trillion, the global construction industry is enormous, and represents 13% of the entire world’s gross domestic product (GDP). In an industry this size, the opportunities for digitalisation are huge.
But according to a recent report by management consulting firm FMI Corporation and Autodesk Inc, we are failing to maximise the opportunity. In its 2021 survey of 3,900 professionals across the global construction industry, called ‘Harnessing the Data Advantage in Construction’, FMI and Autodesk attributed a $1.85 trillion opportunity loss owing to the use of “bad data”.
Such bad data, the firms explained, represents information that is inaccurate, incomplete, inconsistent, or untimely, and can’t be used to drive actionable insights.
Conversely, the study found that respondents who had digital strategies in place to collect, manage and analyse useable data reported benefits including “fewer project delays and overruns, less rework, fewer change orders and reduced safety incidents”.
Jay Bowman, research and analytics lead at FMI, warned that without data strategies in place, the construction industry is “leaving significant amounts of money and opportunity on the table”.
For our own part, MyCrane strives to improve the way the construction sector does business, in particular regarding the crane rental procurement process, which is outdated and complicated for all parties. We have introduced the world’s first online crane rental platform, which is free to use for both customers and crane rental companies. This means the customer does not have to waste time contacting multiple crane rental companies, making phone calls, chasing response to RFPs, clarifying quotations that are not clear, and so on.
For the first time, customers can log on to MyCrane and submit the details of their lifting requirements. Then, registered crane companies respond with their proposals, allowing the customer to quickly and easily accept their chosen commercial offer (all online). No more phone calls, no more trying to work out if quotations are directly comparable. Most recently, we announced the addition of a number of new cranes to the platform, including boom trucks, crane manipulators/ crane arm, man lifts, mini cranes, cherry pickers, aerial platforms and hydraulic gantry systems. This is in addition to crawler, mobile or tower cranes, which were already available. We now offer cranes with a capacity of between 100kg and 750 tonnes and, by the end of the year, all types of cranes will be available on the MyCrane platform.
Staying with the theme of digitalisation, another unique feature we offer is our Selector tool – the first of its kind to be offered free on a non-commercial basis – to help users find the right crane for their lift. We launched this tool after discovering that many companies are still using physical crane charts, which are no longer required in 2022.
MyCrane has been in operation for less than one year, and our progress has been remarkable. We have already announced the appointment of franchisees, and therefore the start of operations, in the UAE, Oman, Qatar, India, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, the UK, and three countries in South East Asia: Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia. Further global expansion will be announced in the coming months.
With the daily pressures of business and personal life, it’s easy to keep doing “business as usual”. But, I invite you to take a moment to consider how we can, together, make life easier for those of us working in the world of construction.
The global pandemic provided an opportunity for me to take stock, stop doing “business as usual” and launch MyCrane. I would be glad to hear from any PMV readers who wish to comment on this subject, or have their own ideas to drive the digitalisation agenda. At MyCrane, we intend to play a leading role in making the construction industry more efficient, more successful and more profitable.