Diales Compendium Issue 3 - Flipbook - Page 14
Time to reflect
When I was asked to provide an article for the Diales
anniversary Digest, I was reticent. Mr Battrick, a long-time
colleague, and all-round good chap, in his usual encouraging
words, advised that this was an opportunity to set out an
article that would be read for possibly the next few years on
the basis that Driver Trett still receives communications in
relation to the last Diales Digest issued back in April 2018,
some four years ago.
However, as a delay expert I am always conscious that it is
difficult to write articles about delay and more specifically
the analysis of delay, given the fact that we still have many
forms of Contract, different methodologies, very different
quality levels of planning on Projects (and as-built data) and
as a consequence, numerous ways to analyse delay. It is no
surprise that the Society of Construction Protocol and the
numerous AACE® International Recommended Practices
documents provide different ways to analyse delay.
The comment that the Diales Digest may be read for (hopefully
at least a few) years to come made me think about “time” in
a more prosaic manner. Firstly, where has all the time gone?
I started as an apprentice in NEI Parsons – a behemoth of
the power industry in the 1970s and 1980s. I then moved
to the AMEC Offshore at Wallsend. Again, this was a huge
fabrication yard at the forefront of oil rig / FPSO fabrication.
From there I went onto McNulty Offshore, working on some
of the most complex FPSOs and modules, including the
Anasuria and the Banff disputes - which ultimately led me
to consultancy.
David Wileman
Diales Delay Expert
What will the future hold for planners
and delay experts in general?
The following are my thoughts as to how planning and delay
analysis will progress in the ensuing years:
1. 4D assessment of delay – as software is becoming
increasingly cheap and flexible, the link between Project 3D
models and the programme (both in terms of as-planned
and as-built) will increase the regularity when this form of
assessment is utilised and finds its way into disputes.
2. Recording ‘as-built’ data through the use of fixed cameras
and live stream video – I have had the pleasure of preparing
an as-built programme using photographic evidence that was
retained to show the construction of the external envelope of
the building in question. The quality of the data allowed, by
way of example, every lift of each section of the shuttering to
be easily determined.
3. Artificial Intelligence - development of planned
programmes, based on data from past projects, should
provide a much higher degree of confidence in the forecast
programmes.
4. Interactive reports - capable of being prepared to allow
the reader to control certain aspects of the report to, by way
of example, allow the reader through animation to instantly
see the effect of an event on the programme.
Whilst working at these companies I had the fortune of
becoming a planner, at the start of the computerised planning
era. By mid-1980s, the planning office at NEI Parsons took
delivery of a state-of-the-art colour plotter. In the late 1980s
and 1990s I was neck deep in Artemis programming. I do not
know one planner who used Artemis in these decades that
does not remember it fondly. Then, by the mid ‘noughties’, I
started to work on projects that were planned on Primavera
P6, Powerproject and Microsoft Project software packages,
to name but a few.
5. Programmes - will be prepared by project managers on
handheld tablets, and the hand drawn programme will then
be capable of being incorporated into the planning software.
Times change. Software changes. Knowledge changes.
However, there is one thing that does not change, and that
is change itself. I have witnessed substantial developments
in the planning industry over the last 35 years, but I imagine
these will pale in comparison to what will be achieved in the
next 35 years.
8. The revision of productivity norms by using exo-skeletons.
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6. Increased use of drones - to undertake reviews of works
not readily accessible and wholesale assessments of site
progress.
7. Status snapshots / progress updates - of rooms taken
using 3D imaging techniques.
9. The use of autonomous robots to walk through sites,
continuously capturing progress status and 3D imagery; and,
10. The impact of 3D printing replacing procured materials.