Why does the construction industry need digital transformation?

With the rapid growth of the construction business, the procurement department has to process a large number of engineering change orders from design units, construction sites and suppliers on a daily basis, which usually involve material design drawings, construction details or order adjustments (such as adding or modifying drainage systems, roof structures, etc.). However, manual work is no longer enough to meet the large number of changes required by enterprises.

Before: The traditional manual operation mode

The Procurement and Development Department Specialist spends a lot of time extracting data from Outlook, checking Excel spreadsheets, and writing notification letters to distribute to the relevant responsible personnel. Not only that, such a process can easily lead to delays and errors, further delay the supply of materials and project schedules, and even affect customer satisfaction and the efficiency of capital recovery for enterprises, which have become important bottlenecks in the digital transformation of the construction industry.

There are several pain points associated with manually managing engineering change orders：

Pain point 1: Repetitive work is time-consuming	It takes more than 1 hour a day to check the Excel sheet data one by one, copy the contents from the communication history repeatedly, and compose an e-mail. At least 25 hours are wasted per month, and up to 210 hours of man-hours are lost per year, including comparing the status of the system with change orders, confirming contact information, and processing replacement requests.
Pain point 2: Missing data and delayed notifications	Repetitive operations increase the risk of missing data and notification errors, which often impact construction schedules, leading to material delays or overtime, further burdening departments.
Pain point 3: The efficiency of manual urging is low	Specialists need to manually contact workers or related personnel, but often encounter situations where they cannot be contacted or call to no avail.
Pain point 4: Customer Late Payment Risk	Delays in notification may result in customers not being able to confirm or make payments on time, further impacting the flow of funds.

After: RPA bot in three steps, easy to handle engineering change order management!

To address these issues, we introduced Power Automate to automate the management of the change order process by following the following steps:

1. Turn on Outlook to automatically check emails: Power Automate automatically starts Outlook every day to check the emails related to engineering change orders and extract the emails that need to be processed based on the preset filter conditions (such as keywords such as “drainage system modification notice” or “material adjustment confirmation” in the subject of the letter). For example, the customer’s unanswered construction drawing design adjustment request or the manufacturer’s unconfirmed notice of additional materials to avoid manual omissions or interpretation errors.
2. Open and read Excel data: The system automatically opens the Excel file of change order management, locates the specified worksheet, and filters out the list of unfilled units or vendors that have not yet confirmed the change items. Through programmed data reading, the system can accurately extract reminders such as “roof material change” and “construction progress delay confirmation”, and integrate them into the subsequent automation process, greatly reducing the time of manual data comparison.
3. Outlook email: According to the Excel filter results, the system automatically generates personalized email content for each unit or manufacturer, including specific messages such as “Drainage Pipe Material Modification Supplement Requirements” or “Construction Site Change Confirmation Reminder”. Through Outlook automatic sending, the format and content of emails are uniform, avoiding manual writing errors, and at the same time, multiple emails can be sent in batches to improve operation efficiency.

The new process requires no manual operation and only requires a specialist to monitor the execution results, greatly reducing tedious operations.

Import benefits: Take change management as an example

After the introduction of Power Automate, when a change order is received, the system can automatically complete the file download, classification and filing, and synchronous registration to the management system, which has brought significant results:

1. Time savings: The time spent processing change orders per day was reduced from 1 hour to 15 minutes. For example, the system automatically completes the download and registration of the “Drainage Pipe Material Change Notification”, saving about 17.5 hours per month, which is equivalent to saving 210 hours of valuable man-hours per year.
2. Improved accuracy: Automated processes effectively reduce the risk of human error. For example, it avoids the failure to notify the relevant departments in a timely manner due to manual omissions of “roof structure adjustment requirements”, which greatly improves the accuracy of notification.
3. Efficiency and transparency: Through data-based operation records, managers can quickly check the real-time status of “Construction Drawing Modification Request Processing Progress” or “Material Change Confirmation Notice”, and provide early warnings for unprocessed projects.
4. Focus on the core business: Procurement and development specialists are freed from tedious manual work and can devote more energy to high-value work such as “supplier coordination meetings” or “construction plan optimization suggestions” to further improve project quality and operational efficiency.

With the introduction of Power Automate, the management of engineering change orders has been transformed into an efficient and automated process, significantly improving processing accuracy and overall efficiency . This successful case shows the practical direction of digital transformation in the construction industry. In the future, if this application is extended to “construction plan adjustment” or “supplier evaluation and comparison”, it will further realize the intelligent management of the whole process and help the construction industry to improve its competitiveness and project delivery efficiency .

KSCC is a management consulting company in Taiwan. Our services include corporate in-house training, consulting, and leadership management.For more information about our corporate services, please feel free to visit our website: https://kscthinktank.com.tw/custom-training/ 

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