Objectives of the service
Image credit: Shutter Stock, Project: mylo
The construction industry is far behind today’s digital trends. With an ever-growing marketplace of complex projects with high-risk engagement, businesses can struggle to find the head space to reimagine a more unified delivery process that might involve less self-preservation and more collaboration.
Over 90% of construction projects are affected by delays, and all forms of delay come at a cost. The range of delay challenges can vary wildly, but the costs will be suffered somewhere, and this can lead to a stressful and hostile approach to correcting the course. Disjointed data-collection affects clarity of structure, quality, progress management, best-practice safety, and much more.
Our software reaches beyond the 5% of reporting management, and harvests data from every single resource, creating a hyper-informed community with a unified target. By unlocking the true value of the individual we drive inherent quality and timely delivery.
Our objective is to prove we can measure risk in real time using an unbiased, fact-based system of work that rewards every individual and / or business that performs to standard.
Users and their needs
Strong bonds can develop within the construction industry’s sub-communities due to the intensity that often exists in project delivery mode.
The demonstrator project has a particular focus on the engagement of the frontline workforce, where we believe the biggest changes to the industry’s thinking are yet to be made. Fixing teams, general labour, and associated field management roles will be engaging with the application. Identified user needs include:
- Better planning and delivery structure
- Fast access to information in the live environment
- Clear and current direction on workflow for individuals
- The ability to push frontline data back through the system in real time
- Visibility of real time earnings
- Centralised communication and live problem solving
- Reliable connectivity
- Better informed risk mitigation techniques
- Concise and relevant live reporting
- A unified and inclusive safety network
Challenges will include the management of ever-changing delivery timeframes (often driven by third parties), and sufficient engagement of the users to drive the target data. Beyond this, it will be imperative that the connectivity solution performs with sufficient resilience.
The demonstrator project will be live on site from May 2021, for a period of 3 months.
Service/ system concept
mylo provides a cloud hosted SaaS (Software as a Service) application for construction companies to manage the project delivery process.
To ensure that on-site workers adopt mylo, network connectivity on site will be reliable, fast, and secure even in blackspots which are prohibitively expensive to serve with current technology. To achieve this, a dedicated local network will be provisioned on each site backed by a satcom receiver / link and Wi-Fi access points.
Image credit: LLO Ltd Project: mylo
The application consists of the following modules:
- A web application for project administration, planning, and reporting, that can be accessed by all associated participants.
- A mobile application to be used by site-based teams to evidence completed work, record delay data, create and claim variations, problem solve in real time, and monitor QA (Quality Assessment) gatekeeping.
- Backend services will integrate the applications and propagate data within mylo.
The application will be optimized to meet agreed performance and non-functional requirements. The mobile application will be tuned to ensure that the on-site fixing teams can adopt mylo without introducing any impediment to their current day to day tasks, allowing users to view assignment data or to claim for completed work in a timely fashion.
Space Added Value
The mylo product is tasked with the provision of a reliable and cost-effective ISP (Internet Service Provider) for its clients, that covers every inch of a live construction site. Problems with terrestrial options can occur whether a project is based on a brownfield site with generally low coverage, or in the centre of a city with high levels of signal disruption.
Our solution overcomes the issues by first supplying a dedicated site-based receiver that connects to a geostationary earth orbit (GEO) satellite. The signal is pushed through a gateway cabinet and distributed across the site via a Wi-Fi network.
mylo’s mobile applications have a requirement to load relatively small packets of data and have been designed to do so outside of the users’ attention by caching pre-planned data in advance of the request, and uploading data outside of the user’s engagement, delivering a seamless experience. With no requirement for streaming, and the ability to restrict the connection within the mylo firewall, we are able to overcome the latency issues that are typically associated with GEO satellites.
Our solution is more reliable, more flexible, and far more cost effective than its terrestrial counterpart.
Current Status
The mylo pilot to manage a building project on a major construction site in central London has been completed. The objectives, including to validate that a satcoms solution could provide a reliable and consistent connection for mylo were proven, validated successfully by the KPI metrics and confirmed by our pilot partners.
The marketing and sales strategies have been agreed and brand assets finalised. The mylo marketing (web) site and all social media channels have been prepared and are available to be published. The mylo application is available for download in both the App and Google Play Stores.
The project completed the Final Review with ESA in mid-October 2021 and has now entered the commercial market.