Digitization in the construction industry: a conversation with Van Mourik Bouw and TÜV Nord Nederland
On November 20 and 21, 2024, we were at DigiBouw, the event about the digitalization of the construction sector in the Jaarbeurs in Utrecht. Here we spoke with various parties about the construction chain and how digitalization makes their work easier, but also what challenges these changes present. We specifically discussed this topic with Nicole van Est (NvE), work planner and KAM coordinator at Van Mourik Bouw and Rosan van Erp (RvE), Lead auditor SPR and Construction quality at TÜV NORD Nederland. Pieter Beuker (PB) and Ruben Kemperink (RK) from Pro4all asked them interesting questions that led to the conversation below.
RK: At Pro4all, we try to contribute to the digitalisation of construction every day with our three solutions Docstream, Snagstream and Prostream. That is also my link to today’s speakers, with whom we will elaborate on this subject. We will hear the experiences of the two ladies from TÜV and Van Mourik Bouw.
NvE: I am Nicole van Est and I am a work planner at Van Mourik Bouw. I am also a KAM coordinator. Van Mourik Bouw is a construction company near Tiel. As Van Mourik Bouw we mainly do non-residential construction, so industrial buildings and offices. We mainly focus on utilities, but we also have a branch with residential, namely the high-end finishing of homes in Amsterdam. Those are the two branches that we have within our company. So I am a work planner and I also do KAM, I have been doing that for almost seven years now. In that position I am also responsible for ICT.
RvE: My name is Rosan van Erp, I work at TÜV NORD Nederland. We do a lot of different certifications and inspections all over the world. In addition, we are a quality guarantor for the new environmental law and the quality assurance law. From there we had to digitize documents, which is why we ended up at Prostream. I was part of that process, which is why I am here today.
The goal here was to reduce paper, so we jokingly said that the only paper on the construction site should be toilet paper.
PB: Nicole, you once said that you strive to have toilet paper be the only paper on the construction site. Can you tell us more about that?
NvE: At the time, we were working on our ISO certification, including the ISO-14001 environment. The objective was to limit paper, so we jokingly said that the only paper on the construction site should be toilet paper. But it was with that thought in mind that we started looking for ways to limit paper on the construction site. Previously, a work planner would spend days folding, and by the time the drawings arrived on the construction site, they were already outdated. I think many builders can relate to that. That is why we started looking for a digital environment. For example, we had Dropbox and OneDrive before, but we wanted to centralize that. At my previous employer, I already worked with Docstream, which is why we started talking to Docstream again here. It has now been six years.
PB: Rosan, where did you come from to find the need to digitize?
RvE: For us, that need mainly arose because a contractor or architect wanted to follow our quality assurance process. Then you want to share documents and Docstream offered the solution at the time because we can put documents in the program. Contractors and architects can then access the documentation themselves. In this way, we also always know that we have the correct construction drawing and that the process is started from there. Everyone can easily view the files and you spend less time emailing. That was the reason for us to start working with Docstream in the first place.
RK: Are there any barriers that you encountered during the digitization?
RvE: We didn’t have such a large department yet, so we all wanted to make that digitization step. We switched from Docstream to Prostream and then we continued to work in Docstream in the same way as we did, while Prostream offers many more functionalities. We didn’t make optimal use of that, that was a point we ran into. We did work on it to ensure that we could pick up all the possibilities it offers. That was the biggest challenge for us: not wanting to continue working the way you are working now, but also looking to the future and how you can start working.
RK: Nicole, do you recognize yourself in that?
NvE: Yes, indeed! There were certainly colleagues who did not see much point in “having to” do all this. Construction people are not IT people: they are builders, practical people. A platform must be easy to understand, for everyone. Certainly with the innovation to Prostream, it has become a lot clearer. It was already clear in Docstream, but with Prostream it has been set up in such a way that it is easy for everyone to understand. I think that is very important.
Construction people are not IT people: a digital platform must be easy to understand.
PB: Has digitalisation made your work easier, Nicole?
NvE: Yes, definitely. The contractors now always have the correct version on the construction site, but also when sharing documents with clients, for example, you can be sure that you always have the correct version. In that respect, digitalisation has really made our work easier.
RvE: For us, that is still a little less so at the moment, because many projects are still getting started. We are more concerned with quality control, so we are still testing with Prostream. That will take the extra step for us, so we hope to be able to take that extra efficiency step soon.
RK: Nicole, you once mentioned that you have placed a decoy in Docstream. Can you tell us more about that?
NvE: Because we did this at the same time as the ISO certification, we also had to centralise all standard forms around that time. What we did therefore was to put all the standard documents, such as the executor who has to make a work order, or the planning, all those documents on Docstream. This meant that people already went to Docstream as standard to get those documents. After that, the step to get your project information from there was not so big anymore. Otherwise it would have been more difficult, now they had to be there for all kinds of documents.
After a while we also got the feedback that it was actually set up really well. That is why we now have the same construction in Prostream again, our complete ISO manual with all the standard documents is also on there again, together with all the projects, and that is how we created that support.
RK: Definitely a good step, I think! Rosan, what is that like for you?
RvE: When we started working with Docstream, our department was still very small. Everyone wanted to work with it, so creating support was not really necessary. We mainly had to convince our parent organization in Germany that it is a safe and sound system to work with.
When digitizing, look primarily at the long term.
PB: Is there a step-by-step plan that you would like to recommend to companies that want to digitize or have taken the first step?
RvE: Look at where you want to go, not only in the short term but also in the long term. What should the system also bring you in the long term? From there, you have to look at what changes that will bring within your process and you can discuss that with certain colleagues. Then you set up the process and start with the implementation. So first ensure support and that you have looked at what would work best in both the short and long term.
NvE: I think it is especially important that you have a number of enthusiasts within your organization who will set up and roll out everything and tell people. They are also the point of contact when people do not understand something, because you will always encounter some resistance, or at least, that is generally the case. But it is important: how do you present it? But also that people know who they can call if they get stuck somewhere. That way people really get enthusiastic about going along with it. You have to take that thought with you.
PB: Are there any questions from the audience?
Audience: How do you do it from the construction to the work floor, do you do checks on the work floor or does that happen somewhere else? Is that shielded?
NvE: Whether we do checks via Prostream varies per colleague. We do a lot of that kind of thing locally. At Docstream we often placed comments within Docstream so that other people could see that too. That is difficult to deal with. I notice that I upload drawings but send the comments separately to the subcontractor, so that you do not share it with the customer or executor. There is a module in Prostream that allows you to do that, right?
PB: Certainly. We have a PDF viewer that is part of the platform, and we notice in the market that many parties use Acrobat Pro or Bluebeam to make comments themselves. We have now integrated that into the application so that you can also see each other’s comments at the same time if you want to. The next step is to check it integrally together.
NvE: For some colleagues that is still a step too far, for others it is a bit easier. So it is a bit of a search how to do that in a good way so that it remains workable. That is really important, that it remains workable.
Audience: Can you also hide those comments from certain people?
PB: That has to do with your role. I can well imagine that you want to post comments that you do not want to share with everyone but want to shield and that is possible. In the application you can also work very task-oriented and keep track of the statuses, so you can shield it, certainly.
If there are no further questions, we will go to the final question. That is for you, Rosan: what do you think construction will look like in five years?
AI will signal in advance that risks are approaching at a certain stage of construction, so that you can respond to them.
RvE: In 5 years I think that construction will work much more with AI, I think that we will all have to deal with it more and more, including construction. Then the question becomes: how does Prostream deal with that?
PB: Oh, she bounces it back! You’re right; I think AI is a trendy term, sometimes I’m still amazed at what you can do with it. But we as a software party also have to do something with it. The answer is twofold: on the one hand we have to use it to make it easier for the user in a very accessible way. That will be included in the application so that you can search for the content of documents. There is a need for that, that someone no longer knows the name of a document but can still find it based on the content. Then AI can also summarise files for you.
There is a lot of communication within construction, messages are sent, comments are sent, tasks are set out. Then an AI assistant can help you summarise what happened that day on a daily basis. “Hey Rosan, these are documents that are relevant to you, that have been placed. And please note: you have not yet responded to this task.” These are things that we want to facilitate in the short term.
Then I will take a step towards construction in five years: we want to focus much more on predicting and helping based on information. We are a platform, many projects go through it, so we actually see in terms of behavior what has happened in a project. So if you often build schools and you have done that three or four times as a company, then AI will help you predict in the coming years: in the past three schools we constantly saw that something happened in this phase, and that phase is coming up again. In this way, it will signal at the front that risks may be coming. So that is an image that we have for you as a user.
Then I want to thank you, specifically Nicole and Rosan.