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How BAM’s big data boosts productivity
Justin Stanton Editor, CM Digital
When is your project team really cooking? BAM UK & Ireland’s Garry Fannon FCIOB and Jordan Nutter MCIOB have started analysing their projects’ big data to understand team behaviours. Justin Stanton reports.
Wednesday in July at 10am and 2pm: that’s when BAM UK & Ireland’s project teams are in top gear, according to analysis of the contractor’s data.
Gary Fannon FCIOB, BAM digital project solutions business partner, and his colleague Jordan Nutter MCIOB, digital project solutions lead (northern), have been taking a deep dive into the company’s data to understand what makes project teams tick.
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BAM is generating huge volumes of data and has experienced the same challenges with that data as other major contractors and businesses, namely:
The velocity at which data is generated.
The sheer volume of data stored.
The variance of data.
The veracity of data.
BAM has gradually become more sophisticated with its data since it launched a common data environment (CDE) in 2012, mandating its use on all projects. At that time, it was using OpenText Livelink as its CDE, Autodesk BIM 360 Field for checklists and snagging and BIM 360 Glue to view 3D models on site.
Over the space of eight years, this set-up was used on more than 500 BAM projects by 8,500 organisations and nearly 16,000 users.
In 2020, BAM evolved its set-up: OpenText Livelink was used internally, while Autodesk BIM 360 became the CDE.
“We were using a lot more functionality. We were making sure that everyone had access to the latest information and all of the information that was stored on the projects was open for everybody to collaborate on,” says Nutter.
“We started to see human behaviour coming out of the data – Wednesday is our most productive day, and July is our most productive month.”
Garry Fannon, BAM
Increase in users
In four years, this set-up was used on more than 200 projects by nearly 6,000 organisations and more than 26,000 users – a significant increase in users over the previous eight years, highlighting the volume of training that was carried out.
“This was the start of us creating structured data sets that we could use for analysis,” Nutter adds.
Then, last year, BAM evolved its set-up further, deploying BAM Source. This incorporates Microsoft SharePoint and Autodesk Construction Cloud; Nutter describes it as a full CDE aligned with 19650 processes.
He explains: “All internal and work-in-progress information is stored on SharePoint that BAM staff have access to. If that information needs to be approved, it gets pushed to Autodesk Construction Cloud, where our design teams, supply chains and clients can collaborate.”
Up to November last year, this set-up had been used on more than 60 projects by nearly 500 organisations and nearly 3,000 users.
Fannon takes up the story: “We’ve begun visualising and creating dashboards as most companies do. But the interesting thing is we started to see human behaviour coming out of the data – we were looking between the lines and challenging what we saw. We started to see things in productivity.”
The online permits-to-work system – introduced for high-risk works on site in 2020 – is a case in point. Fannon notes: “We started to see dips in productivity at Christmas – it dropped at its peak by nearly 50%. We wanted to understand why that is. We know there’s a closedown in December, but is it 50% of our productivity? We’re not sure – that’s quite disproportionate.”
Incomplete workflows
Fannon and his team looked at other elements on their dashboard. Overdue issues, specifically non-completion of workflows, caught his eye. “It’s important when you have a data set that actions are concluded,” Fannon notes. There were more than 6,000 incomplete workflows, suggesting that project teams didn’t appreciate the importance of closing out issues.
“We can clearly see productivity behaviour that allows us to think about what we could do to improve the environment to allow people to be more productive.”
Jordan Nutter, BAM
Furthermore, analysis of the snagging data set revealed significant regional variances.
“Adoption was hit and miss. It was inconsistent across the businesses. And that means we need to make sure that when we deploy new ways of work that we get consistency in our training so that we get consistency and adoption across the business,” Fannon explains.
This analysis also highlighted productivity, with volume of forms being raised an indicator of when most work is being carried out, through the week and the year.
Fannon says: “That’s a typical week on average, and we can clearly see Wednesday is our most productive day. And it drops off from Wednesday onwards. We see that repeated over the months of the year. And not only is Wednesday our most productive day, but July is our most productive month. We then looked at a typical day and we had a peak at 10am and a peak at 2pm.
Productivity behaviour
“That shows trends purely by people producing forms. We can clearly see productivity behaviour that allows us to think about what we could do to improve the environment to allow people to be more productive.”
Fannon and his team are at the start of their big data interrogation, but what action might BAM take in light of the insights uncovered so far? Can they turn every day of every week of every month into a Wednesday in July?
He says: “If we could do that, we’d be so much more productive. It could be light levels: it’s summer, it’s warmer, we’ve got more light and people are happier. There are a number of factors there. We need to have a good look at that. Maybe we could try to improve lighting levels throughout the autumn and the winter periods – would that have an impact on the productivity of a site?”
The November/December 2025 issue of Construction Management magazine is now available to read in digital format.
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