The Challenge

Skanska is committed to a digital transformation strategy to deliver better outcomes, faster, for its customers. Part of this strategy is around creating great places to work. By making sure people have the right tools for the job, this can develop their careers and skills within a supportive environment, and can gain the satisfaction of making increasingly valued contributions to what Skanska does.

Excitech has been supporting Skanska, as its Autodesk partner, with consultancy training and support for their digital transformation for the past 15 years. Having taken on Pinnacle Series initially as a way of providing learning and on-the-job support, Skanska wanted to move to the next level and use Pinnacle Series to deliver learning paths for individual job roles. This ensures that people can hit the ground running when they take on new projects or job roles.

“Our BIM community started using Pinnacle Series straight ‘out-of-the-box’ which enabled us to get people up to speed quickly with BIM working practices,” explains David Throssell, BIM & Digital Engineering Operations Manager, at Skanska UK.

“This soft roll-out covered 250 Autodesk users; people who use Autodesk products every day and need quick answers to questions on the go, without having to go searching on the Internet or seeking the input of colleagues simply to perform an Autodesk function they’re not personally familiar with.”

The ‘out-of-the-box’ platform provides access to key learning materials, as well as online live technical support provided by Excitech. The next phase for Skanska is to customize the software to build in their own protocols and methodologies supported by the development of role specific learning paths.

The company identified specific milestones for realizing this strategy: creating the digital project site and workplace, enabling it to deliver new services and products. “Within this strategy, digitally enabling our people and processes, particularly through digital collaboration and a BIM way of working are key drivers of change within the organization,” says Throssell.

The Solution

Excitech worked alongside the Skanska team to arrive at a definitive set of job descriptions that would require specific learning pathways. This phase of the development involved identifying what an individual would need to learn, and what the timeframe would be for acquiring the identified skill. Excitech compared Skanska’s requirements against existing Pinnacle Series content to home in on
where the gaps were.

For each learning path, the Excitech consultancy and training team created the paths as well as any content not available, including specific course and training videos wherever applicable.

Our BIM community started using Pinnacle Series straight ‘out-of-the-box.’ This soft roll-out covered 250 Autodesk Users; people who use Autodesk products every day and need quick answers to questions on the go.”

This development exercise involved liaising with third parties for specific vendor generated input where the software concerned is not in the Excitech solutions portfolio. The pathways for the first phase included:

• Administration/reception
• Asset and facilities management
• All staff (cross-company procedures such as Health & Safety and HR)
• BIM management and coordination, design management
• BIM management for commercial, environmental, procurement, estimating, and quantity surveying
• Construction manager, supervisor, and engineer
• General management
• Handover and completion, insulation and commissioning, quality management
• Planning

Speaking about the development process with Excitech, David Throssell says “I know that some organizations choose to develop their own customized modules. We decided not to go down this route for two reasons. Firstly, we prefer to allocate all our resources to customer-facing projects; focusing on what we do best: contributing to building, upgrading and maintaining the country’s infrastructure.

Secondly, also part of the same thought process, we know that Excitech have the resources and talent to develop such content faster and smarter than we ever could. Our view is that if you want an expert job done then you have to call on the experts to do it.”

The Results

A year into the exercise, the initial deployment of Pinnacle Series used by 250 Autodesk users has now grown to 700 users, with a full roll-out across the company expected within the next 12 months.

“Pinnacle Series is not just an engineering tool,” says David. “It has far broader use and relevance across the business. It gives us consistency in internal processes and professional skills. It also supports continuity since it makes the company less dependent on the knowledge that people hold in their heads; this is important for organizational development.”

Pinnacle Series in not just an engineering tool, it has far broader use and relevance across the business. It gives us consistency in internal processes and professional skills… this is important for organisational development.”

Skanska have now started to evaluate how they might extend Pinnacle Series across their supply chain, with their top 250 suppliers, to elevate skills and consistency across the chain. “Pinnacle Series improves the confidence for the individual and the team but also has a broader impact; inspiring confidence among customers that we provide consistency in skills levels. When we present bids now, we highlight our use of Pinnacle Series. Some of these bids are on major infrastructure projects that will last 20 years or more.

Demonstrating that you have a robust framework for embracing new technologies and rapidly disseminating the skills necessary to optimize their use across the project team is invaluable. Our customers understand that Pinnacle Series enables Skanska to do that,” says Throssell.