Better data integration can help builders manage risks, find exposures

SAN DIEGO — Most contractors and construction insurers collect data on projects but few integrate information systems effectively to manage risks, according to data professionals who spoke Tuesday at the International Risk Management Institute Inc.’s annual Construction Risk Conference.

“There’s a lot of evidence that if you start getting good data architecture in place within your organization, you actually see better results, not only from a profitability and productivity standpoint, but there will be fewer losses that you suffer on the job sites,” said David Bowcott, Toronto-based executive vice president of the construction industry group at Platform Insurance Management Inc.

Companies that use the data have “substantially better margins,” he added.

The issue isn’t in the data collection — contractors use hundreds of platforms to record everything from safety incidents to scheduling to weather — it’s in connecting the information, said Thiago Da Costa, CEO of Datagrid, a San Francisco-based data company.

The “vast majority” are not connecting their data, which can show why losses are happening, down to which supervisor was in control on days that losses occurred, Mr. Da Costa said.

Artificial intelligence can create expansive risk profiles for potential projects based on information gathered past projects, he said.

Rosie O’Neill, Marietta, Georgia-based senior sales executive at Origami Risk LLC, a risk management and insurance software technology company, said older methods involving paper reports create duplication and disorganization. “It’s disparate and all over the place; sometimes it’s in a drawer,” she said.

With newer technologies in place, once data is collected the capabilities are expansive and can help organize and steer a project and answer questions such as, “When we build a hospital, do we have more problems than when we build a movie theater?” Ms. O’Neill said.

Data also helps connect incidents to exposures, such as how many times equipment has been damaged and whether it is time to replace it, Ms. O’Neill said.

Data can also be used in safety departments and for Occupational Safety and Health Administration logs, she said.

Aleksey Chuprov, vice president of data analytics at Suffolk, a Boston-based construction management services company, said, “Every level of an organization from a CEO down to a project manager” can use data to drive decisions and prevent losses.

“It has been a very long journey to get the trust and the buy-in from an industry where people make decisions based on their gut feelings and their experience and not the understanding of the patterns,” Mr. Chuprov said.