Welcome to the future of construction…
SLATE is an organizing platform (web software, personnel, know-how) for field and technical personnel that delivers solutions to construction project problems. In some cases, the goal may be to streamline and professionalize projects or perhaps make the data collected live, more organized, and permanently retrievable. Project personnel benefit from the clarity SLATE provides so that emerging problems can be noticed early and resolved before being repeated and scaled into a much larger concern.
The elegance of SLATE is that it does not take retraining or provide a distraction to the field team that must stay focused on jobsite details. SLATE brings the power of simplistic proven process to participants as business intelligence tools. Using the platform reduces communication “drag” and the misalignment that occurs on jobsites over something as simple as agreeing on the facts of a situation. This allows the focus to be on solutions, not a delayed search for solid data to support effective decisions. With SLATE communication and participant alignment becomes organic requiring less of a leader’s valuable time.
The other unique feature of SLATE is that the platform is designed to make the data more meaningful and more actionable. Data narrates the story of a project’s health, but only if it can be observed. This is the reason SLATE is designed to prevent disparate or unstructured data from being input to the system. SLATE is project intelligence…
Whether the objective is to solve specific problems, or to become more effective with existing methods, SLATE is an excellent choice.
Reduce Cost/Risk
The SLATE platform is flexible and can be a broad spectrum or precision-targeted project improvement and monitoring tool. The platform can be used to “automate” many field processes, like the typical Quality Control process. While this is not necessarily a cost reduction, the data lives “live” in the system with many positive spin-off benefits.
One of the best uses of SLATE is as a modified field quality assurance mechanism for owners of large industrial construction projects. With SLATE systematically monitoring and reporting of the most critical field tasks, first-time defect creation is minimized, and the contractor can achieve a lower installed cost. Owners also benefit from reduced rework because they get a better plant, and both parties benefit from less undiscovered latent defects which can “become known” near COD, causing a project to deliver late.
SLATE is a potent training tool…
Field improvement and performance validation can also be viewed as risk mitigation. Adoption of the platform can reduce installed cost, post-COD poor-quality effect on availability, safety risks, schedule risks, and the consolidated blanket risk of legal engagement from any or all these issues.
No Software Overhead
Most employees in large companies, especially managers and executives, understand the significant cost of purchasing enterprise software. The initial price is a small down payment of total cost once internal support staff, external consultants, user training, and upgrade costs are considered. SLATE, while clearly an integrated technology and mobile platform, is best understood as a construction-oriented “cloud” tailored to solve real construction challenges.
Customers benefit from real-time SLATE evolutions without owning/maintaining software. SLATE as a technology is constantly being improved. All users of SLATE, whether desktop or mobile device based, benefit from the periodic system-wide enhancements without incremental cost.
The other aspect to consider is adoption drag and the costs of training. SLATE requires very little adoption cost, since it “feels” like the existing end user forms/tools most site professionals are used to seeing. While SLATE can take the role of an all-encompassing enterprise platform, it is ideal in a targeted role for certain project focus areas.
Evolves with Priorities
SLATE data processes are inherently evolutionary, because projects change...
For example, if SLATE were being used to monitor field quality or commissioning details, a safety campaign could be added almost immediately in response to an accident or otherwise a recognition that the culture needed focused attention.
Similarly, if certain disciplines need less monitoring those inspections could be tapered in favor of other “weak spots” with essentially no system changes.
Some work scopes require a consistent approach to processing field observations, so evolution is not desired. SLATE is ideal for those campaigns as well. An example of this might be a final punch list, where the benchmark is the contracted codes and standards. EPS has performed several of these services and the criteria best remain static once inspections start.
The flexible but structured nature of SLATE is very powerful in ratcheting up performance in all aspects of a construction project, or in narrowly defined areas. SLATE is scalable as on-the-fly project occurrences present new challenges.
Rich Data Legacy
SLATE is a fundamentally unique system. Data does not get into SLATE unless it is structured and fits the work campaigns being performed. By contrast most systems are “document management” systems only and tend to just take in everything. This has some significant disadvantages but is certainly easier. However, since SLATE is a business intelligence platform for construction, clean and rich data is essential. SLATE harnesses construction data and puts it to work, easily!
Once the data set is built during construction and commissioning, it is natural to move the data forward into operations for legacy use or extend the benefits of SLATE to support O&M. The underlying point is that the structured data created with the SLATE process continues to have many benefits, including unforeseen.
How often are rows of dusty file cabinets filled with construction quality reports, installation records, commissioning checkout details, and similar found in a corner of the plant warehouse. This is largely useless for plant personnel and very costly because any forward value from this knowledge and history is simply not available in terms of continuity. It’s nearly as useless loaded into a bulk document management system, if tags are inappropriate or the files are dumped into a folder structure for sorting later.
SLATE solves the stranded legacy data problem...
