Digital capital projects

Changing international trade dynamics, supply chain disruptions, the energy transition, and falling interest rates are compelling Canadian infrastructure leaders to rethink their capital project strategies. A resurgent focus on reinforcing Canada’s resiliency is likely to spur increased infrastructure spending across the country, driving increased demand for materials, resources, and talent. It will also increase pressure on project owners, managers, and contractors to hit projects’ financial, schedule, quality, and compliance targets while mitigating risks.

Now more than ever, capital projects need a digital strategy to gain significant financial, efficiency, and safety benefits. Smart investments in digital capabilities will enable capital project leaders to navigate complexity and set themselves up for success in adopting new technologies, delivering projects as planned, and manage growing infrastructure portfolios.

Top capital project priorities for Canadian organizations

Capital projects are high-investment, high-profile, and high-risk undertakings. Because of this, governments and businesses are laser-focused on common priorities:

• Delivering projects on time and on budget.
• Improving capital efficiency, stretching every cent out of every dollar allocated.
• Improving productivity by reducing non-value-adding tasks.
• Enhancing their ability to identify and proactively manage risks.
• Developing the capacity to manage larger, more complex infrastructure portfolios, including alternate delivery contracting methods.

Of course, individual leaders are ultimately accountable for the successful delivery of capital projects, and they too have priorities:

• Capital project “owners” (e.g., C-suite executives and government ministers, deputy ministers, or assistant deputy ministers) want to avoid the project mismanagement, delays, and cost overruns that invite investor or public scrutiny and criticism.
• Vice-presidents, commercial directors, and their counterparts want to meet timelines, mitigate project risks, and ensure appropriate control over project portfolios.
• Project managers want to efficiently deliver projects to avoid avoidable disruptions, meet performance targets, and manage contractors and stakeholders.
  
  

Capital project challenges leaders must solve

Once a capital project is underway, stakeholders face a host of challenges they must address and overcome:

• Proactively identifying and managing material or talent shortages.
• Managing cost and schedule pressures.
• Prioritizing and balancing effort between manual tasks such as report preparation, document management, and approvals vs value add activities such as strategic planning, risk mitigation, and resource allocation.
• Optimizing project spending and risk tolerance around the adoption of emerging technologies such as AI or Internet of Things (IoT).

These and other challenges persist because the capital projects sector continues to rely on conventional tools, techniques, and processes to improve project delivery. Weak governance mechanisms and program controls hinder oversight and create openings for financial and operational risk. Project teams often work in silos and rely on highly manual, segregated processes and static reporting, resulting in data inconsistencies, delays, and poor communication and handovers. While digital alternatives exist, the capital projects sector has been slow to embrace them, other than ad hoc, piecemeal, unconnected investments.

Project managers and owner organizations can see that conventional approaches to managing capital projects are no longer fit for purpose. Yet they’re also realizing that their approach to digital investment isn’t delivering the desired benefits. And no wonder: the scale and complexity of the digital landscape makes it hard to determine the most appropriate solution. The right approach requires a fit-for-purpose, organization-specific digital vision and strategy that allows cohesive piloting and appraisal, investment, planning, and implementation.

The digital capital project: A fundamentally different approach

A digital capital project is more than simply using technology to deliver a project. It’s a paradigm shift in how capital projects are designed, constructed, operated, and closed-out.

Data sits at the very heart of the digital capital project—captured, stored, analyzed, displayed, and used to provide teams and decision-makers with superior project visibility and enabling them to make faster, better decisions. The digital capital projects provide project stakeholders with standardized governance methodologies; integrated systems and data; automated processes; real-time dynamic reporting; and improved productivity, efficiency, and transparency.

The digital capital project enables stakeholders to realize safety, efficiency, and significant financial benefits at every stage of the project lifecycle from design to close out, through the smart implementation of digital-first project management information systems (PMIS). Benefits of adopting a PMIS include:

• Potential value improvement through cost overrun avoidance, productivity improvements, and increased capital efficiency.
• The ability to scale without increasing resources, enabling increased capital projects and spending without incurring greater related costs.
• Rapid information processing, providing a line of sight into the project that enables stakeholder to make timely, evidence-based decisions.
• Time savings for project control resources, by automating repetitive, highly manual tasks.
  

A PMIS isn’t just software. It’s an insurance policy, a shield against chaos, and a tool to secure competitive advantage. With a PMIS, decision-makers no longer need to risk large capital spends on spreadsheets and intuition—they can rest assured that every aspect of their digital capital project is managed effectively and efficiently, from cost control and scheduling to compliance and stakeholder management.

Building a truly digital capital project isn’t about adopting ad hoc technologies and bolting them into existing project delivery frameworks, however. Without careful planning, it can take far longer for digital investments to deliver the expected benefits—if they ever do. That’s why organizations must plan their technology investments strategically and start with a solid digital foundation built on data. This will make subsequent technology investments more effective and ensure digital adds value throughout the project lifecycle.

Deloitte’s approach to digital capital projects

At Deloitte, we believe that embedding the latest technology into capital project management and at construction sites enables organizations to manage scarce resources, supplies, and talent more proactively, while improving productivity, efficiency, and safety.

We provide specialized expertise in digital capital projects technologies that span the full value chain—strategy and technology advisory, program delivery, and implementation services—to help organizations improve project execution performance and capital allocation efficiency. We work with clients to develop the right digital capital project technology strategy and an achievable roadmap that leads to greater agility and productivity and more successful project outcomes.

Business requirements development
We can assess and develop business requirements for clients’ PMIS needs, including KPIs and process maps.

PMIS selection and readiness
We help clients choose the right PMIS for their needs, drawing on insights into industry leading practices, our vendor relationships, and our detailed knowledge of the solution landscape and their associated product roadmaps.

• Mitigate risk and costs of failed technology selection and implementation.
• Leverage proven project frameworks and extensive technology expertise.
• Gain a head start on implementation with detailed, tailored business requirements. 

PMIS implementation and migration
Leveraging our experience and flexible agile based delivery model, we work with clients to implement a new PMIS or upgrade an existing solution, including systems integration, automation of manual processes, and legacy data migration.

• Avoid common pitfalls and improve transformation success by leveraging our implementation experience.
• Streamline the transformation process with clear, actionable steps across implementation workstreams to avoid unplanned changes.
• Configure and test requirements to ensure the PMIS meets business needs.

People change management
We can help facilitate and implement employee communications and training, starting with gap assessment of foundational skills and capabilities. As part of the PMIS implementation, we can provide a robust change management and training plan to improve user adoption and reduce resistance to change ensuring a successful outcome.

The Deloitte difference

Deloitte is committed to doing our part to build a stronger, more resilient Canada. We are uniquely positioned to help public and private organizations deliver the capital projects that will take our country and economy forward:

• Subject matter expertise: Our team comprises experienced, qualified consultants and construction professionals who understand the complexities of managing capital projects.
• A track record of success: We have extensive experience helping clients manage capital projects and meet timelines and budgets.
• Strategic vendor relationships: We have close relationships with major technology vendors, including Oracle, Kahua, Trimble, EcoSys, and Procore, and a thorough understanding of their current and future offerings.
• Full-service delivery with Canadian experience: We are Canada’s largest full-service transformation firm, with Canadian experience and capabilities in digital capital project leadership, data migration, integrations, AI, smart operations, and change implementation. We also have close relationships with other leading system implementation firms.
• Reducing client costs through AI: Leveraging AI tools in our own work enables us to reduce the costs of our services for our clients.
  
  

Now is the time to embrace digital capital projects.

Major investments in infrastructure are needed to help Canada be more resilient in a changing, challenging world. Canadian governments and companies will need to manage the resulting capital projects more effectively than ever—and investing in the right digital technologies will be critical to delivering projects on time, on budget, and in a way that delivers meaningful value and a timely ROI. Deloitte’s Digital Capital Projects team can help you all the way.

To learn more, contact:

Richard Warner | Partner
rwarner@deloitte.ca

Repul Kher | Partner
repulkher@deloitte.ca