This article appears in the first issue of Construction Connection, a new magazine from Oracle.

Through 2020, the Global Construction Perspectives & Oxford Economics report estimates that over US$97.7 trillion will be spent on construction projects globally. In 2010, the growth within the engineering and construction market was US$7.2 trillion and by 2020, that growth will move up 67% to US$12 trillion.

Is your company prepared to make the most of the emerging opportunities?

To take advantage of emerging opportunities, owners/operators and contractors must assess the business challenges faced in today's global construction market - challenges that for the most part begin with constrained capital.

An industrial, commercial or infrastructure owner must focus on where to spend limited dollars while contractors seek improved ways to differentiate themselves as they compete for business. Capital constraints do not just affect the backlog; they affect the work contractors have in-flight.

Article written by John Chaney, President and Co-Founder, Dexter + Chaney and appeared in the May 2013 issue of Construction Business Owner.

Understand how mobile apps are changing in the construction industry in order to use them effectively.

In the early days of business software, applications were geared toward accomplishing individual tasks. As software evolved, these applications grew in scope. Today, so-called “enterprise” software is used by businesses of all sizes.

Enterprise software is characterized by the combination of features and capabilities into a single system used by people across an organization from accounting to field operations. A benefit of this approach is that information can flow faster and easier between the multiple groups or individuals who need it.

To cover the spectrum of a construction company’s needs, however, enterprise software can, at times, make tasks harder than they need to be. Enter the app. Not just an abbreviation for “application,” the app is a piece of software that is designed to do one thing, do it well and do it easily.

As all C-level executives can attest, the lifeblood of any enterprise is visibility. The link between an unvarnished view across all levels of a business and the decisions that are made at the highest level is not a new concept. While visibility across the project portfolio is an area much explored by The Oracle EPPM Board, there are still significant gaps in the quality of the information reaching senior executives. To understand why, we decided to look at the subject from a number of viewpoints not normally considered.

The findings were controversial: those that run organisations are only getting half the story. To discover why visibility in the project portfolio remains impaired – whether this was due to structural issues; a problem with technology; or an issue whose roots lay elsewhere – The EPPM Board dug deeper, and its analysis settled on the following themes:

An Oracle White Paper

Executive Overview

Communication and collaboration between owners and contractors has been a frustrating, expensive, and ongoing issue in the engineering and construction industry. All the players agree that clear communication is critical to the successful completion of construction projects. Yet, poor communication happens all the time as projects progress to completion. Misunderstandings are commonplace—not only when owner and contractor organizations communicate with each other, but even within those organizations between project team members. 

The purpose of this white paper is to explore how communication and collaboration between owners and contractors can be dramatically improved when all players continually invest in three key areas:

• People
• Processes
• Organization

In addition, this white paper will discuss how mobile devices, such as iPhones and tablet computers, further enhance communication between owners and contractors. Mobile applications represent a fundamental change in the way all project participants can communicate and collaborate by enabling project teams to share information from where th work is being done: the field.

Since the earliest days of business computing, there have been countless changes to the technology solutions available to those in construction. However, three major waves have significantly changed how contractors do business.

Article written by Wayne Caccamo, Sr Director, Product Marketing, Oracle and appears on Oracle's EPPM blog.

It’s Happening, Keep Up or Fall Behind

We are in the midst of a transition to cloud based computing as the primary model for data center workloads. According to “Independent Shipment Analysis, Cisco Systems”, by 2014, over 50% of all workloads will be processed in the cloud; traditional computing will be in the minority. It is projected to reduce overall tech spending by $30B-$39B in 2013, replacing 14% of global on-premise spending in 2020. This transition translates into a cloud computing market growth rate of 37% from 2008 to 2013, from $13B to $55B. According to another source, the total cloud market was $20B in 2011 and is expected to reach $26.4B in 2012, equating to 32% growth year over year. Gartner pegged the expected growth rate between 2011 and 2012 at 37% (from $14.5B to $22.1B).

Not long ago, creating a mobile project team simply meant setting everyone up with a cell phone.  As phones became smarter, wireless networks improved, and data plans came down in price, contractors began to make mobility more meaningful.  A new marketplace developed that offered construction-specific mobile apps for a variety of tasks, such as remote time entry, punch lists and even basic cost estimating. This quickly evolving technology has significant implications for how construction professionals communicate and perform their jobs. Additionally, the increasingly widespread use of smart devices is changing the playing field for mobile app and software providers alike.

Fuel Your Bottom Line Through Successful Project Management

Effective project management is essential for the success of your business, so you need real-time visibility into each step of the project lifecycle.  This is especially true in the oil and gas industry, where companies are struggling to maintain profitability in the face of growing costs, risks, and regulations.

That's why leading global oil and gas companies rely on Oracle's Primavera enterprise project portfolio management (EPPM) solutions.  Discover how you can use this solution to successfully plan, build, and manage your projects, as well as fuel your bottom line.

Gain Insight

In the oil and gas industry, companies are struggling to deal with change in every sector and at every level.

It is generally accepted that more companies fail due to lack of cash flow than for want of profit. This is an inevitable position because while profit is a vital indicator of performance, its generation does not necessarily guarantee an organisation’s growth, development, or even survival. For the C-level executive, cash flow also has a particular impact in the planning of short- or long-term investment strategies, where decisions are more often focused on anticipated funding requirements rather than projecting levels of profitability.

Capital budgeting is the process for managing cash flow, where the basic unit of analysis is the investment project. From a finance perspective, projects and program represent a series of contingent cash flows over time, whose amount and timing are only partially under the control of the executive. The amount of expenditure these consume directly influences the level of available working capital, which is the primary benchmark for measuring a company’s operational liquidity. The eternal challenge for organizations is keeping this liquidity in the positive position needed to support day-to-day operations – i.e., to service both maturing short-term debt and upcoming operational expenses – and for maintaining the flexibility to respond to emerging opportunities.

How susceptible is the CEO’s reputation to poor performance across the project portfolio? What impact can delivery failures have on the executive board, and what are the challenges they face to introducing greater accountability?

These are the central questions behind Oracle's research report In the Firing Line, which examines how a lack of operational visibility, allied to the inherent risks that accompany any large capital investment, can have a direct impact on bottom line results – and by extension the career prospects of senior executives.

Mixing real world examples with practical advice, the report also details the capabilities needed by boards to increase their confidence in the overall health of the portfolio, and maintain the strategic agility to redeploy assets in response to any unexpected emergencies without impacting business as normal.

Introduction

What are the primary measurements for rating CEO performance? For corporate boards, business analysts, investors, and the trade press the metrics they deploy are relatively binary in nature; what is being done to generate earnings, and what is being done to build and sustain high performance?