The success and the dexterity of our team come from the way we think, which in turn drives the team to be successful for our client and to the endeavor of the project.

Enjoy!

Knowledge Blocks are a snapshot of our aspiration to learn daily. Our daily learning enables us to keep ourselves abreast with the effects of change on today’s organisation and identify emerging solutions and technologies that will make our project delivery effective.

Our discipline to learn daily should give our clients the confidence in our ability to deliver projects knowing that the delivery of our projects are tempered by  the in-depth understanding of realities of the Business of Today and the Future.

Mindshare content is not exclusive to Optum+, these are culled from various sources on the web.

DIGITAL ECONOMY

We live in a digital globalized economy in an deeply integrated interconnected world wherein the exponential  nature of technology is reshaping the economic and social dynamics of our world as we know. An economy where the social world has collided with the world of economics necessitating dramatic changes within organizations, forcing them to adapt to this new reality in order to maintain relevancy.

It is an era of Digital Darwinism - Disruptive Selection where it is reported that, 70% of the companies on the Fortune 1000 list 10 years ago have vanished unable to adapt to change. This is an disruptive environment where no business is too big to fail or too small to succeed, where technology and society are growing at a faster pace than organization and corporation can catch up.

This scale of disruptiveness or change  in a globalized world has necessitating dramatic changes within organizations, forcing them to adapt in order to maintain relevancy. Only organizations that are capable of changing as fast as change itself will survive.

Organizations, large or small institutional or entrepreneurial will have to today face a more urgent need than ever to adapt to the new collaborative imperative brought on by an interconnected world in a digital economy.

The interconnected world in the globalised economy has affected every industry forcing organisations to learn to adapt to a world where the digital and the physical world cross pollinate rapidly. This new collaborative imperative is significantly driving real change within businesses where new models, team structures, and customer-centered philosophies are being developed quickly to stay afloat.

It is new reality wherein new business models are being introduced and business disruption is the new normal and it has brought in focus the “Customer Experience” where the way we interact; engage with our customers, our clients, is undergoing massive change.  This has resulted in experience innovation becoming key and crucial component of companies seeking to remain relevant and retain customer loyalty.

The experience innovation requires team members and their clients to create an incredible human network in which they participate and interact to create new products and services jointly. An environment where social, digital and mobile savvy knowledge workers who are less managed and more of collaborating individuals are working together leveraging their talent, experience and tacit knowledge triggering judgement work to arrive at decisions servicing social, digital and mobile  savvy customers.

In order to be truly effective today, leaders in business and institutions must change how they engage, and in particular how they establish and maintain relationships via digital channels redefining client engagement and experience delivery and thus transform the experience lifecycle.

PEOPLE : PROCESS : TECHNOLOGY

The 21st Century has initiated a change in our economy that is far removed from the one that existed during the turn of the last century. Tools in business have changed from pen to computer; enhanced communication through the Internet and its associated email capabilities has affected the way we work; we play and the way we live our lives.

The shape of the workplace / facility of the future is not totally clear as corporations are just learning from their experience in the ever-changing landscape of the Knowledge Economy and it seems that this learning process is not going to cease while Change is the constant.

Our ever increasing global environment is shaping the world in which we work, but more than that, it is shaping the evolution of business through its influence on the workplace. However, it is clear that the workplace must become a laboratory of human innovation spurred by the need to leverage the business strategies of an organization in the facility to create agile workplaces and facilities, throughout the process continuing to recognize the close inter-relationship between People, Process and Technology.

It is clear that the workplace must become a laboratory of human innovation, wherein the workplace services and settings are extensions and components of the work itself that interact dynamically, not passively, with the work process.

We put forward a rationale for a need to leverage the business strategies of an organization in the facility to create agile workplaces and facilities. More so, as the productivity of the human assets becomes more critical to the strategic success of an organization, it must be enable to constantly adapt itself to the market. We recognize that organizations will increasingly be at a competitive disadvantage if their business strategies are not leveraged in the facility and not convert themselves into high performance businesses impacting:

                Operational Flexibility

                Employee Recruitment & Retention

                Resilience Business Continuity

                Workplace Scalability

                Enhanced Productivity

The key to a successful programming for built environment must consider People, Process, and Technology besides counting heads and taking into consideration adjacency. Effective programming for built environments should consider the effects of change on today’s organisation and identify and applying emerging solutions and technologies that will make the workplace effective.

DESIGN THINKING

The success of projects of today and in the future requires navigating through a complex web of interaction and network of skills with some outdated methods of delivery of their skills, while leveraging certain cutting edge technology and delivering the product or the project in the shortest time frame to meet the ROI of the business objectives of the client firm.

This new reality of project environment requires a new approach and methodology to harnesses the power of teams to work on a wide range of complex problems by taking a more expansive view of design, to achieve a much greater impact.

Design in today’s world is no more an exclusivity of a single person or a couple of people who would be given an assignment and then would disappear into a back room to re-emerge days later with a prototype. The result can only be an improvement of an existing solution, not much else.

In this scenario comes the methodology know as Design Thinking which is a more collaborative, human-centered approach that can be and is used to solve a broader range of challenges in product design, health care, education, global poverty, government — you name it.

Design Thinking, an innovative methodology, a discipline that brings out the ability to combine empathy for the context of a problem, creativity in the generation of insights and solutions, and rationality to analyze and fit solutions to the context.

The design thinking process is generally accepted as a system of overlapping steps rather than a sequence of orderly steps - inspiration, ideation, and implementation.

Inspiration is the problem or opportunity that motivates the search for solutions.

Ideation is the process of generating, developing, and testing ideas.

Implementation is the path that leads from the project stage into people’s lives.

Design thinking allows consulting team to ideate, use analogy, problem solve while connecting with and invigorating their ideation processes in order to take innovation to a higher level. Teams that integrate the principles of design thinking are inherently optimistic in their project delivery processes are able to share a common mindset and striving to cultivate a more creative and human-centred team while creating innovative outputs.

In organization and management, design thinking allows us to innovative, human-centered enterprises / facilities/ teams /workplaces which focus on a collaborative and iterative style of work and an inclusive mode of thinking, versus traditional engineering processes.

MODULARIZATION

Modularity as the name suggest is to form or organize into modules, for flexibility. Modularization using prefabrication and modular construction have been used for some time but largely on the fringe of the main building construction industry. The concept of modularization has been regular used by EPCM – Engineering, Procurement, Construction & Management -  for large projects in Industrial; Mining and Oil & Gas sectors.

Modularization has been slowing creeping into traditional construction in small  measures utilizing the building block approach for pre-construction of trusses etc. or with piping on backbone racks/steel module - since the early'90s; This has further evolved to more complicated equipment mechanical and lately modularity building of residential spaces – micro apartments etc.  

The traditional stick and build method to implement design and engineering solution are inherently inefficient and consistently producing varying qualities when compared in quality to manufactured goods manufactured in a controlled environment. It also requires that the site is fully developed to begin the process of construction. This inevitably leads to a large gestation period that has a direct impact on the financial cost of the project as well as the ROI of the project.

Modularization enables the client to start building certain sections or entire group of section while the site is being developed and installed in a plug ‘n’ play scenario and ready to start operation immediately while a traditional stick and build approach would have just got off the ground in commencing the construction activities

The success of projects of today and in the future is determined by the ease and efficiency with which structures can be built enabling a project to be delivered successfully meeting the expectations and the criteria of the client by reducing or preventing errors, delays, and cost overruns.

Modularization has moved into the mainstream with client business drivers supporting it usage as it brings a cost saving of 25-50%. Some of the factors that have support modularization are:

Inconsistency in quality of traditional construction;

Remote site access; severe site weather constraints;

Schedule-driven improvement;

Limited availability of regional skilled labor/ imported construction labor/ man camps; 

When extensive Factory Acceptance Testing (FAT) is desired;

High module potential / repeatable facility construction;

Difficulty of traditional construction in inner city high density areas among others

Kit-of-parts & building block approach to faster and efficient delivery system is achieved by designing  with the end in mind so delivery is structured correctly, planned & implemented early through front-end innovative execution strategies such as early definition and engineering integration.

Modularity is a key component of the drive to improve construction industry productivity and successfully delivery projects. Modularization and alternative form of delivery that will enable our clients to deliver projects in a short time to bring product and service to market quicker and reducing financial cost of the project.

CONSTRUCTABILITY

Constructability is a system for achieving optimum integration of construction knowledge and experience in planning, engineering, procurement and field operations in the building process, and balancing the various project and environmental constraints to achieve overall objectives.

It is a system for achieving optimum integration of construction knowledge in the building process and balancing the various project and environmental constraints to maximize achievement of project goals and building performance.

The success of projects of today and in the future is determined by the ease and efficiency with which structures can be built enabling a project to be delivered successfully - meeting the expectations and the criteria of the client - by reducing or preventing errors, delays, and cost overruns.

Many projects are fraught with cost over runs; change-orders; endless clarifications and request-for -information due to the lack of coordination between design and engineering disciplines. This is largely due to design and engineering solutions created in isolation and an subsequent effort at construction stage to attempt to merge them as well as possible.

It is further compounded by the common thinking  “what worked in another project should work on this project”. This is not necessarily true as what worked on another project necessary might apply to the current project at hand. Another reason for this with the classic practice of “cut-  paste” brought about the ease of the ability in CAD systems. .  

The larger the team, greater is the need for greater coordination and design integration to ensure constructability i.e. the buildability of the project/product.  To ensure the buildability of the project/product the timely integration of transition requirements and the construction knowledge into the conceptual planning, design, construction, and field operations of a project/product is required.  

To achieve buildability or constructability at various stages of the project; feasibility; per-design; design; engineering; detail design constructability reviews and analysis are carried out with the intent to improve the effectiveness of a design or engineering deliverable to include: plans, specifications and bid documents.

These reviews and analysis are carried out among the design / engineering team; the client and by those with construction expertise to reduce cost of implementation and/ construction; risk; achieve the budget and thus meet the ROI of the business objectives of the client firm.

MAGAZINES WE CURATE ON FLIPBOARD

The magazine we curate are collection of interesting topics we track at Optum+ which enables us to keep ourselves abreast with the effects of change on today’s organisation and identify emerging solutions and technologies that will make our project delivery effective.

 Enjoy!