Project Data Analytics Community Newsletter
June 2020

We produce this newsletter to keep you plugged into the very latest developments, building capacity and understanding within the project delivery community.

P3M
Project, Portfolio and Programme Management
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A New Paradigm For Project Planning
21/05/2020 - By McKinsey
A useful blog from McKinsey on how to model the impact of various scenarios on project delivery productivity. Read more ...
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The Pathway Towards an Information Management Framework – A ‘Commons’ for Digital Built Britain
20/05/2020 - By Angela Walters
A comprehensive piece of work which will lead towards a commons for digital built Britain. It is aimed at asset data and digital twins rather than project delivery data. But we look forward to exploring how we connect the two. Read more ...
Infrastructure: An Increasingly Risky Business
05/2020 - By Todd Battley
We regularly see the problems highlighted in this article because we can’t deliver projects on cost. Can we apply data and AI to this problem to help us manage risk on complex projects. Read more ...
2020 Project Controls Survey Report
05/2020 - By LogiKal
Interesting annual project controls survey from LogiKal. It drives home that most project controls professionals don’t realise the hugely disruptive impact that this will have on their profession. The project controls apprenticeship teaches people about estimating, building schedules and very little about modern data manipulation methods. Is it fair to conclude that project controls professionals just aren’t tooled up for what is coming? Read more ...
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Complex Systems: A Survey
- By M. E. J. Newman
A lot of people refer to large projects as ‘complex projects’. I’ve been looking into the science that underpins complexity for a number of years. I strongly believe that a badge such as this encourages the wrong behavior. Parts of a large project are indeed complex adaptive systems, particularly those with multiple interfaces in an evolving environment. But a significant majority of these parts are complicated or even fairly routine. But the very definition of a project being unique drives us away from the insights that we can derive from these routine and complicated components. How many risks, benefits etc. are unique? How much of Crossrail was a complex adaptive system? I would propose that most of it was complicated rather than complex. In the world of COVID this reverses. Lots of complicated projects become complex adaptive systems as fundamental assumptions are challenged. As practitioners we have an obligation to understand these principles. Read more ...
Project Delivery
Construction
What is a 5G smart construction site? | Equipment and IT
03/06/2020 - By Construction Global - The Global Construction Platform
As interesting article on how 5G technology can be used to help transform construction sites, with an example from a site in Beijing. Read more ...
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How Construction Firms Can Capitalise On Their Data
27/05/2020 - By Planning, BIM & Construction Today
A great piece on the steps required for companies to make the most of their data. The process all starts with defining goals and understanding what questions you want to answer with your data. Read more ...
How AI and remote collaboration tools could help the construction industry get back to work
20/05/2020 - By VentureBeat
Examples of how technology on construction sites can help to improve efficiency as well as reducing the number of workers needed to be on site at one time – something very important in the current climate. Read more ...
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How artificial intelligence is improving the efficiency of BIM
11/05/2020 - By Planning, BIM & Construction Today
An article detailing how artificial intelligence is being used to process the data generated by BIM systems, and how it can help BIM to become more efficient. Read more ...
Energy
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3D Scanning Offers Path to Remote Asset Management
02/06/2020 - By Rigzone
Some examples of how 3D scanning of oil and gas assets can help engineers to work remotely to identify any faults or plan upgrades. Read more ...
How AI Is Shaping Safety Standards On Oil Rigs
18/05/2020 - By Analytics India Magazine
Energy companies appear to be using artificial intelligence more and more on their rigs to improve health and safety standards. Read more ...
Transport
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Autonomous Inspection and Data Management for Railway Maintenance
03/06/2020 - By railway-news.com
Another example of how the rail industry are using automation and AI to reduce costs and improve the efficiency of railway maintenance. Read more ...
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AI to the rescue for Herts inspections
28/05/2020 - By Highways Magazine
An interesting article on how Hertfordshire County Council are using the Vaisala RoadAI technology to improve their highways route inspections. Read more ...
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AI paves way to lower road costs via concrete sensors, traffic data
20/05/2020 - By FierceElectronics
Sensors are installed when new concrete is laid to let engineers know when it can take on traffic loads. The aim of the sensors is to prevent roads to be opened two soon after maintenance to stop stress fractures from occurring. Read more ...
Other
FIDO detects water leaks for United Utilities - WWT
26/05/2020 - By WWTonline
A really interesting piece of technology that uses artificial intelligence to ‘listen’ for leaks on water pipes, and triangulates their location to allow for maintenance. Read more ...
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Future proofing water infrastucture with AI
16/05/2020 - By WWTonline
Some examples of how AI is being used to help water and wastewater companies to become more efficient and improve their infrastructure. Read more ...
Data
AI & Machine Learning
Federated Analytics: Collaborative Data Science without Data Collection
27/05/2020 - By Google AI
Federated learning is a way for machine learning engineers to run their models across several devices, in a way that means only the user has a copy of their own data. Google have now introduced a new concept, federated analytics, that aims to “support basic data science needs”. It will be interesting to see exactly how the concept works. Read more ...
End-to-End Object Detection with Transformers
27/05/2020 - By Facebook AI
Facebook have released a new approach to object detection, by utilizing Transformers in the model. This is the first time Transformers have been used for object recognition, and it is likely there will be further improvements using this approach as it becomes more commonly used. Read more ...
Open-Sourcing BiT: Exploring Large-Scale Pre-training for Computer Vision
21/05/2020 - By Google AI
A common problem in the field of computer vision is the need to train models on datasets containing a huge number of labelled images. A way to deal with this issue is to use pre-trained models, but these models can often struggle when applied to a new domain. BiT is an approach from google to improve the “pre-training of general images” for computer vision problems. Read more ...
How to Build AI with (and for) Everyone in your Organisation
04/05/2020 - By McKinsey
Interesting article on how to build AI within your organization. It highlights the impact on roles and on the performance of your business. In particular, the need for educating and upskilling. The focus on AI is probably overplayed. There are huge opportunities to be gained through some of the basics such as reporting, assurance etc combined with automation. Within the project delivery domain we need to develop the fundamentals underpinned by a roadmap towards AI … Read more ...
Data Analytics
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How to Build a Data Architecture to Drive Innovation – Today and Tomorrow
03/06/2020 - By McKinsey
A useful report from McKinsey on how to build a data architecture to drive innovation. Some useful advice for those grappling with architecture challenges. Read more ...
Open Data – Why it Matters and Why it’s Hard
27/05/2020 - By Jane Gray
An interesting article on open data. Our CEO Martin Paver was a member of the task force. Whilst this is largely operational data rather than project data it is a still a major step forward. Read more ...
Resources for Creating a Data Quality Methodology
- By Data Quality Pro
A really useful resource on data quality. Read more ...
Data Visualisation
Best Practices To Follow For A Better Data Visualisation
05/05/2020 - By Analytics India Magazine
A useful article detailing some best practices for data visualization. Read more ...
Apprenticeship
Project Data Analyst Apprenticeship
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- By
There are huge untapped opportunities to be exploited in the rich seems of data produced by the projects we deliver. However, there is a shortage of people who have the skills to apply data science in a project delivery environment, which is exacerbated as organizational demands for data insights grows. Recognising this lack of capacity, we created the Project Data Analyst Apprenticeship. Read more ...
Robotic Process Automation
Automation
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Robotic process automation: A cheat sheet
29/05/2020 - By TechRepublic
An informative article on RPA, with information on the different types of automation, RPA software vendors and more. Read more ...
Microsoft Acquires Softomotive
19/05/2020 - By RPA Today
Microsoft has announced the purchase of RPA provider Softomotive, using this acquisition to boost its Microsoft Power Automate platform. Since Microsoft entered the RPA space it has been making rapid progress to catch up with other software vendors, and this is another step forward in that process. Read more ...
Upcoming Community Events
Look out for details on Project:Hack6 - coming soon!
We have some great Project:Meetups lined up for 2020 across the UK. Check out details of upcoming meetups now!
In 2017 Projecting Success founded the Project Data Analytics CommunityIt is now the UK's largest community of project delivery and data science professionals. Existing purely for the benefit of its members, it seeks to push the boundaries of project delivery into a whole new realm. We host monthly meetups across the UK and hackathons 3 times a year. For more information visit our website. To receive this newsletter directly to your inbox every month click on the button below.
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