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"By using BusinessObjects to automate reports, we've found that we can maintain a consistent presentation of the data. People can now make more intelligent use of business data to ensure optimal utilization of equipment and personnel, and deliver projects on schedule and on budget."

Cary Connor
business intelligence analyst
American Infrastructure

Challenge

The Pennsylvania Turnpike roadway improvement project involves widening over five miles of the major toll road to six lanes. Ultimately it will require more than 658,000 cubic yards of excavation, 400,000 tons of aggregate, 200,000 tons of bituminous base, and 100,000 square feet of retaining walls. As ambitious as this undertaking is, it's just one of many projects that American Infrastructure crews are working hard to complete on time and on budget—and software from Business Objects, an SAP company, is helping to get all of these jobs done with maximum efficiency.

American Infrastructure is a heavy civil construction company and materials supplier located in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. The company consistently ranks in the upper half of Engineering News Record's annual Top 400 U.S. Contractors, the Top 50 Heavy and Highway Contractors, and the Top 200 Environmental Engineering and Construction Companies. Achieving this level of success depends on many factors, including high-quality materials, dedicated crews, an excellent safety program, and broad experience in all aspects of heavy construction. It also depends on the intelligent use of data to ensure optimal utilization of equipment and personnel.

That's where Cary Connor comes in. Connor is the business intelligence (BI) analyst at American Infrastructure, responsible for designing the company's data warehouse, identifying data sources, creating and scheduling reports, populating dashboards with relevant metrics—in short, anything that relates to the company's BI system.

When Connor joined American Infrastructure, data was housed in a wide variety of systems, application databases, and spreadsheets, creating disparities in how end users viewed data. "There was no single place where all the data was integrated," she says. "Everybody was accessing the information differently, and consequently people were looking at things in different ways."

In addition to maintaining standard human resources (HR) and finance information, American Infrastructure generates a large amount of industry-specific data that must be regularly tracked, reconciled, and reported. For example, to avoid fines and to help maintain its excellent safety record, the company must produce records that demonstrate compliance with Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) regulations. Crew cost factor reports show the relationship between the dollar amounts budgeted and spent for each project. Utilization reports help project managers maximize efficiency and contain costs associated with bulldozers, graders, loaders, and other heavy equipment. With so many reporting demands, the company needed a way to consolidate data and standardize its reporting processes.

Approach

"Initially, we were just looking for a way to create dashboards, so our construction project managers would have all the relevant data right at their fingertips," says Connor. "But we quickly realized that we needed a full enterprise solution, in order to standardize our reporting processes throughout the organization. With decreasing public funds and pressure to complete projects faster, timely insight into operations was becoming even more important. The BusinessObjects™ XI suite meets our need very well."

Prior to implementing Business Objects software, producing reports was a tedious and time-consuming manual process. "The crew cost factor reports are a good example," says Connor. "These reports are delivered once a week, on Monday morning. Before we installed our BI system, they were actually done on Sunday nights by a fellow at home. It took him four to six hours to complete the task. He doesn't do that anymore—BusinessObjects does it all."

Along with the BusinessObjects XI platform, American Infrastructure also uses Crystal Reports®, BusinessObjects Web Intelligence®, BusinessObjects Dashboard Builder, BusinessObjects Performance Manager, and BusinessObjects Data Integrator.

Results

American Infrastructure now uses BusinessObjects to consolidate data and automate a range of reports that previously took hours to produce. For example, it used to take approximately two hours every Monday morning to produce equipment utilization reports. Safety reports required several hours a month, as data was pulled from different sources and formatted into a spreadsheet. All of these tasks are now handled automatically, and Connor is constantly on the lookout for additional opportunities to streamline the process. "We try to find areas in which reports are still being created manually and distributed widely across the organization," she says. "Then we work with the stakeholders to understand their requirements and deliver the functionality they need to do their jobs better."

An important side benefit of this effort is an ongoing improvement in data quality. "When we go through the process of automating a report, we occasionally find areas in which manual processing can lead to errors," says Connor. "In creating the equipment utilization report, for instance, we found that the data sometimes contradicted itself—a bulldozer might have been listed as non-operational for a given day, but have eight hours logged against it for the same day. Regular, rules-based alert reports make it possible for project managers to correct these inaccuracies immediately. That way, they don't have to spend time at the end of the month trying to reconcile inconsistent data."

Dashboards are especially popular with the construction project managers. In addition to crew cost factor information, data on safety-related incidents, and equipment utilization figures, Connor notes that many simple metrics—such as the number of unapproved invoices per project—are extremely valuable. "Rather than going into a separate system, project managers can immediately see the number and dollar amount of invoices waiting for their approval," she says. "If the total is $1,500, it can probably wait until Friday. But if it's more like $50,000, the project manager can go directly into the system, approve the invoices, and perform whatever follow-up is required. Our dashboard has become a place where people can get the specific information they need on a daily basis for their jobs."

Connor notes that American Infrastructure has always looked for new ways in which technology can be used to enhance business operations and customer service. "By using BusinessObjects to automate reports, we've found that we can maintain a consistent presentation of the data," she concludes. "People can now make more intelligent use of business data to ensure optimal utilization of equipment and personnel, and deliver projects on schedule and on budget. In that sense, BusinessObjects has helped transform the way people work at American Infrastructure."

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