As Group CIO at infrastructure and construction firm Fulton Hogan, Brian Northern’s team have launched a number of initiatives to help the business work smarter. 

Through its Automated Road Inspection application - launched last year - cameras are mounted on company vehicles to record video of the road network. This is then uploaded to a cloud service where machine learning is deployed to analyse the road condition. This has benefited the business by taking surveyors off the road (improving safety) and reducing costs as the previous manual method involved traffic management crews to be in place to allow for the inspectors to perform this high-risk task. 

The innovation has now been expanded to integrate the findings to a job management system for job approval and scheduling which has added further efficiencies. Fulton Hogan is now looking at diversifying and utilising the application in other areas such as airports. 

The second innovation that the Fulton Hogan team has introduced is an application to streamline and optimise a complex asphalt paving supply chain process within the larger regions it operates in. This manual process involves managing all the resources required for roading jobs which change according to priority and at short notice due to weather and other unpredictable factors. A combination of jobs can be planned many days out for a particular shift; however which jobs actually happen, and late adjustments mean planning an efficient overall shift is an increasing challenge.

In order to move fast the team used Auckland as a proof-of-concept region. In that region the Fulton Hogan Auckland asphalt paving supply chain is responsible for $150M - $170M of turnover per annum, with up to eight crews operating the night shift and up to five crews operating the day shift. The application manages the resources required (which are different for each job) and the mobile app component pushes out notifications of changes keeping everyone informed.

By developing this solution, the Fulton Hogan team were able to reduce ‘missed opportunity’ paving shifts across NZ business, saw additional productivity per shift on paving sites and reduced staff ‘planning’ time in Auckland.

Northern says this application came about as part of a close collaboration between IT and the business to solve a business problem with everyone working together.

The team is working across the business and the industry to find further areas to innovate.  Northern says the ‘Quarry of the Future’ is one area they are looking at by taking input and blue sky thinking to innovate a traditional business area.