Innovating to future-proof the business

The Challenge

When Tomas Hollingsworth joined BW: Workplace Experts (BW), he saw an opportunity to use technology to move away from paper-based processes. The company was spending thousands per project on drawing packs and disparate software tools. It needed to streamline and continue to innovate. “I was at a Microsoft conference where they said, ‘Anyone who's not using AI in the next 5 years, their business plan is flawed.’ So, I told the board, ‘We need to put AI in our business plan.’”

Hollingsworth, Director of Technology at BW, knew the company could add value and digitally transform quickly with a construction platform and AI. “I looked for opportunities to make the business more efficient, and to make us look innovative to our clients. We want to stand out from the crowd.”

The Solution

Thanks to Procore, there are no longer drawing racks on site, saving BW at least £3,000 per project. Procore’s in-built AI features added significant value, helping BW to save time and money and increase productivity. “We’re constantly asking Procore, ‘How can we do this quicker?’ and ‘How can we make sure that we’ve got that audit trail?’ Having it all in one place is important to us to maintain that golden thread.”

Procore Assist, an AI-powered conversational assistant, has been pivotal for user adoption. Users ask project-specific questions and receive answers on-demand, reducing time spent on manual search. Because users can speak to Procore Assist as an assistant, it’s intuitive and easy to adopt for teams of all technical backgrounds. “We’ve had some real successes in terms of user adoption for both internal staff and subcontractors. The technology almost becomes invisible. We’re providing that technology, even if the user doesn’t realise this,” says Hollingsworth.

The Results

• Saved £3,000 minimum per project on drawing packs
• Simplified adoption and collaboration for 8,000 internal and supply chain users with Procore Assist
• Increased information managers’ productivity by 200–250%

Procore Drives BW’s Innovation and Transformation Efforts

BW: Workplace Experts are one of London’s leading workplace and higher education campus fit out specialists. It sits between clients and consultants, working with contractors, subcontractors and vendors. This can lead to a large, sprawling data ecosystem to manage. “The amount of data that they’re inputting becomes an issue without a good way to process it,” says Hollingsworth.

Knowing it could boost efficiency, BW worked on cleaning and organising this fragmented data — a significant undertaking that took several years. Upon completion, it was able to consider how to use AI to keep improving its data strategy. Procore’s Open APIs make it easy to extract that data, enabling both efficiency and innovation.

“We were seeing how we could harness AI with the data that we’ve already got, making sure the data we’ve got is clean. We’ve built that foundation over the last six years,” says Hollingsworth. Using a Procore agent, BW has quickly standardised data in drawing naming standards, for example. The Agent identifies discrepancies, such as date formats, and automatically fixes them.

BW’s investment in its data strategy and data optimisation has significantly increased its information managers’ productivity. “Seven years ago, we had 10 information managers working on one site each. Today, 12 information managers can manage 30 to 35 sites. We couldn’t do that without this platform,” says Hollingsworth.

Procore platform enables AI adoption across BW: Workplace Experts

With a solid foundation, BW can utilise Procore Assist to get even more from its data. “Now we can use AI to process data to get real insights and have conversations around dashboards and graphs,” says Hollingsworth. For some, graphs can be difficult to interpret, so BW benefits from Procore Assist’s ability to provide context with any data. “[Clients] don’t want to see a graph in four different colours,” says Hollingsworth. “We can take that, create text that they can understand and say, ‘This is how your project’s going.’”

Thanks to the Procore platform’s easy-to-use interface, AI adoption has been a rapid success. “People are using AI on a daily basis,” says Hollingsworth. “One of our surprises is the amount of success we have with our supply chain wanting to use Procore. People are asking, ‘How can I snag it with Procore in my own environment and share it with you?’”

Procore Assist has been critical for the implementation of AI at BW. “It’s been a huge piece of adoption for us,” he says. “Before, we’d ask someone to sign a form because that's the quickest route.” Now, Hollingsworth adds, he can say, “Go onto Procore, approve that RFI or submit it using Assist.”

Procore has helped BW to set a standard of innovative and forward-thinking practices by digitalising its workflows, enabling collaboration across the supply chain and using AI to speed up and standardise its processes. “Without Procore, we wouldn’t be able to do any of the innovative things we’re doing with AI today,” says Hollingsworth.