How to successively digitize construction sites

“Our challenge is to combine traditional craftsmanship and innovative ideas. We therefore primarily see digitization as an opportunity for new business models and to support our teams with great solutions,” says Michael Hochhold. Colleagues are increasingly working while mobile and administration is via many shared documents. But the optimal infrastructure for this was lacking both on the construction sites and in administration for a long time. One reason was that when it came to software, Leyrer + Graf relied on a multi-vendor strategy, which made communication and daily work more difficult, Hochhold recalls: “Our employees had different accesses and passwords, which they also had to change every six months. So we decided to consolidate and rely more on Microsoft’s portfolio.” The new solution was to unite Office products, shared services, file storage and communications.

The tender was sent to various Microsoft partners and covered areas such as architecture consulting, change management, project support, implementation and support for Microsoft 365. Leyrer + Graf ultimately decided in favor of COSMO CONSULT. The clinching factors were, above all, the consulting expertise and the feeling of being a good match. The local presence in Austria was also important—as was the back-up from Germany, through which experts can always be accessed.

The Microsoft solution includes many products, and that’s a challenge when it comes to licensing, Hochhold explains: “Licenses cost money and that creates pressure. The main task in COSMO CONSULT’s support was therefore to implement a roadmap that prioritized the products we should use immediately and those for later. Because it is a challenge in the change process with a mass conversion when you have about 1,200 people working with it in the final build.”

The first step was for the project team to equip the entire workforce with classic Office products such as Microsoft Teams, Microsoft OneDrive and Microsoft SharePoint. COSMO CONSULT’s external perspective was particularly in demand during the changeover, says Hochhold: “You should seize the opportunity and also call on the consultants’ advisory expertise. To begin with, we fell into a well-known trap and said, ‘But everything is different with us. Standard solutions don’t work.” COSMO CONSULT stuck with the plan and were able to use their experience to convince us that using standard solutions actually does work.” Unlike ERP or DMS solutions, Microsoft Exchange, for example, is highly standardized. “Just understanding these standards and implementing them was a challenge in itself for Leyrer + Graf. After all, there are only a few medium-sized construction companies of a similar size to ours. COSMO CONSULT provided us with expert support, and so our ‘regular’ project work has turned into a cooperative partnership,” adds Hochhold.

The benefits of the new technologies sometimes became quickly apparent. Each document now only has one valid version: gone are the times when no one knew exactly which version was the current one. Internally, it was important to clearly work out use cases, emphasizes Hochhold: “We use an Excel spreadsheet, for example, to show how much more efficient it is to store files on Microsoft OneDrive and work on them together instead of sending them to colleagues by e-mail.” The option to interact with Microsoft Excel in Microsoft Teams may not seem like much of a big deal from the outside, but it makes our employees’ daily work so much easier.

At the same time, the project team also identified unsuitable use cases, for example in the CAD area: it makes no sense here to store hundreds of megabytes of files on Microsoft SharePoint when the entire planning team is in the same office. Hochhold also sees the integrated search as a major advantage: “Often, I can’t remember if I saw an Excel spreadsheet in a chat or received it as an attachment or link. Now, I can just type in the name, find the current version and see that a colleague is working on it and call them right away.”

Now that Microsoft 365 provides a modern technical foundation, more applications from the Microsoft portfolio can be added in a targeted way. There are already initial ideas in this regard: for example, Accounting has expressed interest in the Microsoft Power Platform, which can be used as a basis for creating custom applications using apps, automated workflows and visualized data.

Michael Hochhold still sees plenty of potential for digitization in the construction industry. They have taken another big and successful step forward at Leyrer + Graf, he explains: “When you talk to colleagues, you can tell they’re really enjoying working with the new tools.”