Concentre Consulting manually verify metadata of construction project documents such as drawings and schematics. This involves checking the alignment of external and internal metadata. It is a time-consuming process, involving about 200 checks per day per person. Data Mettle built a tool that automated this metadata verification, which included a complex method of verifying text that was embedded within diagrams. Data Mettle’s work unlocks potential time savings of 90%. In addition, it improves the quality of checking, providing a consistent approach that would not be possible with multiple people.

About Concentre

Concentre Consulting focuses on digital transformation in the built environment. They work with large construction companies on skyline-changing projects, ensuring the right information is available to the necessary stakeholders when they need it.

The Challenges

Managing large-scale construction projects is an enormous administrative undertaking. One of the many elements of this you might not consider when looking at a skyscraper is that file naming structure has a critical role to play. Contractors and subcontractors need to know which schematics and drawings are associated with their current tasks. Is this the right document for the layout on this particular floor? Is this the latest version? Who uploaded it to the database, and who needs it? The way they do it is through the file naming and metadata structure, where each element corresponds with necessary information about the document. Which floor does this drawing represent? What version are we on? Standardised file naming and forcing consistent metadata systems allows stakeholders to quickly identify what that file is for and what version it is.

However, this task is done by humans, which is tedious, slow and subject to error. Misnamed files could lead to delays or worse. One of Concentre’s jobs is to quality assure the file naming structure of these critical documents, checking that the file name corresponds to the metadata contained in the drawings and schematics. They did this using human oversight – checking the metadata against the filename and the corresponding convention for each project.

The challenge was how to automate this so that we could not only speed up this time-consuming process but importantly improve accuracy.

The Solution

Data Mettle was able to build a tool that did just that. Using natural language processing, the tool scans the pdf documents uploaded by stakeholders. It extracts data such as building floor, file type, and other identifying information used in the file naming. It would then verify whether the file was named correctly. And it would do it instantly and without human oversight.

The Results

This tool can present Concentre Consulting and their clients with significant cost savings. A team member would spend 8 hours doing 200 checks. They can complete the same amount of checks in just 30 minutes, representing an efficiency increase of over 90%. In the next phase of the project, Data Mettle will work with Concentre to build the capability to deliver the tool in the cloud so the benefits can be realised.

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