Strabag SE builds a risk management solution to improve efficiency using Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform

As one of the oldest industries in the world, construction hasn’t always kept pace with the modernization that has swept across other industries, particularly when it comes to driving operational efficiencies with data. But one organization is determined to change that. Strabag SE, the global construction company, partnered with Microsoft to build a Data Science Hub to collect decentralized data and leverage it for insights. This enabled the organization to develop use cases to prove the value of data including its risk management project. The solution uses an algorithm to pinpoint at-risk construction projects, saving Strabag SE time and reducing financial losses. With data now at the helm, Strabag SE is cementing its future in a traditional industry on the path to digitalization.

“At Strabag SE, we’re on a mission to be at the forefront of innovation in the construction industry. But to achieve this, we have to be using data.”

Dr. Marco Xaver Bornschlegl, Head of Innovation and Digitalisation at Strabag SE, is explaining the huge goals that the European technology group – specializing in construction projects across the globe – is striving towards.

“The construction industry is very traditional, and innovation can be slowed by its inefficiencies,” says Bornschlegl. “But for us, innovation isn’t just about building incredible solutions and products; it’s about making small changes that can have a huge impact. One area of the business where we saw we could make a difference was with data sharing within the company. We have a lot of data, but it was stored in single units and business fields, with no connection to another. ”

The data science team at Strabag SE realized they needed to establish a central entity to drive innovation and digitalization. “So, in partnership with Microsoft,” he adds, “we built a Data Science Hub to leverage data insights and accelerate business.”

This unlocked a myriad of possibilities, allowing the team to begin developing use cases to prove the value of data and explore its potential. One successful initiative was the AI-based risk management solution that assesses which construction projects may fail. “By using data and AI to pinpoint which projects are a potential risk for us,” says Bornschlegl, “we can save the organization huge amounts of money and time.

“It’s a perfect example of the power of data.”

“Microsoft is more than a technology partner. They advised us every step of the way. Together, we ran workshops to explore the organization’s needs and using their Intelligence Driven Organization (IDO) framework, they helped us to create a strategy to address our digital priorities.”

Dr. Marco Bornschlegl, Head of Innovation and Digitalisation, Strabag SE

Laying the foundation for innovation

Based in Austria, Strabag SE specializes in construction and related services in locations spanning the globe, from our main region Central and Eastern Europe over UK to Chile. With approximately 75,000 employees, its projects range from civil engineering to transportation infrastructure.

“Construction is one of the oldest industries,” explains Bornschlegl, “even to this day, it’s a sector built by hand. While it’s important to honor this legacy, it’s vital that we bring innovation straight to the construction sites to improve efficiency.

“And within this framework, a key challenge we faced at Strabag SE was that each of our global sites were decentralized and employees needed multiple logins to access anything,” Bornschlegl continues.

“This is where our digitalization journey began, and it marked the beginning of our partnership with Microsoft.”

With strong support of the internal IT infrastructure department, the data science team started small, using Microsoft Azure Active Directory to set up logins and enable multifactor authentication. They adopted cloud technology and implemented tools and applications such as Microsoft 365, Microsoft Teams and Azure Active Directory to support employees with their day-to-day workloads.

Now they had a foundation of technology to build upon. “Without the street, you can’t drive the car,” says Bornschlegl. “So, in the last three years, we’ve been constructing the street.”

A centralized data hub is established

With a bedrock of technology in place, it was time to start exploring ways to digitalize and leverage data. Initially, this proved challenging, as from both a cultural and technical perspective, the sector had fallen behind other more progressive industries such as automotive.

“One of the great things about the construction industry,” explains Bornschlegl, “is that it’s all about collaboration, where multiple companies with different skillsets come together to create something incredible. But this way of working wasn't reflected in how companies used and managed data – no one was willing to share what they generated.

“We needed to revolutionize this culture and put data at the heart of it.”

Over the last 18 months, Strabag SE collaborated with the Microsoft Industry Solutions Delivery team to embrace Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform. Implemented as part of a strategy to phase out costly and complex point solutions, the technology has allowed Strabag SE to establish the Data Science Hub, a centralized system to connect every data source so it could be analyzed and produce valuable insights. The system, which is decentralized, uses Microsoft Purview for data governance, as well as various Microsoft products including Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure Databricks, Azure Machine learning, and Azure SQL.

This enabled the team to start building use cases. As the company has operations all over the world, if the use cases proved successful, huge operational efficiency gains and cost reduction benefits could be achieved by scaling them globally. This is helping to provide Strabag SE with a more structured approach, while also generating key insights, business value and shareable data through the data lake.

“Throughout the whole process, Microsoft has been more than a technology partner,” says Bornschlegl. “They advised us every step of the way. Together, we ran workshops to explore the organization’s needs. We used their Intelligence Driven Organization (IDO) framework to create a strategy that would address our digital priorities. We chose two initiatives to work on that would have the biggest impact: improving the existing Data Science Hub infrastructure, and risk management.”

Stragbag leverages Microsoft Intelligence Data Platform adopting some data mesh principles, moving from soiled data to a federated AI data Hub where all business units can be contributors as well as consumers of the data. The solution follows the Cloud-scale analytics scenario guidelines and best practices, with a data Management landing zone that governs the platform and secure the data, connecting with data Landing zones, which may have different ingestion capabilities depending on the sources, to serve the creation of data products.

Mitigating risk using the power of AI

The margins in construction are narrow, so it’s important for companies to pick the right projects to work on. “If you choose the wrong one,” explains Bornschlegl, “it can be financially detrimental to the company. This is why risk management is such an important part of what we do.”

Strabag SE used Azure OpenAI Service to create a solution that allows it to assess the potential impacts of a project in its earliest stages by comparing it against all its realized projects – therefore minimizing the risks that come with it.

Specialists then use a Power App to carry out further comparisons, review the projects and reprioritize the work. “With just three months of data, this algorithm can predict risk with 80% accuracy – it’s mind-blowing!

“With this solution, enabled by Azure OpenAI Service, we know when the weather will prevent us using a crane on-site,” begins Bornschlegl. Moreover, by the aid of Generative Design our real estate development unit knows with a few clicks how much maximum gross floor area they can develop on a site. This kind of information is vital when you have projects worth two million euros with a margin of 4-5%.

“The algorithm can work more quickly and efficiently than humans, but the process still requires people to make the ultimate decisions. Even so, technology this powerful scares people, and right now our biggest challenge is addressing this anxiety among our employees.”

To tackle this and empower employees to embrace everything that innovation can offer, Strabag SE is running initiatives to help transform how employees view and use technology to create a culture of innovation. After all, the construction industry is in dire need of people. So the aim of digitalization is not to replace employees, but to relieve them of parts of their workload.

Constructing a future built on data

“In time,” says Bornschlegl, “STRABAG Innovation and Digitalisation hopes that employees see that in the same way you need different materials to work together to build a sturdy house, when you collect and connect information, you can see the bigger picture and build a stronger organization – and that’s data science.”

With the help of Microsoft, the team are continuing to develop use cases to prove the value of being data-driven and have around 15 projects in the pipeline. “We want to use data to improve efficiency, optimize operations and become more sustainable. That’s what sets apart the organizations that are successful and those that are not.”

For the team at Strabag, leveraging data isn’t just about supporting the construction industry of today. “Data science helps us prepare for the future,” says Bornschlegl. “Our vision is to build a better tomorrow, not just for Strabag, but for the construction industry. To achieve this, we must embrace innovation and unleash the power that data has to offer.”