Alternative Heat Ltd

Aódh McGuinness MCIAT

Connected Delivery Champion

Defining the Real Problem

The construction industry has spent years talking about digital transformation. The harder conversation — the one that happens after the software is purchased and the onboarding is done — is what it actually takes to make it stick.

This piece isn’t a product review. It’s an honest account of what we learned when we set out to close the gap between our design office, our fabrication facility, and our site teams — and what we’d do differently if we were starting again.

The problem we were trying to solve was a coordination one, not a technology one. In MEP prefabrication, where service density is extreme and tolerances are tight, the margin for misalignment between what’s designed, what’s built in the factory, and what’s installed on site is very small. We had good people and capable teams. What we didn’t have was a shared picture of the project that everyone — BIM engineers, fabricators, and site installers — could see, update, and act on in real time. Information sat in emails, in separate drawing packages, in phone calls that didn’t get logged. Issues took days to close. Queries from site stalled installs while they waited for office responses. The gap between intent and execution was costing us time and creating rework we shouldn’t have needed.

When we looked at how to address this, the temptation was to jump straight to a platform decision. The more useful step, which we almost skipped, was to define what we actually needed the information to do. Who needed to see it? At what point in the process? On what device? The answers shaped the brief far more effectively than any software demo could.

Building the Right Foundation

That search led us to Revizto. The criteria were clear: mobile and tablet access for site teams was non-negotiable, crossdiscipline visibility was essential, and we needed measurable accountability—not just a tool, but a closed-loop process. Its federated model environment, combined with real-time issue tracking and a site-accessible interface, matched how we actually work.

“The discipline of defining the problem before selecting the solution is one the industry consistently undervalues — and consistently pays for when it skips it.”

Rollout was phased. BIM and site operations were stood up first — 3D model setup, clash detection, issue creation, and live model access on site, now live across all data center projects. Design workflow integration, fabrication spool tracking, and commercial reporting are following through 2026. The discipline of phasing proved important: trying to do everything at once would have overwhelmed teams still building new habits.

The Human Side of Implementation

Implementation surfaced something we hadn’t fully anticipated: the technology was the straightforward part. The harder work was behavioral. Teams had established habits — ways of raising queries, escalating issues, and tracking progress that had developed over the years. Asking people to change those habits, even for something demonstrably better, required more sustained effort than the onboarding plan allowed for. We underestimated how long it takes for a new workflow to feel natural rather than imposed.

Lessons from the Rollout

There are a few things we’d highlight for any team going through a similar process. First, identify a champion early — not a senior sponsor, but someone embedded in the day-to-day work who believes in the approach and has credibility with the teams using it. Adoption follows people, not mandates. Second, involve site teams in configuration, not just training. The people raising issues from a tablet on site have a different relationship with the platform than those building models in the office, and their input changes how you set it up in ways that matter. Third, resist the urge to measure everything immediately. Pick two or three metrics that reflect what you actually care about, track them consistently, and build from there. A dashboard full of KPIs no one acts on is just more noise.

Transformation through Technology

The outcomes, when they came, were measurable — issue closure times, pre-site resolution rates, drawing revision rates, coordination meeting duration, prefabrication modifications on site. These numbers improved. But the more significant shift was harder to quantify: the point at which the office, the factory, and the site stopped operating as three separate information streams and started functioning as one connected team. That change didn’t come from the software. It came from the decisions made before it was switched on, and the discipline maintained after.

The construction industry has the tools. The gap, more often than not, is in the execution — in the process design, the change management, and the willingness to treat implementation as a project in its own right rather than an add-on to the main one. That’s where the real work is, and it’s where the real gains are waiting.