How MissionOS helps with Big Data in Construction

The term “Big Data” is often used when it comes to describing the huge increase in data being generated bythe construction industry. The fact that data volumes are large is not the only meaning within the term. By most definitions “Big Data” is complex and unstructured data, which needs special measures to mine, consolidate and transform it, to be able to gain valuable insight whether for purposes of improving business or quality of life.

The data created in construction is far from unstructured, and is generally not complex. Today however, the world is creating more data than ever before. There are many standards describing how data should be collected and these are set out in construction specifications. Problems arise where specifications differ from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, and where the mechanisms of data collection varies widely from paper records through spreadsheets, to highly organised data management platforms. Often data is siloed according to particular construction disciplines such as survey, geotechnical, programme commercial and although mileage has been made, the specific software programs used in these disciplines have not yet found truly effective ways to communicate.

The result is that the big volumes of data collected have not been aggregated effectively into datasets that can benefit future projects. In some cases, this is done as an afterthought but this means expending huge resources creating translated and transformed data sets into a data warehouse. This expense is most often beyond the financial and programme capacity of the contractors or contractors and it is a hard task for owners to justify the additional expense.

The advent of BIM goes someway to aggregating as built data as the project proceeds, but this too is often an additional activity to the general production and not integral to it. Many of the important temporary works, time, cost, consumables and ground characteristics informations is also lost.

Maxwell GeoSystems’ MissionOS is a highly flexible and configurable data modelling and management platform, which can manage data of all types generated on construction projects. With focus on the whole data lifecycle, the system absorbs data as it is collected during the construction process into data models which are appropriate to each discipline. MissionOS connects to proprietary software through APIs absorbing data from projects but also providing users with the data they need.

The system’s flexible data modelling environment addresses ground and topographic modelling, reality capture, geospatial layers, sensor data, time, activity, resource and consumables data and reporting as well as built records of the works. Each data model can be specific to a jurisdiction or contract but can also consolidate the data into formalised and summary statistics as it is collected. By standardising these summary statistics by common construction cycles MissionOS automatically creates warehouses of data which can be assimilated across multiple projects.


Find out more on MissionOS and learn why this system is a game-changer in the construction technology industry: