Nominee
Holcim West Central Region Team: Chance Allen – Region Head, Steve Montoya – RMX General Manager, Steve Herald – Regional Technical Manager, Mauro Gonzales – Quality Control Manager, Kai Hilton – Qual
Category
Innovative Person or Team
Description
Digital transformation is one cornerstone of Holcim’s drive for pragmatic innovation and serving its clients as a full-service concrete solutions provider. The ability to access, analyze and apply relevant data is seen as key to helping clients optimize efficiency, minimize waste, increase sustainability and maximize the probability of project success.
To that end, Holcim has developed a suite of digital applications (Holcim Digital Solutions) which can be deployed at critical stages of the development process to help stakeholders across the construction value chain, such as developing the right mix designs, planning, ordering, live monitoring performance, scheduling and logistics. These applications, which leverage Holcim’s vast resources of project and process data, allow project stakeholders to base critical decisions on accurate, up-to-date information.
The Holcim West Central Region (WCR) team has been leading the company’s digital transformation strategy in the United States and spearheading the rollout of these applications.
The WCR team's first successful implementation of the new digital toolset involved Smartflow by Holcim (Smartflow), an application that provides fast, highly accurate pumpability projections for various concrete formulations. Holcim has leveraged the experience of the parent company by collaborating and learning from other projects around the world.
The team introduced Smartflow during discussions surrounding a proposed high-rise development project in the Denver area. Stakeholders were planning to determine pump and mix requirements using the traditional method: outdated standards data, estimates and costly physical testing. The project team was able to demonstrate, through use of Smartflow, that it was possible to make accurate assessments through a 10-minute testing process—leading to dramatic time and resource savings, as well as improved project sustainability.
The success of Holcim’s digital transformation process depends on the organization’s ability to match customer needs with company capabilities, build shared understanding between project stakeholders, communicate the value of new tools and approaches and apply the right tools and information at the right time to maximize value to clients. By clearly identifying a customer need, researching a likely solution and successfully deploying it, the WCR team has demonstrated its ability to practically apply digital solutions for client benefit.
Evidence
In deploying Smartflow to the Colorado market, the West Central Region team was able to deliver considerable value to clients, including improved predictive capabilities, waste reduction and cost containment.
Through the Smartflow app, the team was able to put Holcim’s extensive product and process data to work for a client’s benefit. This knowledge, gained from decades of global experience, exhaustive research and collaboration with other companies (notably a leading concrete pump manufacturer), serves as the foundation for the app’s pumping simulations and the highly accurate results they generate.
The WCR team’s success with implementing Smartflow has delivered direct and immediate benefits to clients in the region:
• Shortly before slabs were to be poured on the metal decks of a large regional distribution center project, the developer learned of severe limitations in building access points, resulting in the need to pump concrete up to 800 feet. The team used mix design data, along with the pump and piping specifications, in Smartflow to rapidly profile multiple mix designs and establish the viability of the existing mix. The developer avoided additional cement costs, as well as any related impacts on the project’s carbon footprint.
• The team was able to allay a pumping contractor’s concerns about the pumpability of ready-mix formulations for its Denver-area high-rise construction project. The Holcim team was able to use Smartflow to accurately assess pumpability and enable the project to proceed without modification to the mix designs.
Insight into real-world customer needs has enabled the team to not only apply Smartflow testing to immediate projects, but to envision other ways that Smartflow, possibly in conjunction with other applications in the SMART Construction Suite, can provide value to clients, including:
• Accurate, rapid admixture analysis.
Using Smartflow, Holcim and its clients can assess the likely efficacy of various admixtures being considered for use in a project, and accurately assess their impact on physical properties and pumpability.
• Rapid access to concrete pumpability information.
Smartflow can draw on authoritative data for hundreds of different concrete formulations, enabling rapid selection based on a formula’s suitability for a specific purpose.
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