The partnership between EHAB and BAM began in April 2020 and has since led to groundbreaking innovations in the construction industry. This case study aims to provide an in-depth analysis of the collaboration between the two companies, focusing on their achievements, capabilities, and their journey towards a more climate resilient construction sector.
EHAB is a tech company which has been working in the construction sector on problems in weather risk since 2019.
BAM is a construction company with 20,000 employees globally, operating in the Netherlands, UK and Ireland.
In response to the Transforming Construction tranche of funding from Innovate UK, EHAB and BAM collaboratively developed The Weather Ledger. The grant funded project aimed to create the first smart contract use case for construction and prove that certain elements, and maybe one day even all, of the contract could be automated. It was an exciting challenge and has led to groundbreaking innovation.
The weather ledger was trialled on various projects, including sites with Network Rail, the Environment Agency, and HS2. The smart contract itself worked seamlessly, it was the interface with construction sites and collecting data using IoT devices which caused issues on the project. For one of the projects solar powered batteries were used to charge the weather stations. The charge for these sufficed in the brighter months of the year, but as the project moved into winter the intermittent power began to lead to holes in the data. The solution for this at the time was to supplement this data with satellite and other data from our partners at IBM.
The success of this initial collaboration laid the foundation for further partnership opportunities.
Since the inception of their partnership, EHAB has expanded its offerings to include bidding, planning, and construction delivery capabilities. This growth allowed them to provide increased value to BAM and other clients, such as their involvement in the Tay Link Road Crossing bid in Scotland. This is a £100m+ bridge and road building scheme which aims to create a bypass for traffic to help alleviate congestion in the town, commissioned by the Perth & Kinross Local Council, learn more here. This was the first project EHAB and BAM worked on after the finish of the grant and has been our longest running project because of this fact.
“Using EHAB at tender stage provided confidence in our schedule time risk allowance calculation by integrating weather modelling with our standard QSRA process.”
Chris McGinness, Regional Planning Manager, BAM
EHAB's new Quantitative Schedule Risk Analysis (QSRA) integration feature proved instrumental in securing assurance for the bid. The solution sees hyper granular data for a location being integrated into the project schedule. This creates a probabilistic model of success or failure of all the activities in the plan, which is then exported into Primavera Risk Analysis (PRA). Primavera Risk Analysis, also known as Pertmaster, is a risk analysis tool that allows you to run risk scenarios and account for uncertainty in your plan.
Thanks to some close collaboration between BAM team members and the EHAB team it was possible to find a way to integrate the robust EHAB risk data into PRA. PRA is not setup for integration and so this proved tricky, but EHAB were able to create risk calendars that can be imported into PRAs weather module.
Increased assurance and earlier warning of risks is critical in any project. The confidence the team gained thanks to the improved risk modelling and granular data has seen them continue the use of the tool throughout the project.
EHAB's solutions have been used in numerous BAM projects, such as the Cockett Wick Sea Wall defences (2023), The British Antarctic Survey Project (2022), the Sheephouse Wood Bat Protection Scheme (2023), The Great Yarmouth 3rd Crossing Bridge Scheme (2023), the Manchester Co-op arena (2022) and the Eastern Green Link subsea cabling project (2023), among a total of around 38 projects as of March 2024.
These schemes have benefited from enhanced weather and climate data being integrated into the plan and either leveraged for QSRA or for analysis of the plan and assessing time risk allowance (TRA). For example, on the Sheephouse Wood Bat Protection Scheme EHAB have set up a regular reporting flow to get the best visibility of changing risks as the project inevitably changes. Change management is one of the hardest things to do well and EHAB provides a simple process to understanding the changing weather risk baseline.
“The tool helped provide clear justification of weather risk to our client which helped protect the time risk allocation in our job” Cameron Woodhead, Senior Planner, BAM
So far EHAB has been used on the most weather dependent projects, but as confidence has been gained and the realisation of the benefits has become clearer we’ve explored an even wider range of projects from large to small.
The collaboration between EHAB and BAM has resulted in significant cost savings across various projects.
On the 29th of September at the Safer Highways event in Nottingham BAM continued their great support for EHAB. Josh Graham pitched in a dragon’s den style competition to a panel of judges, including Andy Johnson, a key account director at BAM. There was a fantastic array of technologies and innovations on display and whilst EHAB did not win the audience vote, it won support from 2 out of 4 judges. Phil Clifton from Balfour Beatty and Andy Johnson from BAM.
Winning this continued to accelerate the partnership with EHAB and led to new avenues of exploration. Especially in the realm of the wider positive impact of technology on work winning and how companies can position theA Collaborative Success:
EHAB and BAM's Innovative Partnershipmselves with a strong portfolio of solutions.
“Supporting startups like EHAB is essential for pushing the industry forward” Andy Johnson, Key Account Director, BAM
BAM has made huge strides to becoming a climate resilient contractor. Through the partnership with EHAB the power of improved foresight, better data, automated processes and an innovation centric approach has been further recognised and adopted.
“We're confident that numerous opportunities await us in terms of automating and actively managing weather-related risks. Collaborating with a contractor like BAM significantly simplifies this explorative journey.” Josh Graham - CEO, EHAB
The collaboration between EHAB and BAM has led to innovative solutions, improved risk management, and cost savings in the main contractor organisation. Their combined efforts have transformed the way construction projects are planned, executed, and managed, setting a new standard for future partnerships and industry advancements.
EHAB and BAM will continue working together to advance how weather and climate risk are dealt with, managed and mitigated.
“The process of managing uncertainty and risk in building and civil construction has moved from desktop studies to technological solutions. Both require skills and experience of those involved to validate the output, but EHAB is a platform and technology that taps into weather data and provides a consistent analytical programme down time output. Construction has a strong risk management capability, this is enhanced by the new platforms and technologies that improve our ability to understand, measure and manage risk.