Construction & Engineering: Building In The IT Advantage

Construction and engineering firms haven't always been the most progressive companies when it comes to business technology. That's changing, as they find that IT increasingly can make the difference between winning and losing clients.

"IT is increasingly one of the reasons we win or lose a project," says Doug Philbin, CIO of Parsons Corp. Over the past year, the construction company has been rolling out a wireless messaging system that includes cell phones, wireless LANs, and satellite technology. One reason for the emphasis on wireless is to help Parsons quickly set up field offices at customer and construction sites. The quicker it gets a project started, the sooner it can start bringing in revenue.

In 2001, Parsons won a $1.3 billion contract from the Federal Aviation Administration to upgrade air-traffic control structures, runways, and navigation systems. In the past year, Parsons has designed cost databases in preparation for the construction work. It's using homegrown PWorks enterprise project-controls software to create a data warehouse that gathers information from Primavera Systems Inc.'s P3e project-management software and Timberline Software Corp.'s estimating software and provides reports using software from Crystal Decisions.

Beazer Homes USA Inc. is using XML to strengthen integration between its IT systems and those of partner ZC Sterling Corp., a home insurer. The result: ZC Sterling has had much higher success with customers than with other methods, Beazer CIO and VP Jonathan Smoke says.

In residential construction, where customer satisfaction is king, Centex Homes recently finished rolling out customer-relationship-management software from Pivotal Corp., running on Intel-based servers. "Referrals are very important for us," says Charles Irsch, CIO and VP of Centex Homes, the main home-building subsidiary of Centex Corp.

Construction firms also need efficient supply chains. Centex has created BuildWithCentex.com, a portal that facilitates communications with suppliers, letting them submit bids, receive discounts, and take advantage of rebate programs.

INDUSTRY LEADERS Rank Company Revenue in millions Income (loss)
in millions IT
employees 7 Gilbane $2,400 -- 50 65 Skanska USA Building $4,884 -- 1,000 74 Beazer Homes USA Inc. $2,641 $123 54 136 Clayton Homes Inc. $1,124 $124 52 155 Centex Homes $9,117 $556 116 203 Parsons Corp. $1,534 -- 378 223 Louisiana-Pacific Corp. $1,943 ($62) 95 250 Lennar Corp. $7,320 $545 140 258 Fluor $9,959 $164 360 269 Pulte Homes Inc. $7,472 $454 210 311 McCarthy Building Cos. Inc. $1,050 -- 17 338 Aecom Technology Corp. $1,700 -- 265 344 Bechtel Group Inc. $11,600 -- 1,800 405 Emcor Group Inc. $3,968 $63 122 407 M.A. Mortenson Co. $1,024 -- 25 421 Foster Wheeler Inc. $3,575 ($525) 1,200 453 Granite Construction Inc. $1,765 $49 81 462 Barton Malow $1,251 -- 16 468 DPR Construction Inc. $1,100 -- 26 Financial data is from public sources and company supplied.
Revenue is for latest fiscal year.
Employee data is from InformationWeek 500 qualifying survey.

SNAPSHOT INSIDE COMPANIES Average portion of revenue spent on IT 2% Average percentage of industry applications and business processes that have Web-based front ends 38% Companies with real-time business processes in place 74% HOW COMPANIES DIVIDE THEIR IT BUDGETS Hardware purchases 18% Services or outsourcing 12% Research and development 3% Salaries and benefits 37% Applications 18% Everything else 12% INDUSTRY FINANCIALS Average year-over-year revenue change -6% Average year-over-year net-income change 61% DATA: INFORMATIONWEEK RESEARCH
See year-over-year shifts in business-technology practices for this industry. Compare and contrast this year's data with last year's.

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