Why the EHAB platform?

Introduction

Weather has always been a problem on construction projects, with 45% suffering from delays due to weather. This pushes schedules out on average by 21%, so roughly 9.5% of the money spect in construction pays for weather downtime and the impacts of adverse conditions. In addition to this about 16% of construction disputes involve weather as a primary or secondary cause.

These are big numbers and they are only likely to rise due to our changing climate. There has been a sharp rise in extreme weather events in the last 2 decades and this is showing no signs of slowing.

The EHAB platform aims to be the planning tool, the independent adjudicator, source of truth, and insurance policy against increasingly extreme weather. To achieve this there must be a model that accurately depicts the state of weather impact in the future, in the present and in the past.

How we model weather risk

The past and present understanding comes from data recorded at a specific location using IBM data. This takes readings from sattelites and local stations nearby, and uses Artificial Intelligence to calibrate the data for the specified location.

The future is much more difficult, so a model has been devleoped which uses advanced statistics, big data models and machine learning. The model is not a weather forecast model, as forecasts more than 15 days out are unreliable, instead we forecast impact. To do so we build a 40 year data set for your location and run a climate trend analysis. This sees more recent years weighted more heavily in the calculations to take into account the changing weather patterns. This dataset creates a standard year for your location.

A plan is uploaded from a major scheduling software and categorised. Every activity is assigned specific thresholds reflecting its weather sensitivity. EHAB has a default risk matrix built on industry research and expert interviews. This plan can be matched to the risk matrix manually or via activity codes or UDF fields previously paired with the EHAB risk matrix using EHAB’s interface.

When matching is complete the model runs 1000 simulations. Each simulation looks at the length of the task, the weather data on those given days, factoring in weather variability for the time of year and location and the thresholds applied to that activity. Also taken into account are all the dependencies in the plan which cascade risk and change the start and end dates of subsequent activities.

Once these simulations are complete the modelled weather risk for the project is available to be reviewed. This is a probablistic model so contains a series of outcomes across the 1000 simulations, offering a probablity of impact and delay. The EHAB platform then offers several dashboards that allow you to interrogate this information to get benefit from it during the lifecycle of a construction project.

Bid:

From the plan dashboard you can identify where risk its in your programme using the heat map, here you can also examine the original end date and the proposed new end dates, offering a number of days that weather is inlfuencing the critical path.
In the mitigations tab you can see a summary of the number of weather days, which is total impacted activity days.
In the export tab you can download a weather baseline report which offers a number of days per month where weather is likely to impact, also in this tab you can dowload a full activity report.

Detailed Planning:

From the mitigations dashboard you can see which activities are impacted and pushing risk down the chain. You can test mitigation actions and their effectiveness by running a new simulation and seeing the resulting impact on the end date and on the number of weather delay days (weather float).
In the variance tab you can compare 2 plans, allowing you to see the weather impact of two different methodologies helping to inform a strategic decision early on in a scheme.

Construction:

From the forecast tab you can see the weather windows in the next 2 weeks where planned tasks could suffer delay. Using this tool you can decide whether to re-resource, raise an early warning or maintain your current plan. Daily emails also provide a summary of this info before daily standup each day.
In the variance tab you can monitor the changing baseline of your plan and if there is additional delay, you can visit the mitigations tab to test some scenarios that will help you to maintain the plan.
In the variance tab you may also re-price you job after a change event that will mean there is more TRA in the contract, the data provides justification for this.

The Contract:

There is a monthly email you can recieve with the data for the site location allowing you to confirm if a compensation event has hit the site.
Coming soon – there will be a dashboard where this data can be seen live with the contractual limits clearly displayed. You will receive an email if the forecasted weather is likely to push you over these thresholds.

Insurance: