In November, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Construction Management Innovation Office (CMIO) launched a new digital advancement strategy which focuses on training, tools, and technical resources across the organization.
The Construction Management Innovation Strategy (CMIS) seeks to bring USACE construction management into the digital age, and is working to drive a consistent stakeholder and contractor experience, enhance project planning and outcomes, provide quality data for informed decision-making, foster collaboration, and establish USACE as an employer of choice.
“The CMIS represents the CMIO’s commitment to bringing USACE up to par with industry,” said Darrick Godfrey, USACE Headquarters construction management innovation officer.
“Our staff doesn’t just want to keep up with industry—they want to lead it,” Godfrey said. “Field staff have told us about the challenges of feeling behind on the technology front. It can be frustrating to see a contractor using tablets and site-capture technology, while we don’t have access to those same resources. This strategy is about making sure our staff is on the forefront of innovation and has the resources they need to implement it.”
The CMIS focuses on four strategic priorities:
- Professional advancement for construction management teammates;
- Improving construction management business processes;
- Modernization of available construction management technology; and
- Construction management research, development, and innovation.
One of the overarching outcomes of the strategy implementation is bringing consistency to the experience that industry partners have with USACE - providing processes, training, and technology to foster collaboration between the two entities.
“Extensive research went into developing the CMIS,” said Alexandra Henderson Connors, construction management technology modernization officer. “This included interviews with industry experts, academia, and USACE construction management staff at every level.”
“It was important that the CMIS reflected industry best practices as well as the reality of USACE construction management professionals who deliver projects each day,” she said.
The CMIS focuses on several targeted actions for fiscal year 2025, including implementing a new, cloud-based construction management platform; expanding training resources; advancing building information modeling capabilities; and developing and delivering emerging technologies.
Though the CMIS debuted in November, the CMIO has been working on enhancing available technology for field staff for the past two years. This has included expanding availability of tablets and mobile applications; housing resources on the Construction Management Administration Application, which is the CMIO’s knowledge management site; and providing in-person and virtual demos of available technology, like site-capture technology and virtual reality trainings.
“The CMIS has been a long time coming, and we can’t wait to see where it takes us,” said Henderson Connors.
About the CMIO
The CMIO is charged with establishing a culture of construction management (CM) innovation within USACE, raising the standard of USACE CM practices through the project lifecycle, and getting the latest technology from industry and the research lab into practical use by USACE construction project delivery teams. Innovation projects and initiatives span the construction project delivery lifecycle from project inception through planning, design, acquisition, construction execution, turnover, and warranty phases.