Increasing efficiencies and decreasing costs

The Challenge

One of the leading regional private construction firms in Egypt and the Middle East, SIAC Construction has completed major projects that include heavy industrial construction, mechanical and electrical, and petrochemical and power plants. Over the course of SIAC’s 37-year history, these projects have spanned the Middle East, with operations in Egypt, Yemen, Djibouti and Qatar.

With Nehad Ragab and his sons Seif and Marwan at the helm, SIAC Construction prides itself on retaining its family business heritage. Yet, as it looked to expand its area of operations––namely, in the construction hotspot of Saudi Arabia––the company knew they had to address blind spots in the business when it came to labour productivity and project status. Without full oversight, SIAC risked its ability to complete projects on budget and on time, and would be too focussed elsewhere to deliver the unique customer experience they had built their reputation on.

The Solution

By bringing project information all into one place, Procore enables SIAC to monitor labour costs in real time and identify at-risk scopes of work. This has meant SIAC can more easily protect its labour budget and act fast to make decisions that impact the profitability of its projects. Plus, Procore’s ease of use ensured SIAC widely and quickly adopted the construction management platform––helping everyone access real-time insights directly from the site.

The Results

• Real-time visibility into project status allows SIAC to gain insights into worker productivity and progress across multiple projects
• Wide-scale adoption of Procore's user-friendly platform has given SIAC better insights and boosted ROI
• SIAC's improved confidence and competitive edge have positioned the company as a significant player in the Middle East construction market

The Story

For SIAC Construction, a major way it differentiates itself from the competition is its retention of its family heritage. This is according to the board member and second generation business leader, Seif Ragab.

“There’s a beauty to a family-run business. The values and leadership run all the way down to the employees of the company. It is a beautiful thing, and clients can see that.”

It has certainly played a vital role in SIAC’s nearly 40 years of experience. During this time, the business has built a diverse portfolio of projects across all corners of the Middle East. But with a burgeoning roster of opportunities came added pressures. Especially considering SIAC had ambitions to continue its regional expansion with a new office in Saudi Arabia.

What stood in its way were departmental silos, alongside processes that were largely offline and relied on paper and spreadsheets. If SIAC were to maintain its reputation and meet its ambitions, it would have to implement a system capable of bringing visibility to its processes and peace of mind to its projects.

To answer these challenges, SIAC focussed its attention on digital transformation. While this has not always been an obvious route for construction companies in the Middle East, SIAC is not your average, ‘traditional’ contractor. It prides itself on partnering with the best construction technology leaders to find solutions and to stand out in a crowded marketplace.

This ultimately led SIAC to Procore, where they found a construction management platform that could act as a single source of truth and provide enough visibility and quality data to improve decision-making and drive confidence. And more importantly, one that would ensure the SIAC team was able to focus on delivering its client experience because Procore took care of everything else.

“Some businesses think the traditional isn’t compatible with the digital,” says Seif. “But we see it as enabling new ways of doing the traditional.”

Since using Procore, SIAC has opened its first office in Saudi Arabia at a time when the region is undergoing an exciting and transformational period of construction that includes groundbreaking initiatives such as Vision 2030. With a foundation of visibility into its projects and their labour productivity, SIAC is entering its ambitious future with a foundation of construction technology that works hand-in-hand with its values.

As Seif explains, “In Saudi Arabia, when we met with Public Investment Fund (PIF’s) development companies, you could tell they were having meetings with contractors on a daily basis. It's always the same––someone comes into your office and tells you they’re ready to work and they have the resources. So at the end of the day, we asked ourselves what makes us different than the competition? Now it’s clear–– our processes, innovation in project management and implementing innovative solutions such as Procore.”

“The biggest black box we had.”

Visibility is undoubtedly essential to successful construction. Having oversight of project status, as well as worker productivity, can make the difference in delivering a project on time and on budget. This is especially true of SIAC, which has a range of projects spread out across the Middle East.

As Seif explains, “Field productivity was the biggest black box we had. One of the biggest problems we faced was the amount of money we paid for casual labour and labour on the project site without actually knowing how productive we were being. Everything was done with timestamps––but being on site is not an indication of what's actually going on.”

Without being able to measure the progress that was being made on a daily basis, SIAC wasn’t able to carry out its labour and material planning as accurately and efficiently as they would have liked. This meant it couldn’t manage the budget effectively and, in turn, provide accurate estimates that could help secure future work.

For Seif, another issue came from how up-to-date the data was. He explains, “If we're looking at something from a month ago, it’s too late to change it. But with real-time access to the data, you can adapt to that … We asked ourselves how can we have access to these projects, in terms of the productivity that happens on a daily basis, and then link that to our head office?”

The question led SIAC to Procore, which connects teams and information on one platform and drives communication, collaboration, and productivity. By monitoring labour costs in real time, and identifying at-risk scopes of work, Procore has enabled SIAC to protect its labour budget and act fast to make decisions that positively impact the profitability of its projects. By boosting profits in this way, The platform has helped SIAC grow increasingly confident of the business being in good shape––meaning the team is able to focus its attention on what makes them unique. That is delivering the high quality, family-run credentials its customers have come to expect.

Ease of use drives business confidence.

The road to implementing new technology can be a bumpy one. While construction technologies are intended to make life easier for employees, the process can go awry during the many steps involved––from selecting a software solution, to onboarding, to encouraging uptake across the business and ROI.

This is why, when choosing the right construction management platform for the business, management included the wider SIAC team in the decision-making process. This wasn’t just about keeping people in the loop though––with first-hand experience of the problems they were facing on a daily basis, the SIAC team was in a great position to choose a platform capable of solving them.

Every relevant member of the SIAC team was required to do their own competitor research––testing the construction management software available, and then making a case for their top pick. This meant they could get hands-on with exploring how each option could address day-to-day challenges, but also ensure they were getting an easy-to-use system that could be adopted quickly and used widely.

“Every team member made the case for their top pick,” says Seif. “The consensus was that Procore’s field productivity was the best and everything else was a cherry on top.”

For SIAC, one of these cherries was the fact that Procore gave the business a single platform to integrate all of its functions. This was a crucial step up from its in-house system and offered an integrated system that housed all projects. But what’s more, Seif knew he was getting a construction management platform that was easy to use and had buy-in from his employees from the get-go.

The result is that SIAC’s team is using Procore with some of their projects. And in doing so have developed a culture of collaboration––something integral to unrivalled and unlimited project support, and simply not possible with a platform that’s hard to use. Procore’s ease of use hasn’t just benefitted the team, but the business as well, with adoption driving real-time insights direct from multiple sites.

As Seif explains, “We like to have the mentality at SIAC that, together with the client, we find ways to increase efficiencies and ways to decrease costs.”

While SIAC may have had the mentality since it opened its doors in the 1980s, now, with Procore, it has the technology. Meaning that whatever exciting plans are in its future, there will always be a foundation of confidence in the business.