Ferrovial Agroman’s R&D department and the Department for Innovation and Corporate Processes have been working on a number of initiatives for identifying and understanding innovation challenges in Construction. Several business areas came up with common challenges such as:
How can we improve collaboration between sites? How can we enhance efficiency in the treatment and useful life cycle of certain materials? The
FerroStock innovation project emerged as an answer to these questions, and consists in the development and testing of an application to help the exchange of redundant material between different construction sites.
Working on the project are the Department for Innovation and Corporate Processes, Ferrovial’s R&D department and the Railway Division –the main driver behind the initiative–, in addition to a team comprised by representatives from different Construction areas such as Purchases, Castilla, León and Galicia regional directorate, and the Insite Team (Information Services).
How the idea was born
Most construction sites end up with building material in excellent condition which becomes redundant upon termination of construction works. This material is currently not normally relocated, but treated as waste, with all its related costs.
The
Railway Division has for a long time been working in a collaborative environment wherein word of mouth and the links between teams in different construction sites provide a way around this frequent problem. However, today’s technologies allow us to implement much more practical solutions to connect not only Railway construction sites, but all of Ferrovial Agroman’s sites, thus making it possible to make best use of materials and tools which become redundant in a particular project, and to realise savings both for those wishing to get rid of the material and those wishing to acquire excellent quality material at a more competitive price.
The Railway Division passed the challenge on to Innovation, and a potential solution was developed, inspired by similar tools in different environments, such as
Ebay, Wallapop,
LetGo, Vibbo, etc. Since then, the Department for Innovation and Corporate Processes and Ferrovial Agroman’s R&D department have been working to refine the idea and validate the hypotheses on which it is based, holding pilot sessions with the Railway Division and other business actors from other departments knowledgeable about the issue in order to streamline the solution and set the stage for the pilot project.
Pilot project
The project will be officially launched mid-November, with a first version of the
scalable product being available towards the beginning of February. Once this version of the project is ready, a
6-month pilot phase will commence in order to contrast and gradually refine the idea:
Learn and carry on building.
The initial aim is to validate the tool and bring about a cultural change in the construction site environment. This new distribution channel between different centres will become part of the new portfolio of construction site solutions.