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Accurate bidding and efficient project execution are critical in the highly competitive business of infrastructure and construction. Jobs can be won and lost by tenths of a percent—and we’re talking multi-million, sometimes billion-dollar projects.
Teichert, an industry-leading heavy construction giant, has a history of, well, being on the right side of history. With an eye on the future, Teichert’s leaders sought a technology solution that would help them bid smarter, build better, and move faster. With an eye on Teichert’s 135 years of expertise, the Launch Data & AI Studio plotted an AI-powered platform that would take advantage of the company's historical data to create something revolutionary.
Together, we built InQuarry.
Winning more business with AI & advanced analytics
InQuarry (IQ) is a platform that provides an AI digital assistant to all of Teichert’s work, cradle to grave. It helps the team put together better bids so they win the jobs they want—without undercutting themselves. Human error in crafting a bid can leave money on the table, or worse, it can cost the company millions of dollars if they underbid.
IQ’s Spot Check feature is the ultimate peer review for any bid. It uses machine learning to search every job in Teichert’s history for similar jobs and compare them to the current bid, checking for past errors and suggesting changes to craft a more competitive bid. According to Teichert’s estimators, Spot Check’s flagging system has already saved the company from overlooking a six-figure omission!
By helping Teichert’s estimators both choose the right bids to go after and bid more accurately, IQ saves Teichert significant time and money, reduces the risk of over- or underbidding, and provides a massive competitive advantage. But winning the bid is just the first step.
Using the power of data for better real-time decisions
Once a bid is won and construction starts, IQ puts on a new hard hat: project management assistant. With a team in the office and a team in the field, it can be challenging to keep everyone caught up and aware of changing circumstances during a project.
When the Launch Management Consulting Studio team shadowed Teichert field teams, we learned that they’d long had trouble keeping a feedback loop between the estimators and the executors. Important conversations about supply chain and resource management happened on the ground, but not every conversation made it to the office.
To fix that costly broken loop, we built a data platform for InQuarry that provides daily updates from the field. Not only does that help project managers make decisions in real time, but the platform also uses AI to analyze historical data in these reports so the project managers can foresee and account for any concern, such as delivery delays or additional people needs, on the horizon.
In addition to helping with the day-to-day project work, this feature also ensures that all these project conversations and data reports are stored and available for the next people who might benefit from them. That could be in a week, or five years down the road—IQ has all the relevant data off the top of its head.
Learning from the best dataset: Teichert's team
“With IQ,” said Eric Streich, President of Teichert Energy & Utilities Group, “our intent is to leverage technology and tap into not only the 135 years of the company, but all the years of experience of our people, and pull it together as a network of knowledge.”
Teichert is known for placing a high value on individual expertise inside their company. In creating InQuarry, they not only wanted to reduce the chances of human error, they wanted to free people up to focus their expertise where it’s most impactful.
“The things that the software can guide you through are now no longer the part that you need to use your brainpower on,” said CEO Mary Teichert. “Let's go do that with something that requires your creativity. You can use all of your good brainpower on: how can we meet this customer's needs better? How can we address the problem differently than we previously thought we might? How can we go find some resource that we didn't know might be out there?” IQ allows the Teichert team to do what they do best—the ‘art’ of the job—and provides the science and the data to do it with.
As Kevin McCall, Managing Director of AI at Launch, explained: “IQ is a perfect example of applying AI precisely where it is most valuable: performing complex and comprehensive reviews of hundreds of projects done by thousands of Teichert personnel so they can spend more time serving current and future customers. It’s a case study in how to apply innovative technology to leverage the knowledge accumulated over 100 years of operations.”
InQuarry is how Teichert is using their storied past to invest in the future. How are you doing the same?