In COGITO, the establishment of the Living Labs took place in January 2021. The aim of this activity is to collect important feedback from COGITO’s stakeholders located close to the pilot sites (Denmark and Spain). This way, COGITO aims to improve the design and development of the project’s toolbox, promote the outcomes and engage target groups into the process. Consortium Partners have built a methodology and action plan to set particular workshops within the project duration and invite selected participants to join the Living Labs’ activities.

 

Consortium Partners decided to organize the first event to collect user requirements for the COGITO system. The first workshop was organised on March 29th, 2021 by the industry partner Rhomberg Sersa Rail Group (RSRG). The second one was held on April 14th, 2021 by the industry partner Ferrovial (FER). Both were attended by construction staff and COGITO technical partners.

 

Workshop workflow

After a short introduction of the project, workshop goals and structure, attendants were divided into 3 working groups to facilitate fluent brainstorming and discussion. The groups were focused on Workflows and planning, Quality control and Health and safety, reflecting the three main areas of application, but also the three Business Scenarios focused on by the consortium about: Workflow, Quality and Safety.

For the Rhomberg Sersa Rail Group (RSRG) Workshop, the product and innovation department of RSRG organised an online call with several professionals from the railway construction industry. In total, 15 people with different roles (Site Manager, BIM Manager, Health and Safety Manager as well es Quality Manager) joined the meeting and discussed the topics and worked out the canvas. Together with participants of the COGITO consortium, 33 people attended the workshop.

For the Ferrovial (FER) Workshop, the Innovation department from Ferrovial Construction engaged various AEC professionals from the company for their participation in the Living Labs activities in general, but for the requirements workshop in particular.

Overall, 35 attendees (including Project Managers, BIM designers, Site coordinators) participated in Ferrovial’s workshops having fruitful discussions and providing valuable feedback.

The MIRO boards from the two workshops were shared for analysis with the technical partners, and more specifically the Use Cases leaders. This analysis enabled the team to:

  • confirm and refine the stakeholders’ needs (i.e. limitations of current practice),
  • assess the value of the proposed COGITO Use Cases/Tools and set their priorities,
  • extract meaningful User Requirements.

Important results

The workshops’ groups identified an extended list of stakeholders, broadly aligned with the initial list of stakeholders defined by COGITO industrial partners. Main stakeholders were identified with regards to the COGITO Use Cases. As deduced from participants’ discussions, the main challenges are faced when planning and executing workflows and they include information quality and flow-related problems, project management difficulties, quality of input information, and technology-related problems.

All identified problems usually lead to project delays, lower overall quality, unsatisfied customers and working crew, increased number of accidents, loss of company prestige or reputation, and corresponding loss of new contracts or business opportunities.

Regarding the Business Scenarios and Use Cases defined in COGITO were all found highly valuable.

The breakout groups also discussed a list of potential KPIs that could be measured to assess the impact of the COGITO solution. If you are interested for more details, stay tuned to our COGITO news

Finally, the breakout group discussions identified a number of User Requirements which was the main purpose of the meeting.

If you are interested to be a part of Living Labs, do not hesitate to contact us!!!