Fluor drives digital transformation with artificial intelligence solution to monitor status of global projects and drive significant project cost savings
IRVING, Texas & ARMONK, New York--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Fluor
Corporation (NYSE: FLR) and IBM
(NYSE: IBM) announced today the use of artificial intelligence-based
systems to predict, monitor and measure the status of engineering,
procurement, fabrication and construction (EPC) megaprojects from
inception to completion. Fluor’s extensive engineering, fabrication,
construction and deep supply chain expertise, coupled with artificial
intelligence and analytic technologies from IBM Watson, forms the
foundation for big data analytics and diagnostic systems that help
predict critical project outcomes and provide early insights into the
health of projects.
Large capital projects, especially in the energy and chemicals, and
mining and metals markets, are incredibly complex with enormous amounts
of data, people and moving parts that are constantly changing and need
to be understood to keep a project on schedule and budget. To gain
insights from project data in nearly real-time and to understand the
implications of changing factors, Fluor is introducing the EPC Project
Health Diagnostics (EPHDsm) and the Market Dynamics/Spend
Analytics (MD/SAsm) systems. Developed with IBM Research and
IBM Services, working collaboratively with Fluor, these innovative tools
help to identify dependencies and provide actionable insights by fusing
thousands of data points across the entire life cycle of capital
projects.
Fluor selected IBM Research and IBM Services to assist in the
development of these advanced systems as part of its global data-centric
transformation strategy. Fluor can now leverage a wealth of experience
from across its entire historical data store and global workforce to
quickly understand markets and monitor project factors impacting cost
and schedule to drive improved certainty and cost efficiency across the
entire project scope.
“Harnessing the power of data to make meaningful insights will alter how
megaprojects around the world are designed, built and maintained,” said
Arvind Krishna, senior vice president and director of IBM Research.
“Together with IBM, Fluor is embracing artificial intelligence as an
engine for transformation in data-driven industries that are ripe for
innovation including energy and chemicals, and mining and metals
construction projects.”
“The ability to rapidly analyze and comprehend big data that drives
decisions at any point throughout the engineering, procurement,
fabrication and construction of today’s megaprojects is an imperative
for the success of our company and the protection of our clients’
capital investments,” said Ray
Barnard, Fluor’s senior executive vice president of Systems and
Supply Chain. “And to be the best at predictive analytics and project
execution in our industry, we teamed with IBM to create EPHD and MD/SA,
an advanced and effective set of diagnostic tools and capabilities that
rapidly predict best-in-class pricing globally, project status and
outcomes, and improves the quality of services and decision-making as we
serve our clients around the globe.”
The EPHD and MD/SA systems are designed to transform complex data into
actionable business insights using domain-driven semantic models to
guide artificial intelligence-based predictive and diagnostics modeling.
A unique feature of the systems is the blending of data with domain
expertise to learn models that are operationally insightful. An advanced
cognitive user interface provides seamless access to the data, reports
and results of the analysis, using EPC domain-sensitive natural language
conversational interface. The underlying domain understanding is used to
guide project diagnostics and provide natural language summaries based
on the reports, with data visualization techniques to ease its quick
consumption and understanding.
These tools assess the status of a project by:
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Predicting issues such as rising costs or schedule delays based on
historical trends and patterns.
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Gaining earlier insights from many sets of complex factors across
project execution.
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Identifying the root causes of issues and the potential impacts of
changes as input to the decision-making process including estimate
analysis, forecast evaluation, project risk assessment and critical
path analysis.
“Besides the work Fluor was already doing on predictive maintenance and
construction sequencing, five years ago we began investing in predictive
analytics and artificial intelligence capabilities to further evaluate
performance and determine critical project outcomes as a part of our
data-centric journey,” said Leslie Lindgren, Fluor’s vice president of
Information Management. “We will be using these innovations on select
large and megaprojects to quickly discover trends, patterns and
meaning in our structured and unstructured data that deliver competitive
advantage through the digital transformation of data into critical
information with significant benefits to our clients, other stakeholders
and our company.”
As Fluor continues on its global data-centric transformation journey,
the company plans to further develop and expand EPHD and
MD/SA using analytics and artificial intelligence capabilities from IBM
Watson and integrate them into Fluor’s processes.
About Fluor Corporation
Founded in 1912, Fluor
Corporation (NYSE: FLR) is a global engineering, procurement,
fabrication, construction and maintenance company that transforms the
world by building prosperity and empowering progress. Fluor serves its
clients by designing, building and maintaining safe, well executed,
capital-efficient projects around the world. With headquarters in
Irving, Texas, Fluor ranks 153 on the Fortune 500 list with
revenue of $19.5 billion in 2017 and has more than 56,000 employees
worldwide. For more information, please visit www.fluor.com
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About IBM
For more information about IBM please visit www.ibm.com.
Fluor CorporationMedia RelationsBrian Mershon, 469-398-7621orBrett Turner, 864-281-6976orInvestor RelationsJason Landkamer, 469-398-7222