Client Story: Honeywell

The Role of Cora in Data, AI, and Performance Improvement 

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So the Cora platform helps us with respect to data in a couple of ways. 

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So the first is that by instantiating our global design model into an IT tool, we reinforce the standard work that the program managers and controllers and engineers are doing. 

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And that improves the quality of the data that we have, right. So digitization helps you reinforce the standards that you've defined. 

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The standard work people should be doing. 

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The second way the Cora platform is helping us with respect to data is we are structuring a lot more data in a consistent way with a common data model, because while we have... 

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...multiple instances of Cora, we have defined standard data model that everybody will follow. 

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The Cora platform or a PMIS platform or a PLM or any of these enterprise tools, AI should be a critical component of it, because then you've got kind of two flavors of this, right? 

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You have the more traditional AI that can look for outliers. So it can help you identify, you know, issues. 

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But it can also define business rules and make predictions. 

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So for example, we've done a prediction around billing that will ideally replace our short range outlook for billing and eliminate what's a very manual and onerous process for our CFOs. 

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But we could see that we would do the same thing with, with threats and opportunities as a predictor of, you know, what our estimated at completion might be for a particular project and to identify projects... 

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...that might be at risk and put them on a watchlist, whether it's a risk to cost or it's a risk to cash. And then automatically kind of identify these things. So, we can mitigate that risk before it manifests. 

Cash and Margin Improvement 

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We've improved our working capital by roughly half a billion dollars over the past year or so, within the project's business. 

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And we're now to a point where we're getting very close to, having a, you know, a positive free cash flow. You know, very good, free cash flow for the the projects, 

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The role that Cora has played is that we have all the billing milestones, linked to an event on the schedule that will enable us to bill. 

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And so as the project schedules evolve, we can see how those billing milestones are moving. And we can identify here, again, you know, looking into the future and identifying, areas where we may be at risk of missing a billing milestone and then taking the appropriate action to try to mitigate that, that risk. 

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You know, broadly speaking, I think where we come from is when we first started this journey, we were doing a lot of rearview mirror looking, right. Things would happen. We'd miss a billing milestone or we'd have an erosion of margin on the project, and then we would be having a it would be a surprise and we would be unhappy, and then we'd be asking why, right. 

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We're now in a position where with all the instrumentation we've done, whether it's a threat to cost or a threat to cash, we have the visibility that it's coming. 

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So I say, you know, our IT team has given me and with the help of Cora, it's given me the superpower that I can look into the future. I can see into the future. And you know, first... 

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...I got this super power to be able to see into the future. But now we've given to everybody. 

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And so whether you're a PM or a project controller or, or a project engineer or a PM leader or a GM or a CFO, you have the ability to also look into the future and see what are the threats that are coming at you. And, so we can see big things coming at us, probably four to six quarters out, and we can see smaller things coming at us, you know, one to two quarters out... 

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...and then mitigate those threats or maximize those opportunities. 

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And that has been, transformational for us in dramatically improving our cash performance and our cost performance. 

Proactive Change Detection 

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The Cora platform has been and in our analytics coming off of the platform has been instrumental to improving our margin position. We're on track to have one of the best margin performances for our projects that we've had in this business. 

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And I think there's there's been two or three key things. So one is that, 

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by instrumenting, this data and looking at your threats and opportunities and looking at what's happening on our project, our ability to detect change and then to go address proactively address that change is transformationally better. So, and one of the cultural things we had to change is... 

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...there was a culture of accommodation, with our PM's with the customer, because they have a relationship with them. They might say, hey, I got money in my management reserve. I'm just going to cover this. We said no, no, no, no, 

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you need to, you need to identify the change and document the change. And your GM will decide commercially how he's going to address it. But your job is to document. 

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And so, that's done a couple of things for us. So one is as we see threats to cost or threats to margin, we've been able to mitigate those before they're realized. Right. 

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And the second is that because we've been better at detecting changes, our change order volume and margin has grown up, considerably. And that is also improving the overall margin of the project.