Preempting Delays: Compass Datacenters Delivers On-Time in Spite of Adding Necessary Design Changes and Scope with OnsiteIQ Early Warning Insights 

Compass Datacenters has earned a reputation as a premier provider of custom, move-in ready, mission critical data centers designed to meet the diverse needs of today’s rapidly expanding technology providers. With a strong focus on innovation, efficiency, and sustainability, Compass delivers tailored solutions that cater to the unique requirements of various industries, ensuring their clients can seamlessly scale and adapt to meet the growing demand. Through their commitment to excellence in data center design, construction, and operation, Compass has become a trusted partner for businesses seeking reliable and secure infrastructure in the fast-paced digital age.

Compass Datacenters serves top-tier technology providers who are rapidly expanding and need extra data center capacity to support their growing customer base. As a result, the demand for mission critical data centers is higher than ever and that demand continues to increase. Compass faces significant challenges in maintaining construction timelines, especially due to the complex nature of datacenter construction, long lead times for specialized equipment, and the strain on local labor resources caused by the extensive workforce required to complete these projects. Furthermore, Compass uses an assembly construction approach where schedule and sequencing is tracked by annotating color coded sectors on the floor plan, making granular progress data by area extremely important.  To ensure Compass can meet the exponentially growing demand, a solution was needed to effectively monitor granular construction progress by area and drive heightened collaboration with the project team.

In early 2022, Nancy Novak, Compass Chief Innovation Officer, approached OnsiteIQ, the leading construction monitoring & intelligence platform, and entered into a contract to begin monitoring a series of Compass data center projects. Within weeks, Compass’ Project Delivery Team was receiving empirical data on their job sites across the country, including milestone progress by area, aligned to the Compass assembly approach. OnsiteIQ Milestone Insights, delivered monthly, provided Compass with valuable installation rate charts by trade as well as key warning observations for inactivity and milestones that were behind schedule.  This critical construction insight data allowed them to quickly get up to speed on the progress of jobs in the portfolio.  Having access to the empirical data greatly reduced the tedious schedule analysis process that previously required 16-20 hours per project, per month. Any poorly trending projects are now easily identified early enough with Milestone Insights and visually verifiable progress data, to be jointly solutioned with the contractor. With this level of visibility, Compass now takes a proactive partnership role with the project team to remove any obstacles and ensure deadlines are met.

• Increased Project Visibility
• Standardized Reporting
• Benchmarking & Comparative Analysis
• Transparency & Accountability

Increased Project Visibility

Compass has gained visibility into project ground truth with empirical data that is independently provided by OnsiteIQ. This added lens is objective and enables The Delivery Team to drive conversations without any inherent bias. “Having objective, factual data gives me tremendous confidence when discussing with my leadership team or reaching out to a contractor for answers. Time is spent finding solutions rather than questioning the data. Furthermore, OnsiteIQ has helped drive our assembly approach by providing milestone installation rates at the project level.” – Nancy Novak, Chief Innovation Officer

 

Standardized Reporting

“The quality of project reporting across contractors and geographies varies wildly.” OnsiteIQ is helping Compass’ Delivery Team, ‘see the forest for the trees’, often made difficult with apples to oranges comparisons across projects. With OnsiteIQ’s rich project reporting delivered monthly, Compass can view the empirical data in the same format regardless of where the project is located or which General Contractor is building it. “We’re able to scan the portfolio and determine the progress of each project and whether it is good or bad. This makes reporting to the leadership team faster but also more trusted.” – Nancy Novak

 

Benchmarking & Comparative Analysis

Archiving 360-degree photos allows Compass to develop a historical database and perform comparative analysis over time. With access to all of the 360-degree photos from every project, as well as progress tracking data such as Milestone Insights and production rate trend data, Compass can easily compare project performance over time. “This capability speaks to our commitment to continuous process improvement and our desire to accelerate delivery in order to meet the growing demand for data centers” – Nancy Novak.

 

Transparency & Accountability 

OnsiteIQ is leveling the playing field for the owner who typically doesn’t have the same view as the project team on the ground. With 360 degree jobsite walkthrough data the project is transparent for all stakeholders including the ability to visually verify progress, quickly.

 

 

Compass Datacenters is utilizing OnsiteIQ across their portfolio with plans to include more sites as they break ground. The visibility of projects has significantly increased, enabling proactive risk mitigation for project schedules, standardizing reporting across all OnsiteIQ-monitored projects, and greater transparency and accountability between Compass and their contractors. Since implementing OnsiteIQ, Compass has driven a new level of proactive collaboration and enhanced cooperation not typically observed between owners and contractors. As Compass continues to meet the exponentially rising demand for data centers, OnsiteIQ is excited to accompany them on this journey.