Kevin Wilson, CIO, Stefanutti Stocks.

Construction is said to be the most challenging market sector. Projects can take place in the middle of nowhere and as much as 60% of networks are ripped up and replaced to be used in new projects. Yet according to Stefanutti Stocks’ CIO, Kevin Wilson, the industry is the vertical that spends the least on ICT and has been the slowest to recognise ICT as an enabler.

“ICT is becoming more crucial to construction as the industry digitises,” says Wilson. “However, a personal computer doesn’t pour concrete or use a drill, so only 20% of our staff has a laptop.

“We run our own networks and I migrated our infrastructure to the cloud and enabled mobile work well before the pandemic, due to the distributed nature of our business. This has helped mitigate socio-demographic, economic and political challenges affecting our ICT’s strategic intent.

“With our small ICT budgets, focus has been on finding cost-effective ways to deliver ICT services to weather financial headwinds. We in-source much of our technology to reduce costs, run our own network and have our own engineers.

“In my role, I spend an equal amount of time wearing the CIO, CTO and CISO hats, but time spent being CISO and CTO has increased and the CISO hat may become the dominant one. The role of a CIO can be tough as you are expected to understand everyone else’s job, but they’re never expected to understand what it takes to keep ICT running.

“Communications is vital. MTN is a key provider of our connectivity and being a cloud-based company, we are reliant on good communications to operate. We use the MTN network for connectivity and the management tools to ensure everyone has the necessary speed and data they need.

We run an open-source telephone system and often have to put up network antennas and relay towers to reach sites. Our staff can be away in remote areas for months so we love new things like 5G to afford a better experience and enable people to stay in touch with loved ones.”

Wilson says the main challenge with the company starting to digitise is creating exponentially more data to store, analyse and archive. He says they will need new technologies to accomplish this and are looking at AI and machine learning – mainly in the software from their vendors, and aggressively investigating AI going forward in terms of data sets.

“The construction industry is in the initial stages of adopting Building Information Management (BIM) – a completely digital way of working offering such advantages as figuring out processes and procedures, conflict resolution, troubleshooting, productivity and ensuring buildings are constructed 100% to spec – to the millimetre.

Ensuring we have the skills and infrastructure to achieve internal and supply chain adoption is a key focus, along with digitising related operations.” Wilson has a number of feathers in his cap, recently achieving ISO27001:2022 certification for the company – the first construction company in Africa to do so. Industry nominations include the Brainstorm CIO Decade of Service award and, in 2018, the Visionary CIO award. He has also built his own 3D printer from scratch.

What gets him up in the morning is “being a technologist at heart and getting to work with a wide variety of cool technology. Security concerns keep us up at night, despite the many measures we have in place.”

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