Smart PMO
Smart PMO was selected by Innovate UK amongst innovative startups to pitch and exhibit at Highways UK on November 3rd and 4th in Birmingham.
Highways UK is one of the largest infrastructure conferences in the UK attracting more than 3,500 executives from the largest UK and EU construction companies, contractors, consultancies and government bodies.
We caught up with Dr. Jerbi Houssem, CEO of Smart PMO, after the event to see how he got on:
What topics were you speaking on?
My talk was about how AI in general and our platform SmartPMO in particular could de-risk complex infrastructure projects and maximise their productivity.
Project delays and budget overruns are typical problems of infrastructure projects, which impact society and people's lives. My presentation introduced an AI perspective to solve these problems and help realise the UK second road investment strategy.
With new leads you mention in UK and EU, what type of project were they?
The new leads are large contractors and project and cost management consultancies that are involved in transport and rails projects, for example, the design and building of HS2.
Where did you see the interest around AI at the event?
Low productivity and recurring delays have been perceived as inevitable in the construction industry for decades. All stakeholders (designers, project planners, builders, project managers) recognise the increased complexity of large infrastructure projects, the challenges to manage the supply chain of these projects, poor project management, and inaccurate work estimation due to the lack of knowledge at early stages of the project.
Our vision to use AI to learn lessons from past projects, that is beyond what every individual could experience, and extrapolate that experience to enable clients to better plan and deliver new projects was interesting to all people we met. Event attendees also found valuable the practical examples that we presented about how AI could provide assurance and predictive power through the project lifecycle.
