Structural Group: Brick and Mortar Streaming

For companies that don’t have a financial stake in the success of the streaming media industry, the internal use of streaming today is generally considered an option, not a necessity. The question is: Is it an option like leather seats and walnut trim, or more like turbo injection and anti-lock brakes? The former are luxuries. The latter significantly affect performance, and may even help prevent a crash. For Structural Group, a 25-year-old company based in Baltimore, Md., streaming media has become an integral part of its core business practices, and has markedly enhanced the performance of its operations.

Structural Group employs 800 workers in 17 locations throughout the United States, repairing and reinforcing large concrete structures, including buildings, parking garages, industrial plants, tunnels and bridges. It completes 800 to 1,000 projects per year, with budgets ranging from $10,000 to $7 million. Led by visionary founder and Chief Executive Officer Peter Emmons, Structural recorded revenues of $125 million last year, and has enjoyed annual growth rates of 25 to 30 percent for the past 10 years.

One of Emmons’ most farsighted innovations is Comprehensus, Structural’s groundbreaking system for using streaming media to capture, archive and distribute the company’s knowledge base. "A big challenge in any business is capturing information and knowledge, and making it available to others in the company," says Emmons. Because so much of its work is procedure and process intensive, Structural enjoys particular benefits derived from its knowledge management system.

Structural began collecting detailed text reports from its field operations in 1996. The next year, to more efficiently gather and store this information, Structural shifted to a video model. "The experts doing the work didn’t have the time or skill to properly document the knowledge that they had learned on a particular project," says Emmons. "We realized that video could capture this information very easily." Video also allowed viewers to experience the environment and working conditions associated with each project or process.

Comprehensus’ charter is best summed up in its mission statement: Create and implement a video and document-based knowledge management system which will improve the cost and quality of processes, procedures and strategies while empowering human resources. Marc Yeager, a longtime company employee (see sidebar, next page), was recruited to become the first company videographer/reporter. His mandate was clear, yet challenging. "The goal is to get the nuts-and-bolts detail of everything that we do," says Emmons. "We told [Marc] to come back with enough information on the videotape so that he could hand the tape to the receptionist, and the receptionist could do the repair."