How One Engineer Eliminated Paper From Federal Infrastructure (Against Considerable Resistance)

By: Kolawole Abe

Adedoyin Oje faced a problem typical of federal contracts: information chaos. Progress reports typed days after the fact. Design changes communicated through phone calls. Client representatives making decisions based on week-old data. Her solution was Building Information Modeling and mobile field dashboards on federal highway projects. The resistance was immediate and vocal.

“Site engineers who’d managed projects for twenty years suddenly had tablets and daily data entry requirements,” recalled a colleague. “The pushback was intense. People thought it was bureaucracy. Until equipment failure got predicted 72 hours early through automated variance alerts. Complaints reduced after that.” The technical challenges weren’t trivial, federal sites don’t have reliable power or internet, workers aren’t tech-savvy, equipment fails. Oje designed systems robust enough to work under those constraints: offline-first apps, solar-charged devices, simplified interfaces.

What emerged was 38% improvement in reporting accuracy. Real-time progress visibility replacing weekly paper submissions. Automated variance alerts replacing reactive problem discovery. “You couldn’t hide anymore,” admitted a subcontractor. “If productivity dropped, everyone saw it immediately. You needed explanations with data, not stories. Uncomfortable. Effective.”

The timing matters. She implemented comprehensive BIM on federal highways before many international firms made similar systems mandatory, ahead of the curve globally, not catching up to it. The Nigerian Institution of Civil Engineers invited her to present the framework at their technical conference. Standing room only, engineers from across the country trying to understand the implementation. “There’s technology transfer happening,” observed Dr. Chioma Adebayo at the University of Lagos. “Firms realized digital delivery creates competitive advantage. They’re trying to acquire that capability.”

The automated variance alerts proved particularly valuable. When concrete delivery started deviating from plan, the system flagged it 72 hours before schedule problems would have occurred. When equipment utilization dropped below thresholds, automated notifications enabled proactive reallocation. “The shift from reactive to predictive is fundamental,” noted an industry analyst. “Most Nigerian construction operates reactively, problems happen, you solve them. Her digital systems made projects predictive, you see problems emerging and prevent them.”

Institutional adoption accelerated. The firm expanded digital delivery protocols across divisions based on her framework. Competing firms hired away engineers from her teams specifically to replicate the approach. The Federal Ministry explored similar systems for other projects. The methodology has since been cited in academic papers on digital transformation in African infrastructure.

The resistance she encountered reveals how threatening transparency is to traditional construction. Information asymmetry allows convenient ambiguity about responsibility. Digital dashboards eliminate that ambiguity, every stakeholder sees identical data. “Traditional project management gave certain people information advantages,” explained a researcher. “Digital systems democratize information. That threatens established structures.”