Carlson students translate construction data into insights

By Amy Carlson Gustafson

Davey Johnson had worked road construction jobs throughout high school and college, but he’d never thought about the analytical side of the industry. That changed for him in Minnesota Carlson’s Master of Science in Business Analytics (MSBA) program.

Through a hands-on, experiential learning project, Johnson and his classmates spent weeks analyzing real bidding data for Central Specialties, Inc. (CSI), an Alexandria, Minnesota–based road construction company.

“I won’t look at roads the same way after this project,” says Johnson. “It’s interesting to have to jump in and learn new things about an industry I didn’t know much about.”

The project, managed by the Carlson Analytics Lab for the Business Analytics in R course, partnered MSBA students with CSI to analyze two years of bidding data to identify trends and insights that could help the company improve its bidding process and find more profitable jobs.
 

Learning an old industry’s new challenges

CSI President and CEO Jarrod Felton and Vice President and CFO Ross Larson discovered the MSBA program during a Minnesota Carlson executive leadership class about AI. They saw an opportunity to bring fresh analytical thinking to an industry still relying heavily on “pen and paper processes,” says Felton.

“We’re trying to get the construction industry into the 21st century before the beginning of the 22nd,” Felton told the MSBA students. “AI is an important technology to leverage because ultimately, taxpayers pay for these jobs. If we’re not leveraging technology, we’re passing the burden onto the taxpayer.”

This project was several students’ first real-world data analysis. Business Analytics in R is the first of the MSBA curriculum’s experiential learning course sequence, which connects students with real clients every semester and is taught by Professor Mochen Yang.

The students learned that road construction bidding is complex. The low bidder wins the job, but location matters enormously. Access to aggregate reserves (crushed rock makes up 97% of roads) can make or break a bid’s competitiveness. To fully understand this process and their client's needs, the students met directly with CSI's leadership.

“It was helpful that we met multiple times with the C-suite of the company and figured out what type of problem they were asking of us and what each metric they gave us meant,” Johnson says.

The students built interactive dashboards that transformed Excel spreadsheets into visual, user-friendly tools. Six teams ultimately presented their findings to Felton and Larson.

“Going into the project, we thought CSI would have just a handful of competitors, but after examining the data, there were more than 600 competitors within the field,” says Johnson, who notes this was one of the biggest surprises he encountered. “It’s crazy to think that so many companies are vying for these projects and the competitiveness that goes into formulating a bid.”
 

From analysis to interview skills

What impressed the CSI executives wasn’t just the technical work but how students demonstrated real-world application.

“The students said, ‘Here’s what I would do if I’m bidding in this county or region,’” Larson recalls. “‘I would go into my dashboard and filter to these selections. It’s going to tell you the history of this county and who has bid on these projects.’ They really demonstrated how we could utilize those dashboards in real life right now.”

MSBA student Esther Baumgartner, ’17 BSB and College of Liberal Arts, says the project went beyond honing technical skills; it also gave her confidence and marketability.

“This program has been great about telling us how to talk about this experience when we do start to take interviews,” Baumgartner says about future job hunting. “I can talk about this experience I’ve already had, the results of the analysis, and the steps I took to get there. It makes me much more marketable.”

Baumgartner also appreciated that the project required students to apply skills from multiple classes simultaneously. 

“It focuses on the concepts and how to solve problems,” she says. “To be able to use those tools to solve a more ambiguous problem and tie them together definitely builds a lot of confidence. I can do this. I know how to be adaptable.”
 

Real stakes, real learning

Felton sees the experience as valuable practice for students entering the workforce.

“The class gives students a good opportunity to practice taking ownership of an idea, how to develop belief in its potential, and then how to express that belief to a key stakeholder who decides whether your idea gets selected for investment,” he says.

The students didn’t find an “AI silver bullet” for predicting winning bids, but Felton wasn’t expecting them to. What mattered more was learning how to approach an unfamiliar problem, work with real clients, and deliver actionable insights.

“If we adopt technology, ultimately the cost of our infrastructure improves,” Felton says. “It becomes lower cost, higher quality, better performance. It impacts all the taxpayers.”

Johnson says having industry leaders trust him with real company challenges proved transformative.

“As someone who’s come into this field with minimal experience, to be able to work hands-on with these industry leaders is really great,” he says. “It builds my confidence knowing they are confident in me doing this analytics work.”

The photo at the top of the page is courtesy of Central Specialties, Inc.