As the construction industry embarks on a transformative journey of modernisation, Jacqui Glass offers a unique perspective.
The ‘Defining the Need’ report is a fantastic first manifestation of the ‘harmonise, digitise and rationalise’ policy.But the use of cross-sector data hints at even more powerful opportunities in the future, such as:.
Longer term pipelines..The Construction Playbook includes policies for publishing commercial pipelines and developing long-term plans for key asset types.The data set developed by the Hub could be expanded (‘upwards’ from spaces into assets and complexes and ‘downwards’ into sub-assemblies and products) to create a holistic data set that would allow suppliers to carry out their own analysis and forecasting.. Where better to publish this data than on a digital marketplace?.
Searching the data for ‘SL_90_10_47 Lifts’ would show the exact number of lifts in the five-year pipeline and allow government to place contracts for the manufacture, installation and assembly of bulk orders of lifts, creating economies of scale;.Open sourcing this data set would then allow third parties to develop their own goods and services (in exactly the way that open source data published by Transport for London, OpenStreetMaps and others has allowed the creation of common apps such as Citymapper, Bus Checker and Waze).
This could create a new ecosystem of apps and tools that could sit alongside e-commerce to help clients, designers and manufacturers;.
Longer term digital transformation.. Last year, I wrote a. piece on a future state for Platforms.Using construction tech to enhance processes on-site.
To begin, we can use digital technology to offer more advanced ways to conduct onsite processes which aren’t normally digitalised, such as counting rebar.Using construction technology in this way facilitates benefits like on the day sign-off, with confirmation that the correct tonnage has been installed.
asBuilt believes the construction industry’s core problem lies in connectivity, and that we need to be evaluating where we should be looking to unlock connectivity on construction sites.That makes this a technology landing issue, rather than a technology platform issue.