Digital integration in construction

Earlier this month a panel brought together by software specialist Deltek and Building magazine gathered to discuss how the construction sector could move from digital transformation to embedding systems, methodologies and technologies into industry best practice.

由Building集团技术编辑、洞察力和战略总监Thomas Lane主持的小组讨论，探讨了技术整合的障碍、行业竞争力问题以及初创企业可能带来的解决方案。贯穿整个讨论的一个强有力的主题是，公司需要合作，改变他们的文化以嵌入数字化。

Slow progress

George Mokhtar, UK head of technology at Turner & Townsend, kicked off the discussions by saying that there was an “accelerating maturity around digital”. He said that in the past couple of years there had been a growth “in adopting new technologies changing the way we work, rethinking how our industry behaves”. However, he added, digital progress across the industry varied greatly. “[The construction industry] isn’t in any one place at the moment,” he suggested. “There’s basically pockets of light and pits of despair.”

McBains运营总监马克•利森(Mark Leeson)指出:“建筑业是世界上数字化程度最低的行业，因此还有很长的路要走。”他表示，该行业的问题已经讨论了30或40年，但“没有太多变化”。李森说，问题之一是这个行业太分散了。“我们不能再按照过去的方式行事了，”他说。“这是不可持续的”。

A recurring topic in the discussions was that the culture of the construction industry was acting as a blocker to digital integration.

“我们没有尽可能地团结在一起，也没有尽可能地开放。原因……是责任。”

George Mokhtar, Turner & Townsend

Corporate strategies sometimes struggle to get the balance right, between 50% digital and 50% culture (people’s behaviour), Mokhtar suggested. He quoted someone at a recent conference as saying: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

Mokhtar also pointed out that one of the reasons for slow digital progression was that there were lots of different generations working across a fast-moving sector. Mark Buckle, technical director at Tilbury Douglas, added: “We’ve got five generations in the industry and they all adapt to technology in a different way.”

Blockers to digital integration

As well as culture, other blockers were mentioned during the roundtable. Darren Russell, chief digital officer at Mott MacDonald, suggested to the panel that, as an industry, “we do everything we can to block

利用技术来传递价值”。主席托马斯·莱恩问最大的阻碍是什么。罗素表示，其中一个问题是合同中的知识产权所有权:“知识产权通常投资于客户。但之后它就卡在那里了。”

He also said competitiveness between firms was an issue. Andrew Lee, managing director of JNP Group, told his fellow panellists: “We’re all fighting each other,” saying what was needed was “a change in the culture of respect and how we perform as a profession”.

Mokhtar agreed contracts were a barrier to embedding technology. “We’re not coming together as best we could and not being as open as we could. The reason is the financial institutions insist on certain levels of liability.”

Professional indemnity insurance was identified as a big digital blocker by several panellists. Lee said: “I’ve seen people not get PI and closing down. We’ve got a big problem that must be solved.” He added: “The financial industry is so powerful. How do we stop them dictating [to us on] something we know better?”

John Chubb, chief executive for consulting (UK and Ireland), RPS, said that firms “still have this sort of financial barrier which holds us back”. He said it was “bonkers” that the biggest investors in insurance were pension funds. “We’ve got to change the way we deal with money that underpins the project,” Mokhtar said. “It’s the money that controls the behaviour.”

“There is absolutely best practice out there. We need to resolve how we can make it the norm.”

Louisa Finlay, Kier

Digital integration could also be held back by recruitment issues in the industry, panellists agreed. Recruitment was “falling and falling”, Lee said, adding that if the sector was not careful “we’ll be dinosaurs”.

Panellists also said digital progress was being hindered by clients with different levels of understanding of data collection. Mokhtar said: “You’ve got those who know nothing, you’ve got those who sort of know enough to be dangerous, and then you’ve got those who are real experts – and it’s very difficult to work across those three mediums.”

李森指出:“很多时候，我们都曾被要求提供数据，但我们完全知道索取数据的人永远不会使用或理解这些数据，甚至无法远程处理这些数据。”他解释说，最近有个客户问他要BIM Level 3，他很困惑。

What’s working

Mokhtar said that you could see “great leaps taken forward” in the infrastructure market. Also in the “real estate sector, particularly information science and technology, manufacturing or engineering”. The real estate sector, he said, “tends to be a hive of more agile development. They make very clever leaps forward on a day-to-day basis.” Buckle agreed that success was client-driven so sectors such as infrastructure that were “more agile and top-down”, where the client was better informed, were more advanced in embedding digitalisation.

On the issue of liability, Mokhtar mentioned that when he worked in Denmark he professional indemnity vehicle was much simpler. This simpler form of indemnity allows risks at the design stage and everyone working on the project to come together on a “slower, cheaper contract” that is “geared to outcomes” rather than the money that underpins the project. Chubb also highlighted that as Denmark’s “contract risk is completely different, everybody drives to the same outcome. Everybody gets rewarded with the outcome.”

Louisa Finlay, clients and markets director at Kier, said “brilliant policy” and “some really forward-thinking public sector clients” meant Kier was “delivering some fantastic projects that are fully digitalised”.

Emily Scoones, head of digital innovation building services at Ramboll, warned that it was vital not to embed “bad practices into our data” along with increasing digitalisation. It was important not to introduce biases, she said. Mokhtar agreed it was important to “tackle the ethics behind data”. But he added: “Insight can be used for good, it can help people use assets better and more safely, and it can drive behaviours that are more sustainable.”

Solutions

罗素表示，企业需要做出改变，创造一个“适合所有人的环境”。他补充说:“我的观点是，在我们的行业内，我们拥有从根本上改变交付方式所需的所有技术，如果我们能做到这一点，所有人都会受益。”他表示，挑战在于“让整个行业接受这种数字化”。罗素认为，“如果我们可以开始共享数据，信任数据，并有某种可以共享数据的合同安排”，行业可能会更紧密地团结在一起。

Scoones believed partnerships were essential to embed digitalisation in the sector “both internally within the sector but also externally”. She said there were a lot of other industries “that have gone through all this data stuff”.

It was necessary to learn from other industries, Scoones said, rather than to “try to reinvent the wheel”. She also suggested “amazing, great little” start‑ups could work within or with big corporates. Smaller “agile” companies could be given space and the environment to find “completely different solutions that wouldn’t be possible in the bigger companies”, she advocated.

Russell said Mott MacDonald was investing in a Spanish start‑up with “incredibly clever people” that was “opening doors for them”.

然而，Deltek欧洲、中东和非洲地区及亚太地区副总裁Neil Davidson谈到了公司治理的重要性，并指出数据共享以及将初创企业纳入“价值主张”也会带来风险。这里存在“不同的商业风险，因为你有GDPR的考量，以及与之相关的罚款”。

“The data needs to be more standardised in order for projects to become more streamlined and to collaborate better with the wider team.”

Richard Owen, Rex Procter & Partners

Leeson said what smaller companies “bring to the party is a kind of system change”. He explained small start-ups might be able to show the way to improve communication, to help the construction industry become less “fragmented”. Leeson also suggested that upskilling personnel quickly would help digital integration. “Where skills run out and we retrain, then you have to make another step. So there’s that constant kind of jolting of progression thing.” He added that the same data could be used for multiple purposes: “You’ve got to get the data anyway to operate an asset, so you may as well use the same data to properly assess risk at the same time.” On the issue of insurers, he suggested: “Get close to them. Get close to your enemies – if they are the blocker.”

Finlay表示，如果以不同的方式建造建筑，并正确使用数字技术，该行业可以“从完全不同的技能组合中招聘人才”。她补充说:这真的很令人兴奋:我认为，在未来10年里，我们有机会通过谈判做出改变。”她建议说:“绝对有最好的做法。我们需要解决如何让它成为一种规范。”Finlay还建议，让人们理解信息管理是很重要的。身兼同意了。“信息经理是一个项目的命脉，”他说。

How useful is standardisation?

Richard Owen, director of Rex Proctor & Partners, said: “The data needs to be more standardised in order for projects to become more streamlined and to collaborate better with the wider project team.”

芬利说，她相信“标准化推动质量”，但该行业必须小心，因为你不希望最终“到处都是方形建筑”。我们需要区别。”Stride Treglown的董事罗布•萨金特(Rob Sargent)表示:“标准化就是说:‘你知道吗?我们不会争论到底用的是拉法基还是英国石膏。’这让生活变得简单多了。”

Mokhtar说:“重要的是组件的物理标准化。我认为数字技术可以帮助简化这一过程。”

他补充说，“洞察力的标准化”很重要。如果你能将“报告、情报和系统中的数据”标准化，那么你就能“简化决策时间之类的事情”。

Leeson said if you get a really good system then it “doesn’t stifle innovation” and should be useful for retrofit, “which will probably be the vast majority of what we are doing in the end”.

Scoones added: “I think what standardisation allows us to do is to flip how we use our resources on a project. Traditionally you start really small and then, by stage four or five, that’s where all your fee comes in. Standardisation allows you to take that fee and bring it up to the front end.”

Sargent finished off the debate by talking about the “impossible matrix” that the industry was “trying to stitch together”. He said of the future: “I imagine a world of extreme complexity, of hundreds of apps all trying to talk to each other and nothing really goes.” He stated: “Some simplicity would be lovely.”