Mind the (Digital) Gap
The need to digitalise the sector has been understood for some time, but progress has been slow and the gap is widening quickly. The sheer pace and accessibility of developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI) in recent months – and the alarm that it has caused some tech executives and academics – illustrates its potential power. The infrastructure and construction sector is ripe for transformation and many see enormous potential across the whole lifecycle, from accelerating and optimising the design process, through to sequencing construction work and even monitoring performance. But the sector lags behind others in its digital enablement, and risks sliding further behind.
Joining the Dots
The sector has struggled to make technological gains, meanwhile other sectors have transformed their business models beyond all recognition.
The sector’s structure does not help. Supply chains are fragmented, with data scattered across a raft of subcontractors and suppliers. Joining the dots requires agreement on a set of common standards to enable data exchange. The sector’s lack of vertical integration and transactional, project-by-project nature makes this all the more difficult.
The risk-reward equation for construction is also a barrier. Prime contractors operate within perilously thin margins, limiting their capacity to invest and take risks.
All of that said, participants highlighted the sector’s attitudes to transparency as the main barrier to progress. They highlight a general unwillingness for data sharing across the supply chain: information is guarded, and sharing it raises anxiety that IP may be lost or that organisations may be exposed to legal claims. There may be more than a hint of truth in this, which is why a broader deal between clients and their supply chains may be necessary to harness the value of the data in their hands.
Companies like Facebook and Microsoft tell their suppliers they want to see the data. We must follow their lead and create the environment for our suppliers to be transparent.”
HANNAH VICKERS
CHIEF OF STAFF Mace
Factory Thinking is the Future
The gains from data transparency across infrastructure projects could be enormous, enabling the sector to truly understand not just how it performs, but why. Many infrastructure projects are like black boxes. Data transparency allows the lid to be lifted and for continuous improvement and optimisation to occur quickly – not at the end of the project or key phase – but the next week, day, or even shift.
Data transparency will allow infrastructure projects to operate more like factories, not just in terms of how they build but how workflows are optimised. Some of the biggest gains will come from the combined impact of thousands of small things, each done a bit better every time.
The analytical tools to make sense of this data are developing at lightning pace. All that is missing is the data.
Risk is Good
