Digitally Built - Building the Future
Some Context
First, a little context; on the 20th and 21st of April, the Institute of Engineering Technology hosted the Digitally Built conference. The purpose of the conference was to encourage discussion around groundbreaking digital innovations and the possible impact they might have on the cities of the future.
The built environment (BE) industry (i.e. construction, contracting, engineering consultancy etc.) is going through a turbulent time; populations are growing, client expectations are increasing and the UK government is pushing harder for buildings to be more efficient and sustainable. As a result, the built environment, a traditionally laggard industry with respect to the adoption of technology, is being forced to look to technologies for new ways to innovate in line with this changing world.
One of the ways it's looking to do this is with BIM, aka Building Information Modelling. At its heart, BIM is about the effective management of information and it ultimately aims to pull together the various strands of information involved in the development of cities, into one comprehensive model. In doing so, BIM seeks to provide a bigger picture of the processes and impact engineering has on the buildings and infrastructure of our cities.
Whilst the conference was primarily aimed at the professional disciplines who use BIM, like civil engineers; I was there mainly to gain a better understanding of the current state of the BE with respect to the use of novel technologies.
Better Information Management
The built environment has managed to develop a reputation for always being behind the curve when it comes to the adoption and use of new technologies. Perhaps it is because of this, that an idea calling for a move away from traditional building design methods caused such disruption. CAD models have, for a long time, been used as a standard when designing buildings for representing the physical properties of the given building. For all other information required to pull a building together, separate designs were created; ultimately resulting in multitudes of models with large amounts of information overlap.
At the conference, a standout statistic was in regards to the design and construction of buildings:
For every one building built, we design it two and a half times and build it one and a half times.
In essence, this quote accuses the Built Environment of riddled with inefficiencies which, somewhat unsurprisingly, result in the profit margins of any project being unsustainably small.
Up until here, you wouldn't be blamed for thinking it's all doom and gloom for the BE and the future of our cities. However, there is hope; the introduction and standardization of BIM represents a genuinely positive shift towards cities comprised of intelligently designed buildings, and effectively operated infrastructure. Engineers will be able to collaborate more effectively, minimize information repetition, and gather more information on how their designs perform.
In using BIM, there come opportunities to not only build with greatly increased efficiency but to also capture data about how buildings are run and even, in the future, about how buildings affect the people and communities that use them.
Internet of Things
It's fair to say that given current developments, the internet of things will have enormous implications for all future civil engineering projects. With an increasing ability to collect information and process it, the need for systems capable of acting intelligently in response to this data is growing.
In order for this need to be satisfied, infrastructure must become more interconnected and coordinated; for a system to act in an optimal way, the system itself must have some level of self-awareness. In this way, the pulling together of various information sources is fundamental to BIM.
A centralized building model could be used to monitor and control every aspect of a building. Everything from fridges and taps, to embedded lightbulb sensors and CCTV, can be connected to a network and analyzed in real-time. This enables intelligent decisions to be made based on the current circumstances.
The Blockchain Solution to a Cost Problem
Whilst the benefits of moving to a more effective design ideology through adopting BIM seems compelling, there is a major question surrounding who the actual beneficiaries are and, beyond that, who should pay for the cost of adoption?
The barriers facing the built environment are largely cost focused and relate to how much of a return on investment can be generated from BIM. As it stands, the investment required to make BIM work is considerable and without a guarantee that the benefits will be borne by those who pay for it, companies can't be blamed for being hesitant in committing wholeheartedly. The question of cost is one of 2 parts; the cost of adoption and sellable products:
The Cost of Adoption - At present, not all companies involved in the various stages of building design are at the same stage of BIM adoption nor do they have the same design practices. As such, there is a disproportionate cost placed on any one company that designs to a higher level of BIM than others; hence very few decide to do so.
Sellable Products (Billables) - Traditionally, computer models were included as requirements of a design contract rather than a separate product that could be charged for. Because of this, in order for any financial gain to be made by the engineering firms producing the computer models, there has to be a fundamental shift in how contracts are written and carried out to adjust for this.
What blockchain provides is the real-time tracking and ledger keeping of information across all parties concerned. Similarly to how Bitcoin works, each piece of information associated with a building information model is created as an entry on a blockchain ledger, which can then be traded between designer and client as part of the design contract.
In doing this, the information provided within a model can be quantified and given value as a product of the design process. In terms of the cost of adoption, this encourages all companies to maintain similar levels of BIM adoption as this would be the only way of benefiting from the billing of the model information.
Impending Doom?
Whilst BIM as an idea isn't new, there are new challenges that need to be tackled to ensure we get the most from new technologies, that they have longevity and, most importantly, that they're safe.
Naturally, connecting all of the important information sources associated with a building raises significant security concerns. It's not difficult to imagine a situation where a major piece of infrastructure is hacked and maliciously controlled by people without our best interests at heart.
On this, Dr. Sally Leivesley from Newrisk spoke at the conference, raising an interesting point; unlike with bridges and buildings, with technology, you must design for critical failure. As opposed to static constructions that simply must stay standing, it's comparatively difficult to design for every scenario to make a system capable of withstanding all hacking based attacks. As such, it's essential to design any new infrastructure that uses a centralized control and information system in mind of it being breached such that it can be designed to react appropriately to prevent serious damage.
Conclusion
Ultimately, the question that must be asked is; is BIM worth it? The answer to this, at least in my eyes, is an unequivocal yes. It wouldn't be wrong to say that we need to be careful, there are huge risks associated with perusing the adoption of a more integrated way of designing and building, but, at the same time, there are also enormous gains to be made.
What BIM empowers us to do, is to build the next generation of cities that will make the way we live more sustainable. Sustainability is, after all, the end goal; there's a time limit on everything we create and sooner or later, the resources that we use now as though they are expendable, will run out.
