State of Digital in the Construction Industry

State of Digital in the Construction Industry:

President Cyril Ramaphosa will, this evening delivers the State of the Nation Address to a Joint Sitting of Parliament and to the nation at 19:00.?The State of the Nation Address is an opportunity for the President to take stock of challenges faced by the nation but also of progress made.?And my fellow South Africans, I implore the President to put a huge focus on the one of the main barriers facing the digital transformation of the construction industry, here in South Africa, as well as globally.?This, my colleagues, is the dire state of data interoperability and data standardisation within the industry.

It is my dream in our industry that we can create a better design environment which is fueled by data interoperability, where all stakeholders, from Architects, Engineers and Facility Managers can share data, freely between all tools and software applications!?It is my dream that owners and users of facilities will seamlessly use design data in the creation of their Digital Twins to be able to manage their facilities better, simply because the data interoperability between the design and operations software applications does not exist OR relies on some tedious, manual method of data exchange.?Okay, this may not necessarily be my ‘dream’, but it is most definitely a requirement of the industry if it is to realise the benefits of data standards seen by other industries, mainly manufacturing/mining.

There are many organisations working to make their data interoperable between the various design, operations, and maintenance packages already, and for this, we must give credit.?However, it is taking too long.?I remember the case of the Fieldbus Wars within the automation industry, where the same issues were faced and, instead of true standardisation, many different protocols were standardised under a single framework.?Is this the solution for the construction industry??Possibly, but the point is that something needs to happen ‘now’, instead of Standards bodies taking decades to develop a single set of specifications.

As designers, now, we go through hoops trying to figure our best ways of getting point clouds, into models, into design applications, into common data environments, into simulation packages, into game engines, into operations and control systems, into maintenance and facilities management systems.?And we must choose been open standards (where we are the mercy of unknown developers) and proper standards (which are mostly out of date).

So, dear Mr President, let’s make this call, for the sake of all the Smart Cities, Smart plants, Smart infrastructure that we want to develop, let’s develop our standards framework, for the country to which all stakeholders can work within, to ensure the sustainability of designs, and of our installed infrastructure.

I thank you,

Yours in Digital.

Selvan