So, first up is the democratization of technology. This, for me, is a huge thing, which is why it's right
at the top of the agenda. This is a real big game changer of the last 12 months.
In the past, we’ve seen that usually the people that have access to technology like this on the
jobsite are going to be people in specialty roles, but we are seeing now more and more
that it could be the project engineer that’s out there flying the drone or working with the model.
As technology becomes more widespread across general life, in other industries, in your
personal life, that’s only going to increase and encourage the need in adopting technology.
Next up is the incredibly exciting area of 3D printing. This is where
we use machines or robotics to layer material on material and effectively
print a 3D structure or entire building. And this is where we’ve seen massive advancements
in the last 12 months. We’ve had our first 3D-printed property sold on the commercial market,
but where this is really exciting is the opportunity to solve many of the challenges
that the industry faces. With the housing crisis continuing to grow across the world, 3D printing
can really help create a sustainable solution. It definitely feels like it's at a tipping point
of it's either going to take off and become a widespread thing, or it's going to remain one
of those sorts of gimmicks. I guess the next 12 months are really critical for 3D printing,
whether it can make that leap from ‘cool idea with good potential’
to actually becoming a widespread way of building buildings on this planet.
Next up is the huge, huge area of automation, which is really starting to come to the fore as the
industry is grappling with a number of challenges. Yeah, as we look ahead with this impending skills
crisis, we’re only going to see automation increase across the board, but what we need
to do is change the perception of the fact that it is there to help us deliver those projects.
Some people perhaps have the idea that, or even fear, that robots are going to come in,
or AI (artificial intelligence) is going to come in and take our jobs away from us.
We are probably decades away from that, and people don’t need to worry. This is
about machines and AI enabling us to do our jobs better, more efficiently,
more effectively to a higher standard. It’s about automating those parts of the job that
aren’t using the height of our skills, that aren’t using the best of our abilities
all the time, and freeing us up to do more tasks, or to do other tasks, to a higher standard.
Geospatial is another hugely exciting area. It's where we use geographic information
systems to collect, analyze and store data about the geographic location of a site.
We’re seeing more things like drones on construction sites,
being able to get that geospatial information into the hands of the project team.
The real use case is on those large-scale infrastructure projects. Those projects that
just don’t fit on paper. This, for me, as well goes
back to this democratization of tech, which was our number one trend, because
this kind of thing is really exciting, but it’s been enabled by advancements in GPS,
by advancements in detailed satellite mapping, and that stuff is going from
only being available to the military a few decades ago to being available on our phones,
in the palm of everyone’s hands today. Yeah, absolutely, bringing that familiar technology
into construction is only going to make things even easier in terms of adoption.
Offsite manufacturing is where elements of a construction project are moved away from the
actual construction site into a factory under controlled factory conditions.
Offsite buildings can range from all sorts of things, from volumetric buildings, where
entire units or bathroom pods are prefabricated in a factory and then transported to site;
panelized approaches, where elements of the façade or key components of the building are produced
under factory conditions and then brought to site; or component-based approaches. This is where the
industry chooses the design from a standardized kit of parts, getting the efficiencies and
standardization that comes with the offsite manufacturing approach but with the adaptability
and versatility that is needed for the huge range of construction projects and sites that we work on.
When you’re on a construction site and you’re building in the field, there are so many unknowns.
So, one day there’s nothing, and then the next day, there’s loads of activity, so it’s a lot easier to
do that within the walls of the manufacturing plant than out in the field. And being able to
do this in a factory is going to help us to reduce waste, it’s going to lower the cost, it’s going to
make a safer experience for everyone as well. Whether it's hotels or hospitals
or even skyscrapers, we are going to see offsite manufacturing increase in scale, both in terms of
the number of projects but also the size and complexity of those projects.
Digital collaboration is another massive area of construction. It was growing before
the pandemic, but I think it’s been really accelerated through the COVID-19 pandemic.
I think a lot of people when they think about digital collaboration in their mind,
they may be picturing just taking a piece of paper and working from that digitally.
But, in reality, digital collaboration is about so much more. It’s about coming together as a team,
being able to see the same information that your teammate is seeing and being able to make
decisions together based on real-time information. As we look forward to the next 12 months,
we’re also starting to see a trend of not just AEC (architecture, engineering and construction) firms
adopting digital collaboration but those industries adjacent to AEC;
those cities and municipalities, those government organizations are starting to adopt and embrace
digital collaboration for, not just their project design, but also in their permitting as well.
Going back to the democratization of tech, it’s generally the way the world has gone,
it’s to a much more digital collaborative approach, so
it’s much easier to do in construction now because the bar has been lowered.
People have access to this technology in their everyday lives, so the idea of being able to do
it in construction is a lot easier now, and those benefits are really starting to come through.
Autonomous vehicles use technology like cameras, sensors, radar, or AI
to operate independently on a construction site without any kind of human control,
but normally with some kind of human supervision. Where we are really seeing benefit is in those
controlled environments of the construction site. It doesn’t have the challenges that you have in
your open world. Hopefully, we are going to see this technology really start to drive forward
and realize some of those benefits within that controlled environment.
So, site video monitoring is kind of exactly what it says on the tin. It’s a tool that enables you
to see into a construction site, to see what’s happening on the ground no matter where you might
be in the world. It was a technology trend that was really maturing and really picking up pace
before the pandemic, but as you can imagine, the COVID-19 pandemic has massively accelerated it.
This last year, with restricting the number of people that can be on the jobsite,
these video platforms have really seen a lot more use because people need to be
able to see what’s going on on the project. And not just that, the advancements in not
just collecting that data but also being able to analyze it using machine learning
and AI to enforce a lot of those restrictions or increase safety and tracking of project progress.
As if any of us needed reminding, the pandemic kind of dealt everyone the same hand.
Around March 2020, we were all told we had to stay at home, but we still had to
work and get the job done from home. So that forced everyone to innovate and think about
how am I going to communicate, how am I going to share information with my team, how am I going to
make my processes as slick and easy as possible. Absolutely, we’re seeing really creative uses of
technology across the board. The innovation that has happened in the last
12 months has actually moved technology adoption in construction forward by as much as five years.
I think that 2020 was all about IT teams figuring out how do we keep people working from home,
how do we keep them going. Whereas 2021 is more so going to be like, now that
we have these systems set up, how do we use them to our best advantage going forward?
We’re seeing a real shift in culture around data. A few years ago people knew they had to start
asking for data, but they didn’t really know what it was for or what it could help them do.
Now there’s a real understanding about the impact of data and the power of data,
not just to inform design and construction process but to inform the operation process as well.
There’s not just limiting that sprawl; it’s collating all of that information to really
get that competitive edge. But along with that comes the privacy aspect, with things like
GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) coming to the forefront.
The last few years we’ve seen that data being in the hands of the end user more,
but we are seeing a shift to the bigger business, to the leaders being able to
make business decisions based on that data. I don’t know if you guys agree, but it’s
almost like we are getting to that world of two deliverables we’ve spoken about for a long time,
where people don’t just want the physical building of the project; they want the data that comes with
it. I can remember the CEO of Crossrail telling me in 2017 that he was delivering two railways,
one physical one built under London and another digital one being delivered in the cloud, and
that’s a huge mindset change for construction, but I think we are starting to really see that
play out on the ground now, on not just Crossrail but everyday projects.