A Digital & Flourishing Built Environment
An online discussion held on 13 November 2024 by Dave Philp and Neil Thompson, (hosted by the IT & Climate Change Panel)
Summary
What is the Built Environment? Why is it different to Construction? The role of Digital Twinning and the application of Data, Technology and Change Management. Approaches to new build and existing estate. The challenges of Big Data. Social Value creation opportunities. Examples of developments. Current state of the UK market.
David Philp, Chief Value Officer – Cohesive, a civil engineer by background, talked us through the concept of a digital built environment and how this is fundamentally changing our concepts in the construction industry.
Dave explained that back in 2010, the UK Government’s focus on construction strategies was based on the building capital costs, not the operational costs over the life of the asset. Construction productivity compared to other industries was low. The concept of a Built Environment discussed here today refers to a new approach looking at the whole socio, economic and environmental aspects of infrastructure development much broader than the construction of a building or a bridge.
With this in mind, we need to connect the physical with the digital worlds. To do this we need searchable, indexable computer readable information which we are now using to build a digital twin – virtual replicas of physical assets – representing the built environment , integrating data sets through sensors, scraping, 3D models. It might include geographic data, construction certificates, operational and safety data, and predictive data.
Dave highlighted that 99.5% of our infrastructure already exists. So new infrastructure projects every year are only adding 0.5% of the value to existing infrastructure. So we need to be able to retrofit and understand existing infrastructures to get more out of them. Dave cited NHS Scotland’s Digital Estate as an example, showing how it has integrated data for better asset management across 21 health boards. The Digital Estate models all the infrastructure assets they own across geographic locations and all the other information to improve performance and decision making. But infrastructure is not just above ground. Another example is Ordnance Survey which is now looking at a National Underground Asset Register of each asset, what it is made of, how it is used, and maintained. This will be key to improving safety, productivity and operations.
An interesting project in the UK called CReDo, led by the University of Cambridge, is a Climate Resilience Demonstrator: the combined twin, sharing data across organisations is able to make joined up decisions around infrastructure resilience.
Dave concluded by stressing the importance of data governance, integration, and management frameworks to ensure the data quality needed for effective digital transformation. He highlights the potential of digital tools to support climate resilience and decarbonization goals, underscoring that the success of this transformation hinges on the quality and management of the underlying data. But it’s not just about data and technology, we need to weave in people and culture to help us get better collaboration.
Neil Thompson, Technical Director AtkinsRéalis, has worked as an economist and engineer and focussed on the data in a digital built environment.
Neil explained that for him data does not equal information. Data is the world of IT systems and IT infrastructure, Information is in the world of how people do work on top of those systems.
So far the digital built environment is seen as a laggard because there is a misperception. We seem to think the built environment set or the construction set isn’t innovative, but he challenged that.
A lot of the services that we use in a digital infrastructure space, like ChatGPT that can be accessed for free, are having a profound impact on how we work today. The cost of automation is reaching an Inflexion point, so it’s not that the construction industry has been behind, it’s that the technology has only been available over the past five years where we can actually utilise it at scale. Ten years ago Ordnance Survey just wouldn’t have been able to create a National Underground Asset Register. We have only just reached a point where we can actually hold that level of data in a system and connect to it through the Internet.
Also, our sentiments have changed, whereas before we looked for the cheapest products now we look for the best products with the best performance for our budgets.
How are we going to build a digital twin? The important thing to understand here is that there’s a difference between the infrastructure that connects the computers together and the browser, the twin interface, which allows us to find information and answer simple questions like “How many bolts do we need in this?”
We also need to involve a far broader set of stakeholders, not just the IT department but all users, engineers, etc. as a Team.
Neil’s final words of caution: just because we can deploy technology now does not mean we should, on the one side the built environment is energy intensive and on the other side, the infrastructures built still contribute to pollution and climate change.
Youtube video of the Event: https://youtu.be/jE4gzWF6DAY
(Our thanks to the Hall, Dave Philp, Neil Thompson and Philip Pascall in helping put this event together).