Jaimie Johnston, Head of Global Systems at Bryden Wood, is The Construction Innovation Hub’s Design Lead and the author of the definitivebooks on Platform construction.
It requires collaboration and the convening power of the Construction Leadership Council will be crucial to that.. BIM and digital twins.We’ve been watching this process evolve over time, with BIM focused on digitising the design and construction of projects.
What we’re really aiming for though, is a future state where we’re able to understand and measure and digitise the actual performance of built assets.At that stage, we’ll be able to use the data to create insights beyond one particular project.Instead, the data will help us understand network and system level impacts.
We’ll be able to evaluate specifically how an energy project, a transport project, a school and a housing scheme interact.Digital twins and federated digital twins will enable us to understand how things are actively performing..
Whereas, originally, this effort focused on the capital phase of a single construction project, with digital twins we’ll be dealing with the whole life of an asset, and how it relates to, and integrates with,its environment and the other assets around it.
That level of data will provide huge knowledge and insight, which in turn will help us to make better decisions supporting our broader set of Design for Value outcomes.Furthermore, it opens up an opportunity for machine learning and artificial intelligence to come into construction, as they require vast data sets to operate.
If we want to get into AI in construction, and even digital twins, we have to put the building blocks in place now.Construction Platform design could accelerate the capture of data needed to make this a reality.. End of life: reuse and recycle built assets.
When a built asset comes to the end of its life, a construction Platforms approach is appealing because it gives us sustainable options for redeployment and reuse.Automatically knowing the provenance of a built asset allows us to get into a circular economy.