Wherever new technologies have properly permeated this
fragmented industry, the outlook is an almost 20% reduction
in total life-cycle costs of a project, as well as substantial
improvements in completion time, quality, and safety.
infrastructure projects, building a major new
underground line across London: the designers
and engineers are using a centralized set of linked
BIM databases to integrate about 1.7 million CAD
files into a single information model.
During the actual Construction phase,
drones survey and inspect the construction
site. 3D printers prefabricate many of the
building components. GPS and radio-frequency
identification (RFID) are used for tracking the
materials, equipment, and workers, in order to
then optimise flows and inventory levels. Robots
and autonomous vehicles do much of the actual
building work. 3D laser scanning or aerial mapping
is used for comparing work-in-progress against a
virtual model, thereby enabling prompt course
corrections and minimizing corrective work.
Take the case of a Japanese equipment
manufacturer that has developed fully autonomous
bulldozers, led by drones that map the area in real-
time to provide data on the workload.
During the operations phase, embedded
sensors continue to monitor any given part of
an asset, checking for deterioration, facilitating
predictive maintenance, and continually updating
a central database. Augmented reality is used for
guiding maintenance crews.
Big data – on traffic movements, electricity
consumption, and so on – are collected digitally,
and are subjected to advanced analytics, in order
to optimize decision-making and generally boost
operational efficiency.
By way of illustration, consider the approach
taken by the Japanese building service provider
NTT Facilities to the inspection, maintenance and
repair of their R&D premises: by integrating the
BIM model into the building’s facility and asset
management system, and making intelligent use
of this combined resource, the company was able
to reduce the cost of operations and maintenance
by an estimated 20%.
Gathering momentum
On average, uptake of these transformative
technologies has been slow initially. They have
faced some resistance to adoption, and some
companies that do deploy them have struggled to
capture all the potential benefits. The obstacles
are being overcome, however. More and more
companies are now embracing the opportunities,
with productivity starting to rise and promising to
soar.
Within ten years, according to our estimates,
full-scale digitalisation will lead to huge
annual global cost savings. For non-residential
construction, those savings will be USD0.7 trillion
to USD1.2 trillion (13% to 21%) in the design
& engineering and construction phases; and
USD0.3 trillion to USD0.5 trillion (10% to 17%) in
the operations phase.
Note that the productivity gains will vary
not only across the life-cycle phases but also
across the sub-sectors: vertical, industrial, and
infrastructure.
The gap between digital leaders and laggards
is widening – for construction companies
themselves, for technology providers, and also
for Governments in their role as project owners
and regulators. All these stakeholders need to
master the dynamics, upgrade their competencies
and investments, and adapt their processes and
attitudes, or risk losing out competitively.
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