News
DIGITAL DELIVERY
NAVIGATING COVID-19
FOR CONSTRUCTION SECTOR
By AECOM South Africa
The difficulties of accessing remote sites, combined with
the challenge posed by flight and travel restrictions due to
the ongoing Covid-19 crisis, will result in a fundamental shift
in the South African construction industry towards adopting
digital assets.
With many projects shuttered as a result of the lockdown, the
industry is likely to adopt various models in remote-working as
the ‘new normal’ in order to get these projects up and running
again, and continue to do so in future.
A leader in digital delivery is infrastructure delivery
company AECOM, which has implemented new technology
in assisting its clients in obtaining remote oversight of their
projects from any locations. An example of this innovation is
the development of the digital technical quality review (DTQR)
process, a collaboration between AECOM’s quality and digital
project delivery teams across Europe, Middle East and Africa
to streamline the review-process inside a cloud-based project
environment, Autodesk BIM360.
The DTQR is a solution that enables digital drawing mark-ups/
issues, and prompts project reviews at key milestones to ensure
quality. “This is a much smarter process than the traditional
analogue method,” notes Craig Howie, AECOM South Africa
Digital Project Delivery Lead. “The fact that all information is
captured in a single area means there is a digital record of all
activities, like a paper trail without the waste of paper!”
In conjunction with the DTQR is a major drive from the
company to move away from office-bound servers to fully
cloud-based platforms that can be accessed from any location.
While this process has already been underway for some time,
especially for all new projects, it has really been given impetus by
the Covid-19 crisis. Indeed, Howie says there is now a strong sense
of urgency in the construction industry to move to cloud-based
solutions for better resilience and collaboration globally.
Another area that has seen considerable investment is
modern collaboration and communication tools. “We are
definitely using these far more extensively than before, with the
main focus on the collaborative potential to be able to have multiuser
conversations and work on documents seamlessly across
teams,” adds Howie.
The company is also promoting its Reality Capture Solution,
based on 360° cameras deployed on-site to take high-resolution
photographs in strategic areas flagged by design teams. This
allows for all relevant project information and updates to be
accessible remotely via an app. “It also allows the client to visit
their site virtually, without having to actually physically go there.
Not only is this a huge cost benefit, but it is also highly interactive
Architects and engineers work
in a global-environment, which
means they are competing on a
global stage.
AECOM
www.hvacronline.co.za RACA Journal I September 2020 5