Like other sectors, construction is being transformed by digital tools and practices, BIM in particular. Beyond the tools already acquired or being purchased, it must also quickly take the other drivers of change into account.
Seen from afar, BIM (Building Information Modelling, or Management) is first of all the “digital model”: a tool for designing, building and managing a building, a civil engineering structure, an infrastructure. So software has to be bought and people trained to use it. As in the days of ERP systems, or more recently “enterprise social networks”, this makes the fortune of software publishers and trainers.
BIM as SaaS?
One aspect of the digital transformation that has been mobilising companies and their investments for several years is the arrival of SaaS (software as a service): offers based on use rather than ownership, for new, more powerful and faster-evolving software.
With these new digital products, the construction world is going through the same throes as other sectors: financing, choice of systems (Archicad or Revit?), compatibility and interfaces with other software, staff training…
Large companies have equipped themselves and are digesting it. And, as in industry, the era of the “digital twin” has arrived: immediately available for new builds, even if it then has to be kept “alive”, with “big data” challenges – collecting data, but above all analysing it. And with the question of digitising old data for maintenance and renovation projects.
The multitude of small players (architects, engineering consultancies, but also building tradespeople…) are looking for suitable business models. And the public sector, long reluctant, is stepping in under pressure from the market and professionals because, the sector being heavily regulated, it seems unthinkable to give private players free rein.
Beyond what might seem a simple switch from buying to renting, SaaS also affects data ownership, with the associated cloud offers. Because who owns the data of a building or an infrastructure? And who should be given access? Occasionally or more permanently. Beyond the very specific security aspects (sovereign functions or critical infrastructure), the stakes are financial, in the short and long term. Because when Google provides maps of cities and buildings free of charge to professionals working on a construction or renovation project, why agree to pay for mapping services? Who owns knowledge of public space? What can be made open data? And what is the remuneration for updating data, or for exploiting it intelligently?
The example of MaaS
Just as industry has been for the “SaaS” aspects, the world of transport – sorry, of “mobility” – can inspire the construction sector on other aspects: skills and organisations.
MaaS (mobility as a service) means giving an individual (equipped with a smartphone) all the information needed to know about (information) and use (ticketing) the mobility options for getting from point A to point B.
Beyond the change of vocabulary, the shift from “transport” to “mobility” no doubt reflects a paradigm shift in that world. The transport authority used to design a transport service – as well suited as possible to needs, of course – and users adapted their habits to the services available. In the digital age, which makes knowledge easier – and therefore the profitability of new offers that complement or even compete with the former monopolies – and makes it easier to connect many operators with passengers, the customer is taking back control.
The construction world, often under constraint, is beginning to see the same shift in the balance between experts and users. At a time when everything is accessible on our screens, even in the palm of our hand, is it acceptable for a client to wait for new plans and studies, when it seems so simple to modify in real time (given enough computing power – but that is available in any consumer electronics shop) a 3D model that will simulate the impact on noise and light, construction costs or energy consumption, throughout the day and the year?
Where is the skill, where is the value?
Another consequence of this transformation concerns skills. The new tools have created new professions (just as they eliminate others). As in retail, many start-ups are developing around BIM, with technical expertise from specialised engineering firms, or with the emergence of roles still to be defined, such as “BIM manager”.
In construction as in mobility, this also raises an organisational question. For financial reasons (capturing the added value of these new professions) as well as for reasons of professional identity (if prestige and part of the added value lie in information, the historic players do not easily accept being “relegated” – some to “transport”, others to “the building site”), large companies are tempted to absorb the new entrants – to the benefit of the start-uppers, who very quickly cash in the high price of creativity, skill and a modern image.
But in mobility as elsewhere, the success of these acquisitions is debatable because, culturally as well as in daily practice, (near-)monopolistic giants rarely adapt to young shoots, which they stifle with their bureaucracy, processes and slowness – all characteristics often offset by the financial and human power indispensable to any roll-out, but which are the very opposite of the “agile” world of these new players. A middle way is to create subsidiaries relatively shielded from historic practices, which at least have the advantage of addressing data ownership and revenue control – but will they stay in the fold in the long run? And at the other extreme is the “partnership” route, like the one between SNCF and BlaBlaCar, with the start-up winning dominance of its initial market, extended to an offer outside the rail operator’s “core business”, and an assertion of complementarity rather than competition.
Which path will the construction majors choose, willingly or not?
And of course, what matters is on the inside
Finally, BIM is not just a question of tools or customer orientation. It is also, potentially – as with all digital transformations – a question of transforming organisations themselves. Because “the best is on the inside”.
Beyond the various “BIM levels” that reassure organisations struggling with these rapid transformations, the digital model is a tremendous collaborative tool, through which the different trades can contribute their expertise at the same time. A “tremendous” opportunity for supporters of collective creation. But a “tremendous” threat for those who uphold the hierarchy of skills and expertise. Because if the builder can contribute, in real time, their perspective (and constraints) to the design, what becomes of the creator’s “gesture”, historically dominant?
The accelerated emergence in France – as in other European countries – of dual architect/engineer profiles, in the same person (which requires real self-detachment, if not “embraced schizophrenia”) or, more often, within the same team, shows the relevance of genuine collaboration (and not just cooperation) between skills and approaches that seem, a priori, very far apart.
As in industry, where engineers must work with designers to better meet customers’ expectations, rather than settling for “what they need” (and above all “what we know how to do”). Because working with others means leaving one’s comfort zone.
These new practices are, for construction as for other sectors, a sticking point for the success of digital transformation. Because it is not just about adopting off-the-shelf tools or methods, but about keeping professional identities alive and putting new operational practices in place, between design and construction. And that is always “tailor-made”.
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