Design to Value: Shaping a Better Built Environment | Martin Wood

It is not sustainable, or desirable, to continue building more and more traditional data centres.

From our digital design configurator apps for schools and housing, to our transformational, cross-sector work with platform construction (P-DfMA), our goal is to use smart tech to advance a better built environment.We’re always excited to talk to other industry players who share our goals, focus and passion for modern methods of construction, driving improvement by embracing change and leaning into construction tech.. We caught up with Craig Lamont, Chief Commercial Officer for Australian digital specialists, asBuilt, and found out how they’re using construction technology in smart and unconventional ways onsite.

Lamont doesn’t believe construction’s lack of digitalisation is caused by a lack of industry uptake of technology.Instead, he thinks it’s because the industry is oversubscribed to the idea of finding a silver bullet to solve all the ills of a construction site.asBuilt believes that the solutions needed by the sector are already available, and that by unlocking sites via technological empowerment of the workforce, the use of construction technologies like spatial mapping and IoT, and a shift in thinking toward humanity and long-term value, we have the power to truly advance the industry for the betterment of everyone involved..

Using construction tech to enhance processes on-site.To begin, we can use digital technology to offer more advanced ways to conduct onsite processes which aren’t normally digitalised, such as counting rebar.

Using construction technology in this way facilitates benefits like on the day sign-off, with confirmation that the correct tonnage has been installed.

asBuilt believes the construction industry’s core problem lies in connectivity, and that we need to be evaluating where we should be looking to unlock connectivity on construction sites.While early BIM slides had a digital thread looping operational data all the way around, in fact there are all sorts of breakpoints.

The handover from construction into operation never works particularly effectively, and we never really get that kind of handover into the capital model.Planning has always been one of the big digital breaks, where things suddenly go into quite a subjective, painful, and paper based process, and planning has long been held as a blocker to housing, amongst other things.

The impact of digitising the planning process would be enormous, causing many other aspects to fall into place.. Digitising planning with RIPA and BoPS.Still, digitising planning presents a complex and difficult challenge.