Waltham, MA - Mark Driscoll, Sr. Director, Industrial & AEC Enterprise Sales, hosted an AMC Bridge panel discussion with the industry experts and leaders about the challenges of bringing new technologies into the construction workflow at online event NY Festival of Construction—New York’s largest online construction event organized by New York Build Expo & NY Festival of Construction Online.
The panelists were:
- Mark Driscoll, Senior Director, Industrial & AEC Enterprise Sales, AMC Bridge.
- Jim Quanci, Director of ADN Partnerships, Autodesk, Inc.
- Philip Epifano, Enterprise Account Executive, OpenSpace.
- Josef Kauer, COO, Robotic Eyes GmbH.
- Rick Dunlap, Vice President Technical Services, BrandSafway.
- Mike Cox Lead BIM Strategist, Allegion.
The concept of Building Information Modeling, or BIM, has been around for many years. But the success of BIM adoption varies around the globe. In many cases, there is a delay in the companies realizing the full potential ROI that BIM can provide. One cause of this challenge in realizing ROI is the multitude of available technology choices and the difficulties of integrating and leveraging those technologies. Over the past several years, we have seen an explosion in new technology available for the construction market. Along with the increase in technology options, the hurdles of process integrations and solution complexity have also increased.
The participants discussed some of the challenges and best practices for the successful implementation of the new technologies. Here are a few highlights:
- BrandSafway recently decided to develop an augmented reality application for their internal customers. Their motivation is the need to connect their huge field operations team to the 3D data created by designers. Creating a library of 3D objects common throughout the enterprise and providing forums for sharing those objects improve planning, safety, quality, and more. The AR application helps resolve three key challenges: design validation, engineering collaboration, and staying technologically competitive.
- Allegion, a leading manufacturer of doorway security hardware, recently launched a new version of an add-in application for the Autodesk® Revit® BIM software. Driven by the need to unlock their domain expertise for their customers’ benefit, Allegion built the application with bidirectional data exchange, which helps the customers identify the right versions of their products and makes available all of the data required by designers, suppliers, and builders.
- OpenSpace helps construction clients adopt their innovative tracking technologies for construction projects. New technology adoption can be a daunting and disruptive task. The lessons learned from their successful implementations include:
- Keeping the deployments simple and focusing on individual outcomes for each adoption phase.
- Articulating clearly the benefits for all project stakeholders.
- Being sure that the new technology adoption has a real value to those stakeholders.
- The impact of the Autodesk Forge™ cloud-based developer platform on the construction technology ecosystem has been profound and supports the notion of data availability and breaking down data silos. Underscoring the I in BIM, Autodesk Forge is about data access: it is “the plumbing that allows people to collect data and access data” and the platform that makes it easy for people to get the data they need.
The panelists all agreed that building construction is a series of processes, and each process contains elements where efficiencies could be improved. That often results in the creation of new technology solutions to improve those efficiencies. But there is not just one workflow for a construction site. There are multiple workflows, and as a result, multiple gaps in technology adoption and data access. The construction workflow has many challenges that the new technology can solve, but in the end, it comes down to three major points:
- Data access is critical—breaking down the silos created through the design, engineering, and building processes will create scalable benefits for all stakeholders.
- Unique domain expertise must be unlocked—liberating legacy knowledge and critical product information for utilization across the entire design to construction workflows will make it easier for users to select and specify products and leverage new technology.
- New technology adoption can be disruptive—making it essential to create an adoption plan, consider all possible integrations and data requirements, and create a phased plan that will provide a safe and secure process for rolling out new technology across the enterprise.
The insights learned and shared in this panel discussion were beneficial and led to an engaging dialogue with participants on the call. You can learn more about the panel discussion by watching the panel video on YouTube.
About NY Festival of Construction
The New York Festival of Construction Online is a virtual, online event covering all the latest projects and opportunities for the construction and design industry across New York and the Tri-State area. It is organized by the same team that arranged the New York Build Expo, the largest annual construction and design show in New York, as well as the Chicago Build Expo, the leading annual construction and design show in Chicago.
About AMC Bridge
AMC Bridge is a vendor of choice for software development services in the areas of computer-aided design, engineering, manufacturing, and construction. Since 1999, we have been delivering solutions for CAD, CAE, CAM, PDM, BIM, and PLM applications. For over 20 years, we have participated in the development of commercial software products and custom solutions for the engineering markets based on a variety of platforms, from desktop and web to mobile and cloud.
Autodesk, Revit, and Autodesk Forge are registered trademarks or trademarks of Autodesk, Inc., and/or its subsidiaries and/or affiliates in the USA and/or other countries.