In October, the measure everyone looks to as a gauge of inflation, the Consumer Price Index, was up +6.2% year over year, the fastest rate of advance in the United States in decades.
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The accompanying table show the top 10 major upcoming Private and Government Office Building construction projects in Canada. They are all in the planning stage and are mainly new projects, but may also involve additions and/or alterations.
The accompanying tables show the top 10 major upcoming Private and Government Office Building construction projects in the U.S. They are all in the planning stage and are mainly new projects, but may also involve additions and/or alterations.
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Cash flow is the lifeblood of any commercial construction project. Being able to effectively manage cash flows on projects and throughout the year can be the difference between the success and failure of your business.
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Canadian construction starts year to date, as calculated by ConstructConnect, are set out in Table 1 below. By dollar volume, the total is +5.7% versus January-to-October 2020, with residential at +22.0%; nonresidential buildings, +19.9%; and engineering, -20.2%.
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The Building Safety Bill is fast-approaching the UK construction sector, and promises widespread change.
The government is aiming to “overhaul regulations, creating lasting generational change and setting out a clear pathway on how residential buildings should be constructed, maintained and made safe.”
Although the Fire Safety Act is now in place, the Building Safety Bill is still being finalised and it may be difficult to know how to get ready. So, what are the headlines from the bill – and what should owners and construction firms do today?
Here’s a summary of the Building Safety Bill and six key takeaways for UK businesses.
First of all, it’s important to acknowledge that there are gaps in the practical guidance out there for construction companies. Right now, the details are being worked out and it’s hard to see exactly how organisations will consistently meet the requirements.
But nonetheless, it’s vital that all construction businesses get ready for change. From owners to individual subcontractors and suppliers, the Building Safety Bill will place new obligations on every collaborator in the supply chain.
This isn’t just for tier one contractors; everyone will have to buy in, and there will be strong legislative punch to enforce the changes. Irrespective of your size and scale, understanding what’s around the corner and starting to get ready is critical.
The principle of the golden thread of information will require everyone in the supply chain to maintain a record of every project. It’s not just about handing over documents at the end of the project, or even uploading project files onto the cloud.
Everyone from designers to contractors will need to maintain a local electronic audit trail, rather than relying on clients to hold the data. Choosing data platforms that easily integrate with others will be important, to ensure that data records can be slotted together.
That’s not to say that everyone will need to use advanced modelling tools, but internal records will be critical – particularly in the event that something goes wrong in the future. It might not be as disastrous as a fire, but the identification of a faulty or dangerous component that needs to be removed from other builds is essential.
Again, this applies to all companies – no matter your size or scale. Small suppliers will need to revisit how they collect and store project information, just like everyone else. And positively, this also offers the chance of process improvements within businesses, from improved efficiency to quality control.
Arguably owners face the biggest challenge from the Building Safety Bill, especially if they aren’t already on a digital transformation journey. It will be critical to have systems in place to receive, and then manage and maintain, project data throughout the operational life of an asset.
That can’t be racks of drawings or folders of paper stuck in a cupboard. Owners will need to consider the best way to structure information – for example, in a common data environment – to ensure that it’s as easy to manage and access as possible.
Owners should work to set out their information requirements, so that they know what to ask for at the start of each project. Again, this richer dataset can offer other benefits for owners, such as more efficient asset management and more straightforward refurbishments in the future.
We will need to see a skillset shift across the construction industry to meet these new regulatory demands. Arguably, right now the sector suffers from an on-demand approach to specialist skills, with businesses waiting until there’s a problem to go and find someone who can solve it.
The issue with the obligations being imposed through the Building Safety Bill is that there simply aren’t that many people with the skills and availability to help. It might not be normal practice to spend funds on training at very traditional organisations; nonetheless, businesses will absolutely need to invest in staff to prepare for the potential avalanche of demand.
This is a definite change of approach. Companies will need to plan differently, while owners will need to recognise that the cheapest approach won’t always be acceptable. But without more digitally confident staff, businesses won’t be able to cope with the demands – and the uncertainties – inherent in any new legislation of this kind.
Although we’ll see a step change in information management, companies won’t need to build Revit models to track every component. There are actually lots of different ways of meeting the regulations, sometimes using existing technology in new and creative ways.
For example, Oculus has developed a system that uses camera footage to record on-site processes, like installations or subsequent inspections. The video record is timestamped to show progress over a project, and can then be linked with model-based information sets to create a detailed dataset or reviewed with other snapshots to show progress or changes over time.
However, the way that we connect these different technologies and approaches together will be critical, to ensure data can be transferred and collated seamlessly. At the company level, choosing open data platforms will help to ensure interoperability with other systems.
At a national level, there are a number of working groups developing an information management framework, such as the National Digital Twin Programme and the Government and Industry Interoperability Group (GIIG). All of this will not only support the golden thread of information on projects, but help the industry as a whole to create more consistent data and deliver better outcomes.
Meeting new legislation always seems like a bit of a headache. But it’s important to recognise that these are extremely positive developments overall. It’s not only about trying our utmost to avoid another horrific incident like the Grenfell Fire, but cascading information across the industry, to enable us to fix things that might be faulty or at risk.
Access to more detailed digital information can also help construction businesses ensure the quality of their work – while increasing efficiency and highlighting ways to boost productivity across the organisation.
Similarly, with a record of the materials used in each asset, owners can move towards the circular economy: designing buildings that can be dismantled, reused or repurposed, to massively improve the sustainability of the built environment.
Finally, it might seem that businesses are facing multiple changes in tandem right now, from the BIM Mandate Initiative to the Construction Playbook and digital twin initiatives. But arguably, the UK is much more joined up in its strategy than anywhere else in the world.
There’s a clear link between aspiration and execution – and by meeting these demands, companies will be helping to create a safer, greener and more productive sector. That is a huge advantage.
The post How to Prepare for the Building Safety Bill appeared first on Digital Builder.
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The U.S. foreign trade deficit deteriorated further in the latest month, sinking to -$972 billion USD in September 2021, an unwelcome record. The shortfall comes entirely in the trade of ‘goods,’ -$1.178 billion. The ‘services’ balance, which includes business and tourism travel, plus between-country costs of transporting cargo, remained above water, +$206 billion USD.
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The accompanying table records the 10 largest construction project starts in Canada in October 2021. Also included is the latest trend graph on starts. This looks at 12-month moving totals of the civil and nonresidential building categories in Canada.
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We asked our employees and customers what they are most thankful for this year. To kick off the holidays, we want to share some of the responses!
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Lomans are an end-to-end installation company in the Netherlands who work today on the smart buildings and sustainable installations of tomorrow. They have all construction specialities under one roof: electrical engineering, mechanical engineering and smart buildings. Their market extends to all types of buildings and their focus is on the long, and therefore, sustainable term. Lomans are familiar with all phases of the installation process when it comes to construction projects – from the design phase to operations and maintenance keeping a clear vision on implementing sustainable, innovative, and creative solutions. With mechanical, electrical and plumbing specialists in one place, the team at Lomans have experience working on a range of projects extending from distribution locations and offices to residential accommodation.
Lomans have approximately 400 employees with an estimated 250 colleagues working in the field on construction project sites. Over the last few years, the company has seen stronger growth with more and more projects being added to their portfolio. However, this expansion created some issues when it came to managing their day-to-day processes on projects. Bas Spaan, Data and Information Manager for Lomans, says: “With our company growth it soon became clear that there was no standardised approach to the way in which we implemented and used digital solutions on our projects. We have a number of different departments here at Lomans and many of them were working in entirely different ways.”
For Bas, managing project data and ensuring teams had access to the most up-to-date and accurate project information became challenging. “In some cases email became our single source of truth for the project teams at Lomans but this was not at always reliable nor sustainable.” At a minimum, Bas estimates that most of the project document was saved in at least two different locations – ranging from local network drives to different collaboration platforms and document sharing websites.
Lomans splits their company into customer teams who focus on the end-to-end project delivery processes. Working in this way means all project collaborators engage directly as one group – for example commercial, maintenance, engineering and bid teams, bring the overall construction process together smoothly. They work on a variety of big and small projects. “Our teams were collectively brought together in a deliberate move to focus more on the outcomes we deliver as opposed to the disciplines we belong to. However, this process showed us even more acutely that we needed better tools to support us to work more collaboratively and started our journey towards digitalisation,” affirms Bas.
Lomans were already using Revit, one of the design products in Autodesk’s AEC collection, for their 3D modelling and coordination. Bas found that Revit provided data rich models which provided vital project insights, but this important information was not always accessible to everyone on a project.
“With the exception of modellers, the wider team members were completely blind when it came to the insights they needed on our projects.”
—Bas Spaan, Data and Information Manager, Lomans
“So, we needed to find a way to better share important project data in a straightforward way that didn’t add too much time and complexity,” says Bas.
“Prior to implementing Autodesk’s Construction Cloud platform, Lomans worked with several manual processes. We had team members who printed off 3D drawings and worked in a 2D way using 3D information, which was clearly not the vision we wanted for the company,” says Bas. “The process was time consuming and lengthy and, team members couldn’t always be sure they had u accurate and up to date project information. Getting our hands on key project insight was more complex than simply looking at a drawing.”
Over the last few years, Loman’s set out their 2030 future vision to focus on using cloud solutions for their construction project data to collaborate seamlessly internally and externally on projects. The team started using Autodesk Construction Cloud’s BIM 360 platform as their common data environment in 2019. “Our long-term plan has always been to align and use Autodesk Construction Cloud products so when Autodesk Build was launched, we knew that was the direction we wanted to travel in,” says Bas.
“We know that in the future we’ll be working differently with technology. Soon, the computer will be telling us the best way to work, not the other way round! We have realised that working in a cloud environment is a fundamental element to moving closer to this reality.”
—Bas Spaan, Data and Information Manager, Lomans
“Autodesk’s reputation in the market gives us the assurance we need that they are the right cloud software provider for us,” says Bas. “Seeing the capability of Autodesk’s cloud and the work they’re involved in when it comes to shaping the future of our industry, it was totally clear that this was the right company for us to work with.” For Lomans, other providers offered them an end point solution but not a solution that enabled collaboration between the design, construction, and operation phases of their projects.
The team at Lomans began using Autodesk Build in early 2021. They started by rolling out the technology on a team-by-team basis. “We actually started with the least digitalised team at Lomans when it came to the rollout of Autodesk Build,” says Bas. Rather than implement the technology on all projects at once, Bas and the team introduced the technology by adopting a ‘sprint’ methodology. This allowed the team to get familiar using one particular digital workflow or process in depth at a time and then move on to the next process from there. “Rolling out the technology in this way helped to reduce disruption to our current projects and enabled us to learn from the cloud environment and from each other,” says Bas.
All new projects were implemented using Autodesk Build’s cloud environment. The first team to use the technology worked on small retail projects which were usually shorter in length than some of Lomans’s bigger projects. Bas reflects; “We could iteratively use the digital workflows and build our knowledge out bit by bit. We were also able to test some of the more complex workflows like markups and revisions on smaller projects and learn quite quickly about what did and didn’t work.”
By adopting this approach Bas and the team could quickly identify the best practices Lomans wanted to take forward. They started with getting the basics right with document management, then built on workflows like revisions, markups, checklists and issues management. “Using small steps and starting with the basics when it came to document management has meant that we’ve been provided with invaluable learning time,” says Bas.
The team at Lomans now use Autodesk Build for all new construction projects. Project data is structured in a standardised way which means any new team members joining an ongoing construction project know exactly where to go in their common data environment for the relevant information to get up to speed. Bas aims to be able to support construction teams use the permission sharing features when collaborating with external partners. This will remove the risk around data regulations and ensures the internal project team at Lomans can feel confident that the right people have access to the right information at the right time.
“We decided to use Autodesk Build for an annual process we carry out in our retail teams,” says Bas. “This involves emergency lighting checks for over 800 shops that we manage. Prior to implementing Autodesk Build, this was an entirely paper-based process which was not only time consuming but also risky, as important information could be lost during this process.”
Looking to the future, Lomans plan to use more and more of the features and functionality that Autodesk Build offers including automating annual processes. Lomans are also investing in the optimal tools for their team when it comes to using Autodesk Build, which includes providing employees with laptops and smart devices. “The time our team has saved using the solution already has been immense,” says Bas. “Searching for documents is not only time consuming but also frustrating. The thinking that goes into this activity has also been removed,” reflects Bas. “Our teams can now focus on the value-added activities like making sure our projects are delivered to the best quality. We can also focus on more robust quality checks rather than wasting time on administrative tasks,” says Bas.
The vision for Lomans is that all projects will be live on Autodesk’s Construction Cloud and time will not be wasted searching for documents, looking for data or waiting for information to be provided. “For our team at Lomans, we’ve removed the need to search for documents on a project; they’ll be exactly where you need them to be,” states Bas.
For Bas, happy customers drive business growth so focusing on quality and implementing smarter ways of working will be invaluable for the team at Lomans. “Ultimately, our team’s expertise can be used to the best of their abilities. We can better support our customers to address their needs and solve their problems for improved outcomes,” says Bas.
The post Working In and With 3D Environments to Deliver Better Outcomes for Lomans’ Clients appeared first on Digital Builder.
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