Digital Construction Week: Top 3 Takeaways

Three topics we loved at 2019’s Digital Construction Week 

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Digital Construction Week 2019 or DCW2019 in London saw many announcements, key takeaways and exciting launches. Even if you went to the event, you likely missed out on a few lectures, product demos and more. 

Below we discuss the top three takeaways from this year’s conference.

Tech needs to be easy to integrate

The second day of Digital Construction week included the Digital Innovation Lunch presented by Enterprise Ireland. The lunch saw five presentations by five companies driving process and workflow efficiencies in the construction industry.  

Attendees witnessed five out-of-the-box ‘Pecha Kucha’ style talks where the presenter showed 20 slides for 20 seconds of commentary each (6 minutes and 40 seconds total).

A fantastic afternoon enjoyed at @EntIrl’s Digital Innovation Lunch as part of @DigiConWeek

We'll be sharing some pictures shortly pic.twitter.com/RuFXWdEN2S

— Enterprise Ireland UK (@EI_TheUK) October 17, 2019

Marco Herbst from Evercam showed the disruption capability machine learning has in the industry, and our very own CMO, Julie Currid, captivated the audience with an out of the box talk, “The Love Life of Construction Workers”. 

Currid’s talk highlighted the 93 percent of businesses who report buying software but never adopt it (Flexera), and how companies can avoid this buyers remorse. 

(Hint: buy tech that your employees or contractors will want to use. Shameless plug: over 50,000 workers and managers give GoContractor’s online orientation a 96% satisfaction rate. Learn more.)

Innovation leaders are talking Digital Twin

A digital twin, the virtual model of a physical product, service or process, saw a significant spotlight during digital construction week. 

Digital twins are now more than ever seen as an engineering must-have.

The global digital twin market was valued at USD 3.8bn in 2019 and is expected to reach USD 35.8bn by 2025 (MarketsandMarkets). 

The duplication of the physical into virtual allows the construction industry to avoid potential complications, drive productivity, and even plan for the future. 

A new whitepaper for Digital Twins was also released at Digital Construction Week. Notably, the whitepaper included an industry-agnostic maturity spectrum to address what constitutes a digital twin:

BIM is King

Nearly a year ago, The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) published the first-ever global BIM standards. These standards are meant to provide the basic framework required for contractors and designers around the globe to effectively collaborate on all stages of projects. 

It also encourages the wider use of BIM; Which is exactly what it did on the first day of Digital Construction Week. 

On the first day of the conference, the UK BIM Alliance, business standards company BSI and the Centre for Digital Built Britain (CDBB) launched the UK BIM Framework. 

This is a major step forward for the implementation of BIM in the UK. This new framework will act as host to all the information companies need to comply with the ISO standards. The framework will be anything but stagnant– it will continuously grow and refresh its information with quarterly updates. 

1. MarketsandMarkets, Digital Twin Market | Industry Analysis and Market Forecast to 2025, 2019
2. Flexera Software report, The State of the (Software) 2016