Even though data and data collection are not new concepts in the business environment, converting data, and the underlaying knowledge, into actionable insights is something not commonly done in the Architecture, Engineering in Construction (AEC) industry. The AEC industry still heavily relies on intuition rather than data in many of its operational processes. Think about it, some of the biggest problems in the industry range from collaboration issues, fragmented-siloed disciplines, low productivity, poor sustainability, skilled labor shortage, among others. Bringing fact-based knowledge from data points obtained from past experiences has the potential to significantly improve many of the processes we currently use and greatly improve many of the above-mentioned challenges.
At Sweco we have started our data journey in the last decade and our projects on that topic are now of a high strategic importance in this new decade. The mission is clear: Collect, store and process the knowledge being created daily in our projects, convert it into actionable insights and use it to improve our industries processes and challenges.
Imagine, in Finland, at Sweco, we do over 10.000 assignments, in different areas, every year. What if we could capture the knowledge from those assignments and then target the knowledge, computed from the insights and patterns found in the data, to our designers, partners and clients in on-going assignments? Can you imagine the potential gains our industry could achieve with methods like this?
In a more concrete case, imagine that we could for example, process all the previously designs of precast walls from residential building projects, or steel detailing connections from industrial projects, have systems that could understand the multi-dimension relationships between those complex systems and suggest possible actions in on-going, similar assignments?
Or simply, understand how the thousands of users are using a specific software, find patterns and trends from that massive amount of information and provide those insights to the relevant stakeholders. This new type of data would provide them with the means to make decisions based on facts in addition to the previously used intuition.
Currently, some of the knowledge gained during assignments is lost or forgotten, over time, workflows like this might sound like science fiction to many, but they start to appear in many places in this often-called conservative industry. In the end of the last decade we have started several partnerships and projects with governmental entities, universities, other companies and relevant stakeholders in order to tackle these issues because we strongly believe that, new data driven workflows like these, have the power to help us tackle our Industries hardest challenges and help speed up our industry digitalization journey.
As you can imagine, this is a big task and extremely difficult task, which is something that requires a join effort in our industry to be able to create a real impact in our business environment. If you have similar experiences, missions or goals talk to us, we are always eager to find new partners in this journey.
We will be speaking in several conferences this year about this topic, come and listen to our journey, learn about our Project WISDOM that tackles these issues and engage with us in this journey.
Meet us in Finland, Helsinki
• 17 March 2020 at the panel discussion at the Kira AI: Shared vision for AI success
• 25-26 March 2020 at the IABSE AI workshop
In Sweden, Stockholm
• 31 March – 1 April at the Nordic BIM Summit
In Estonia, Tallinn
• 7 May at the Proptech Tallinn 2020
Ricardo Farinha, Director of Technology, Sweco