7 minute read
Theo Agelopoulos
LEADERS' OUTLOOK
ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022
BY THEO AGELOPOULOS
Senior Director, Architecture & Engineering Design Strategy, Autodesk
Our customers have been on a digital transformation journey from CAD to Building Information Modeling (BIM). BIM is a digital process and the foundation to enable efficient delivery, from planning all the way through to operations and maintenance. To digitally transform the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry, one must adopt BIM.
There are various phases of the BIM process, beginning with digital planning and design, digital construction and ending up in digital operations. At the core of the BIM process is a rich and intelligent 3D model, CAD still plays a role in the BIM process except now it’s a 2D documentation derivative representing a point of view at a single point in time. COVID saw an uptick in the demand for remote working and connecting different disciplines together through the project lifecycle. The Cloud has allowed us to better connect different processes and people, both in offices and in the field. This demand has accelerated the next wave of adoption and digital transformation. In the past two years, we have seen significant ramp in the adoption of Autodesk’s Cloud technologies because many of our customers had to rapidly distribute their workforce in a coordinated manner while managing their project risk.
There are several independent industry reports that claim digital transformation of the AEC industry has accelerated by three to five years because of COVID, I believe it and see that happening before my eyes.
The pandemic served as a forcing mechanism in accelerating the AEC industry’s adoption of remote working leveraging digital collaboration technologies. Even post-pandemic it has permanently changed the way AEC professionals work and collaborate forever.
Adoption of Digital Twins In the development of a capital asset, from planning to design to operations, most of the digital maturity has primarily happened in the digital design and engineering over the past 20 plus years. Over the past five years we’ve witnessed rapid adoption in the construction space, there continues to be a tremendous amount of capital invested in digital construction. Now we are entering the next phase of innovation in digital operations, which is why we are seeing the emergence of Digital Twins.
This is one of the primary reasons Autodesk has been working closely with Esri over the past five years to connect our asset scale Digital Twins with their macro level Digital Twins from a geospatial perspective. If you digitally transform the way capital assets are delivered — using a BIM process — you should always end up with a derivative Digital Twin, which then optimizes the way you operate and maintain that capital asset through its lifetime. As you operate and maintain that asset in the Digital Twin environment, and look towards renovation and retrofit, the collected data and insights should re-feed the BIM process for future renovation and retrofit. We will finally close the loop of moving data and information through the capital asset lifecycle to drive knowledge and better outcomes.
Stimulus measures and tech adoption Governments around the world, including those in the United States, Germany, Japan, Australia, India, and China, to name a few, made major stimulus investments in their infrastructure, primarily to create jobs and keep their economies moving forward. This has only further accelerated the digital transformation of the infrastructure industry.
In the United States alone, the infrastructure bill uplifts infrastructure spend by USD 500 billion, with key investments in roads and highways, rail, water infrastructure, water storage, public transit, and airports.
We should all be excited about the infrastructure stimulus bill, not just because of the amount of money that is being put into these different markets. What is very encouraging is the current
administrations USD 100 million investment in digital construction programs.
Historically we have seen stimulus investments drive an early uptick in construction for shovel ready projects, we should also realize the benefits digital innovation to execute them better. As we continue forward we will also see new projects entering the planning and design phase, driving more adoption of digital technologies leveraging design automation through AI/ML to design better, more high quality and sustainable assets.
I spent some time on Capitol Hill in Washington trying to help educate key stakeholders and policymakers about the value of digital technologies. I was so excited to see how receptive government has become in driving innovation and change in our industry. I expect to see more digital technology adoption in AEC over the next five years than ever before.
Things never move as fast as any of us want them to; digital adoption is an evolution, not a revolution. But it feels like there’s a fundamental shift happening, partly because there’s digital transformation happening in a lot of industries at the same time, and our industry is going to benefit from this momentum.
Tech for sustainable infrastructure Over the last decade the AEC industry has been primarily focused on building sustainability, and with good reason as buildings generate nearly 40 percent of annual global CO2 emissions. We have seen standards evolve to help engineers and architects deliver more efficient buildings, and with the broad adoption of BIM coupled with analysis has helped the AEC industry adopt more sustainable practices in design and build.
That maturity in buildings has made its way into infrastructure. Regardless of the asset type when you begin with a rich BIM model it allows you to analyze and simulate the impact of different materials, different locations and different designs. Once in operations we can then use sensors to measure things like if a particular infrastructure or building asset is performing at the level we had planned for in-design. IoT (Internet of Things), with Digital Twin platforms that allow us to create a digital replica of the physical world will transform the way we optimize operational assets, and those insights will also drive major changes in how we plan and design for the future.
Metaverse enabling the infra industry Metaverse is the next major buzz, the question is what problem are we really trying to solve for with If you digitally transform the way construction projects are delivered, you should always end up with a derivative Digital Twin, which optimizes the way you operate and maintain a capital asset.
LEADERS' OUTLOOK
Metaverse? Certainly at Autodesk, we have already been doing things that lend themselves to the vision of a Metaverse. Our customers have been using tools to model different types of infrastructure and building assets and putting them into an AR (augmented reality) and VR (virtual reality) experience to solve different types of problems. We’ve seen customer deploy solutions that allow for virtual training to virtual experiences to help make design and operational decisions.
At Autodesk we have always been focused on enabling our customers flexibility in using their Autodesk design and model data across multiple vendor environments. Whether it's Unity, or Unreal, or Nvidia, they have all been consuming our content to build Metaverse experiences in many ways.
Our goal would be similar to what we are doing with Esri — we want to enable federated data environments that customers can assemble the way they need, in the case of Esri, it’s bringing together BIM and GIS data. We absolutely want to deliver to the industry best design, construction and operations platform for capital assets — but want to leverage the power of the BIM process to connect the various phases of the project lifecycle that eliminates data redundancy and enables data reuse. Our digital Cloud platform to support this experience is Autodesk Forge, our Cloud offerings are all built on the same Forge platform. Forge fuels the BIM process and manages our data across the project lifecycle and will feed the Metaverse. It allows our customers to create a unified data and user experience. The Metaverse to me is just an extension of what we are already doing in driving the industry’s digital transformation. We are all participants in the broader Metaverse, our job is to enable our customers to essentially get access to the data they need to build different experiences that bring value.
The jury is out on what those high value experiences are, I think our customer and the industry will decide where the value exists and that’s going to be an exciting time for the AEC industry!
ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022
