DATA-CENTRIC OFFSITE
OFFSITE FUTURE: DATA & DIGITALISATION
Graham Cleland, Managing Director of Berkeley Modular, sees digitalisation as an enabler to scale and a way to leverage productivity. With the landscape of the UK’s offsite sector becoming increasingly populated over the last few years, what developments should we be looking out for? Many new entrants – mostly concentrated on residential development – joining a host of longer-established players are embracing business models based on the manufacture of volumetric modular residential product, rather than other forms of offsite solution such as panellised product. The investment profile of these new entrants suggests that the success or otherwise of their business models directly relates to an ability to operate at scale and achieve high levels of productivity. Digitalisation and the power of datacentricity across the wider construction industry is somewhat misunderstood. Most often, parties tend to think that the creation of 3D models using common software platforms in order that information can be easily shared and the likes of clash detection carried out constitutes all that is required for the building of an information model. Indeed, over the last 10-15 years, new roles such as BIM Manager and BIM Co-ordinator have emerged across the industry which tend to reflect this limited understanding. Yet the creation of a geometric digital twin in a virtual modelling environment does not really constitute the building of an information model that digitally captures both the product and the process needed to be executed to create the physical entity. The newer entrants to offsite who are focused on the manufacture of volumetric modular product for the residential sector appear to lack understanding of digitalisation and the power of data-centricity. For such manufacturing-based enterprises, it is not to say that their utilisation of sophisticated software to foster collaborative working to help the
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efficient development of a geometric digital twin is not beneficial, rather that in itself it is not adequate for the purpose of facilitating scalability and high levels of productivity. The digitalisation (or digital engineering) of product and process implies a more wide ranging set of activities than just the collaborative development of a geometric digital twin. Whether these enterprises have implemented rigid manufacturing workflow to support the production of a limited range of standard product, or a more flexible manufacturing workflow to support production of mass-customised products, a datacentric logic which facilitates control of the value chain and supports data-driven decision making is a pre-requisite to success. Plainly, an expansive notion of digitalisation and the power of data-centricity reflects something more than the simple idea of building information modelling, and whilst not widely appreciated it really does hold the key to an enterprise realising scale and high levels of productivity. In order to comprehend the power of data-centricity, enterprises must secure a deep understanding of what data it needs and how it must flow to efficiently operate. Most enterprises do not invest the time and effort to secure the necessary insight regarding data creation and flow. Without this understanding, they are unable to determine the nature of the technology platform needed to support the effective digital engineering of product and process. As a result, they typically default to a technology strategy incorporating a set of software packages which cannot be fully integrated, and so
WWW.OFFSITEMAGAZINE.CO.UK | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020
