Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors -RICS- (29 pages).
While the pace of digitalisation across the built and natural environments continues to gather momentum, there remains a significant opportunity for the construction sector to invest more widely in adopting model-centric and data-driven work processes and practices. The benefits of digitalisation (the adoption of digital technologies, defined for the purposes of this report as BIM and digital twins) are well understood by many market participants. Still, many barriers to adoption remain across a sector that is fragmented, under continual cost and time pressures, and frequently criticised for spending less on research and development than comparable industries. In addition, to support traditional construction processes such as cost estimation, prediction, planning and control; progress monitoring; and health, safety and well-being, the sector is now having to address other practices with some urgency. These include incorporating environmental, social and governance (ESG) principles; designing and measuring social value; implementing whole-life and whole-asset thinking; and carbon footprint calculation, benchmarking and reporting across projects.
To understand the sector’s current thinking around digitalisation, four additional questions were added to the RICS Global Construction Monitor (GCM) survey, which is produced every quarter. This report analyses the global responses received during the Q4 GC 2021 survey, which closed on 20 January 2022. The results represent a snapshot of current sentiment and behaviours from a sample of the sector. RICS’ professional sentiment monitoring has been found to accurately foreshadow market movement, and the GCM is a resource to be considered alongside other sources when assessing market trends or conducting market analysis. Monitoring market sentiment around digitalisation in construction supports a level of confidence in both assessing current levels of adoption and predicting the direction of travel for the sector. By repeating these new survey questions on an annual basis, RICS will be able to demonstrate the continued pace of adoption and the nature of the continuing barriers and challenges being faced by the sector.
The results point to a globally consistent level of digitalisation. They show a current focus on the well-established needs of the sector, but also indicate growing use of digitalisation in construction around the emerging themes of ESG, social value and whole-life concepts. There is also a consistent understanding of the barriers to further adoption. While other data and technology approaches have already been applied across the sector, it is the power of building information modelling (BIM) with its higher dimensions of time (4D), cost (5D), facility management (6D), sustainability (7D) and health and safety (8D), coupled with digital twins, that has the potential to provide the most additional value over the coming years.
Much has already been achieved and implemented by many market participants. However, to address the profound impact of construction on our world, the sector must move even faster to reap the benefits of BIM and digital twins. In this digital transformation journey, RICS professionals – particularly those working in quantity surveying and construction, project management, building surveying and infrastructure pathways – can play a significant role.