Amazon is of course the most famous digital marketplace, and the one most people are familiar with (except Alibaba perhaps, depending on where you are reading this).
Similarly, while it is certainly important to maintain a focus on bringing apprentices and young people into the industry, we also need to prioritise graduates and master’s degree students.These are the people with the higher level skills who can land straight into management roles of organisations and really make significant shifts in how things are done.
Moreover, organisations need to create space for people with these skills, because this isn’t always the case at the moment.. It’s also important to acknowledge the work that is already being done in this area.Bryden Wood’s digital configurator apps are deliberately aimed at lowering the barrier to entry, while Professor Glass notes that at UCL there’s a part of the faculty entirely composed of data scientists looking at the built environment.There’s work for everybody to do on this, we just need to make a home for people in the sector.
On a somewhat similar note, the industry also needs to start making better use of its existing data.We can’t expect to get into digital twins and smart assets, if we aren’t making the most of the data we already have access to.. Further exploration into the future of construction.
Professor Glass explains that as we turn our efforts towards shaping the future of construction, one of the areas we need to prioritise is our action on net zero and climate change.
With construction currently contributing 39% to global carbon emissions, we simply aren’t moving fast enough and the issue needs to be brought forward.This means we’ll be able to access instantly both the cost and availability of a project’s components.
For example, Xometry, a company in the United States, is already being used by major manufacturers.Xometry sends the digital file of the required components out to its distributed network of pre-qualified manufacturers all over the USA.
They then get a price.Once the customer is happy with that price, they bring the components together.