Nima panel discusses a data-driven future at Futurebuild
On 6 March 2024, the second day of the three-day Futurebuild event at London’s ExCEL exhibition centre, a nima panel talked about the potential for a data-driven future for the built environment.
The panel – facilitated by nima vice-chair Paul Wilkinson – comprised nima ambassadors Vicki Reynolds and Emma Hooper, plus John Adams from nima patron Glider.
Before looking to the future, the panel reflected on 15 years of BIM progress, the impact of the April 2016 BIM mandate, and the extent to which organisations have adopted digital technologies. John pointed out the importance of timing: in a project-oriented industry it isn’t always easy to implement new technologies part way through a project, and long projects can mean individuals don’t get to try new technologies for years.
Starting by thinking about the long-term reuse of data and information is crucial, Vicki said. John and Emma backed her up, stressing how useful plain language questions can be in establishing client’s information requirements. Getting clients to think beyond construction is also key. Creating strong foundations for asset management involves capturing information about the new built assets, enabling data-capture from through-life operation and maintenance of those assets, and then integrating all the data.
Audience questions got the panel talking about lessons that could be learned from other industry sectors, about manufacturers’ inputs to built asset data, about artificial intelligence (AI), and about how the insurance sector might help. Could we, for example, highlight how good quality information about an asset adds value to that asset in the same way that a full service history adds value to a motor vehicle? Adopting novel approaches such as insurance-backed alliancing (aka integrated project insurance, IPI) can also help encourage teams to achieve greater sharing of better data (for more background on IPI, see this Constructing Excellence case study).
