Innovation strategy is one of four scans that forms part of the Technological Innovation theme for RIBA Horizons 2034.
I have been involved in the architecture, engineering and construction sector (AEC) for 35 years, and over the last decade, have worked as a venture capitalist investing exclusively in the built environment. During that time, I have witnessed the industry’s focus evolve from the drive to digitise and the rush to leverage cloud-based technologies to its current inflection point: wrestling with how to apply artificial intelligence (AI).
Since the next decade will be critical for the global economy and the planet, it will also be critical for the building industry. How we approach innovation will be the single most important factor in determining how well our industry advances by 2034.
The first step in moving forward will be learning from past mistakes, notably the overpromise of the Building Information Modelling (BIM) revolution. Armed with this knowledge, the industry’s innovation strategy can be centred on three key targets for beneficial growth:
- leveraging data
- adopting a systems approach
- realising the digital twin
To support this growth, the industry will need to work together, breaking down traditional professional silos and making tech adoption and experimentation more accessible. And it must do this better than ever before.
Learning from the overpromise of BIM
The promise of digital technology has been shaping the building industry for decades, but its adoption and implementation have been painstakingly slow. While the conceptual origins of BIM date back to the 1960s, its development began to steer the future of the industry in the 1990s. [1]
Indeed, BIM’s early promise was prodigious. By representing the physical and intrinsic properties of buildings with a software-based digital rendering, these specifications could be readily shared between stakeholders during the building’s lifecycle. This would usher in an era of real-time collaboration not only for design but also for construction and operation.
Thirty years later, however, and supporters’ promises that BIM would revolutionise the industry are mostly unrealised. While BIM now produces excellent drawings, the full vision for it outpaced its underlying technology.
One reason for BIM falling short was that it was conceived and began to be developed well before the current cloud era. Without leveraging the cloud, the technology was not able to deliver the means for stakeholders to collaborate effectively.
To compound matters, stakeholders were in any case hesitant to share too much or accept the risk that deep collaboration demands. Working through the technical limitations proved impossible without participants being willing to share openly. As BIM struggled to meet the industry’s high expectations, architects, civil engineers, general contractors and even investors shifted their attention and capital to other areas of innovation.
The vision for BIM technology – a single tool that would transform the way the building industry worked – was arguably too idealistic. Drawing attention to this failure is relevant because we see parallels today with emerging technologies, most notably AI.
The hype surrounding BIM touted capabilities and benefits that the technology couldn’t support. With AI, the technology is impressive, but it remains unclear how the applications will prove useful. Determining the best uses for AI in AEC will require significant work to prepare the ground.
Phil Bernstein put this imperative crisply: “The advent of machine-learning based AI systems demands that our industry does not share toys, but builds a new sandbox in which to play with them together.” [2] If we prepare in the right way, developing an industry-wide practice of information-sharing and collaboration will be as important as any application of AI – if not more so.
Driving meaningful, industry-wide change
Meeting the challenges the built world faces over the next decade through innovation will require the industry’s ecosystem to work together, including technology creators and suppliers, legacy institutions, professional organisations like RIBA, and even built environment-focused investors.
We need existing technology vendors to be committed to advancing tomorrow’s solutions while maintaining the tools critical to delivering and managing today’s projects. Their innovation strategy must prioritise integration with adjacent technologies, data transparency and improved use and access, all of which address BIM’s biggest miss: facilitating collaboration between stakeholders.
Now that the underpinning technology exists, a new category of collaboration platforms has emerged. Join.build, a Building Ventures portfolio company, and others are enabling the active dialogue and recording of key decisions jointly made by stakeholders across a project. Capturing interactions and keeping an audit trail will become a central part of all projects in the next decade. This is an aspect of innovation that should be supported by the whole industry.
Securing this collective support will be a challenge. Technology in AEC has been dominated by a few large global leaders, and it is not clear if they will provide the next-generation solutions needed for the future of design. After all, today’s standard technology stack is based on products that, at their core, are more than 20 years old (older indeed than the new talent joining the industry). Without buy-in from these companies, the technology the industry depends on is unlikely to change.
Instead, it will take broader customer-based leadership and pressure from large new tech entrants and emerging startups, along with investors and industry organisations like RIBA, to drive meaningful change.
By growing the market and making technology more cost effective, technology vendors can lower the current cost burden on architecture firms. Therefore, making experimenting with and adopting new technology more accessible. This increased access to new tools will help the construction industry to focus its innovation strategies on the most important areas.
Three priority issues will drive meaningful change and support the technology needed to meet the challenges facing the industry over the next decade.
1. Focusing on data as a resource
The first area of focus is data. Years ago, an architect friend told me that trying to understand the progress of a building project was like driving in the pouring rain without windscreen wipers. My friend was referring to the opacity of working without the benefit of clear communication, tracking and collaboration.
The same analogy could be used to describe more recent workflows, with systems that fail to connect resulting in a deluge of data that collects without a plan in place for their curation or analysis.
Today, however, things are changing. Technology platforms that connect these disparate systems and establish not only crisp hand-offs but also opportunities for real-time collaboration are being adopted more broadly.
Going forward, AI has the ability to parse these masses of data to synthesise useful information, identify patterns and shape improvements. The architecture profession is on the path to eliminating ‘production architecture,’ where the value is in producing drawings.
Leveraging new AI-enabled tools will mean that no new projects will start from scratch. Instead, they will build on a firm’s previous work to enable better decisions early in the design process. Imagine, for example, a project where an ‘AI principal’ – a virtual assistant informed by data available at scale – kicks off a design charette.
This new AI principal will ensure the broader design integrity of a project. It will also enable instant checks against the many time-consuming considerations architects must navigate daily, from client programs and local building codes to choices of building products. This safeguards projects against human error while providing architects with the time and headspace to focus on the best design options.
2. Adopting a systems view of the built environment
Building on this approach to data, the second area of focus for our industry’s innovation strategy is to adopt a systems view of the built environment.
Greater access to data and insights as well as more opportunities for collaboration enable all stakeholders to view the building lifecycle as an interconnected, interdependent system. Safety concerns and sustainability measures will accelerate this shift.
For example, the UK’s Building Safety Act 2022 requires accountable designers to maintain a golden thread of digital information for buildings from design through to operation. Also, in a 2022 study on the built environment as a system, Hari Kumar Suberi notes a lack of precedent in referring to the built environment as a system as a limitation in his own research analysis. [3] Despite this, Suberi posits that sustainability will require this change. A “paradigm shift” is needed to capture, track and visualise the built environment as a system to meet the social and legislative demands for net-zero buildings.
Technology is laying the foundation for this paradigmatic shift to capture data and connect stakeholders. We will soon have the ability to follow the golden thread not only during the design and build process but also through operation in a way that accounts for occupant experience.
Today, platforms are starting to leverage AI to measure the carbon emissions associated with building products, materials and even furnishings and fixtures for a full picture of the materials’ carbon impact. As this information becomes easier to access, architects, builders and owners can include carbon accounting and circularity planning more widely and consistently in their design process.
Other AI-powered tools are beginning to equip building owners with predictive maintenance suggestions, saving costs and ensuring safe occupancy. These are all facets of a systems approach that will help the building industry to create safer, more resilient structures with far less environmental impact, which must be a critical outcome of any technological innovation in the next decade.
3. Realising the digital twin – finally
By leveraging data and adopting a systems approach to break down traditional industry silos, the industry can create the opportunity for the final critical issue: establishing the digital model as a single source of truth and achieving the elusive digital twin.
The industry’s current process of design, construction, handover and operation of the built environment is too disconnected – a drive through the rain without wipers. A digital twin would improve the process at every stage. To work, the model must be complete earlier in the process, validated against reality throughout design and building, and flexible enough to adapt to changing needs.
The digital twin must contain not only the information from the BIM model but also the golden thread. It must record accurate and up-to-date information about an asset’s design and construction and, during operation, about its maintenance and improvement.
Once the technology is available, the industry will be able to ensure that buildings age better than ever before. With digital twin technology finally realised, every new and existing building or piece of infrastructure can have its own unique digital model to help direct and capture necessary improvements over time.
These improvements can be both planned and strategic, based on usage data, materials data and more. That way, the industry will be able to maximise the use of the existing built environment instead of defaulting to construction, thereby avoiding the embodied carbon footprint that comes with new buildings.
Innovation requires industry support
These three issues line up with activity in the market. Sustainable design and construction will be enabled by better-informed and transparent choices made during the design process.
Under business as usual, taking more decisions earlier and enabling collaboration from the start risks a longer and more complex design phase. However, with the support of technology that has fully harnessed asset data across lifecycles in digital twins, these risks will recede. Projects won’t start from scratch and can more easily and successfully be developed from initiation through to operation. This will only continue to improve with the growth of modular, prefab and off-site construction as the industry leverages modern methods of construction.
A data usage study by Building Ventures found that, before 2010, there were fewer than 100 startups launched in the AEC technology space annually. During 2018, it tracked 700 new startups in a single year. This vertical growth lined up a rapid expansion of venture-backed businesses in general, and these AEC startups were able to capitalise on it. Between 2020 and 2022, the global investment in AEC technology grew to $50 billion, nearly doubling in just two years. [4]
The next generation of tools brought to the market by startups will allow the industry to approach designing, building and operating the built environment as one process, rather than discrete phases with clumsy handovers. To accomplish this, however, the startups will need to capitalise on recent advancements and sustain their ambitious growth with the collective support of the building industry.
The increased capital invested in AEC tech is a good thing but is only one step in a longer journey. The industry needs to play its part by adopting, improving and integrating the best of this technology. Firms in the industry need to invest in partnering with vendors to pilot new tools. Their feedback will not only help in the evolution and continuous improvement of the tools but also encourage investor confidence.
Embracing innovation for the future
Ultimately, innovation strategy is not about technology. It is about evolving our processes and adapting rapidly to change. While I have provided a broad perspective, what innovation happens over the next decade and what the industry will look like will be driven by individual firms’ analyses and approaches.
Leveraging data more effectively and moving towards an integrated systems view of the building lifecycle will inevitably shift the professional reality for architects, as it will for civil engineers, general contractors, builders and all stakeholders involved.
As a part of a more tech-enabled business model, architects will move on from hourly rates and utilisation calculators to charge based on outcomes instead. This transition will prompt them to accept fiduciary duties in their clients’ interests.
If architects don’t seize this opportunity, including taking more responsibility for the risk and even financial aspects of projects, design may increasingly move into the realm of construction. However, those architecture firms that embrace this future by extending the application of technology will surely be the beneficiaries. After all, there is much work to be done constructing new efficient buildings, retrofitting our existing structures to combat the climate crisis, and improving our growing cities as they house more and more people.
Technology may feel like a threat to existing practices, but it also presents an opportunity. The potential to reshape our built environment, our building industry, and our future for the better is there. Committing fully to innovation is the path to creating a better-built world.
Author biography
Jesse Devitte is co-founder and general partner at Building Ventures, the venture capital firm dedicated to supporting early-stage startups in creating a better-built world. Previously, Jesse helped grow Softdesk to a public company, concluding in the sale of the business to Autodesk. While at Autodesk, he was the AEC Market Group’s VP/GM.
Jesse has invested in many startups that are now part of industry-leading solutions, including Assemble, Honest Buildings, Newforma, SketchUp, SketchFab, Honest Buildings, and TinkerCad. He is currently on the boards of AeroSeal, enVerid, Join.Build, Skillit, and SmartPM. Jesse graduated with distinction from the Indiana University School of Public and Environmental Affairs.
RIBA Horizons 2034 sponsored by Autodesk
References
[1] ArchDaily - V. Quirk (7 December 2012). A Brief History of BIM
[2] P. Bernstein (2022). Machine Learning: Architecture in the age of Artificial Intelligence. RIBA Publishing
[3] H.K. Suberi (2022). Research Analysis of Built Environment as a System: Implementing Research Through Design Methodology in Frontiers in Built Environment, 7
[4] McKinsey & Company - J.L. Blanco, D. Rockhill, A. Sanghvi, and A. Torres (3 May 2023). From start-up to scale-up: Accelerating growth in construction technology
