Posts Tagged New Technology

Deep Analytics Coming to AEC : Data Wants To Be Free. #BIM #XML #AEC

gorilla thoughtSo with Google announcement of Project Genie : Vannevar Technologies and with IBM opening Watson to the programming community one has to believe that deep analytics is coming to the AEC industry.  Not silo attempts by industry leaders.  It’s got to get easier to run energy analytics, design options, facility management…integrated in a way that is push button easy, and as anyone in the industry can attest we are still far from push button easy.  However, getting thousands of people, the collective intelligence of the programming community solving problems.  Getting data centralized, performance feedback, learning from that virtuous circle, that is exciting stuff.

Data is the foundation of all of this, without the data, we have nothing to run with.  For the AEC environment, it’s the building whether it’s in the design phase, or most likely, already operating.  How long will the data reside in proprietary formats?  How long is that a viable business model?  We will see that companies that can provide the most value with the data start to thrive.  Hence the opening up of Watson as a platform and the fact that Google is coming to the AEC marketplace shows there is some seismic shifts in store.  I’ve written before that getting the AEC crowd to change their stripes, adopt new technologies, can be difficult, however it’s really going to be Autodesk 360, and what they can offer you in house vs. the world.  There has been talk of the ICFxml gbXML  or ways to have BIMs in an open environment.  This may very well be the tipping point.

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BIM sure to bring creative disruption: #BIM

I wanted to bring some attention to a recent article in the Daily Commercial News & Construction Record by Korky Koruluk, and included the first 2 paragraphs below.

Once in a generation, perhaps, a new technology comes along that enables rapid innovation and change. Sometimes, too, such change leads to a whole new batch of companies that pursue the changes aggressively, while their older, larger competitors are still trying to figure out what happened.

I’ve a hunch that Building Information Modeling—BIM—is one such technology. And I suspect that it is going to cause problems for some firms that have, perhaps, become too comfortable in their own markets.

Transformative technology has led to major disruption in the past, and there may still be a few construction veterans around who remember at least the tail end of one big one: the evolution of mechanical excavators.

Clay Christensen, a professor at the Harvard Business School, wrote an influential book in 1997 called “The   Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail.”

I don’t think this is so much a warning anymore but a reaffirmation of what most firms in the A/E/C space realize which it is now time to invest in technology to help you manage projects better but also help differentiate you in the marketplace.  If last 1/4 is any indication of the next one, the market will remain squirrelly and cost at bid and cost controls will be the defining factor and whatever tool will help you lock that down, get it, use it, win it.

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