The built environment is massively important to the UK economy and the wider public good, encompassing as it does all major infrastructure such as road and rail and the buildings in which we live, work, and are educated.

However, the sector suffers from low productivity compared to sectors like finance, insurance, and manufacturing. Research and development spending in the built environment also runs well behind that of other sectors at less than 1% of revenues, compared to 3.5% and 4.5% of automotive and aerospace sectors. Large projects are typically taking 20% longer to finish than scheduled and end up around 80% over budget.

With challenges of that scale facing it, you might expect the built environment to embrace the transformative effect of digitalization, but it remains inherently conservative when it comes to taking advantage of this new technology.

The goal, for many, is to digitally transform their business and embrace innovation standards and construction innovation best practices.

Digitization vs. digitalization: What’s the difference?

Catalysed by the sector’s mandate and subsequent adoption of Building Information Modelling (BIM), businesses have begun to explore the wider realms of innovation as they strive to achieve a digital transformation.

To read more on the topic of Building Information Modelling (BIM), click here.

A business looking to digitally transform will likely find it difficult to integrate these new technologies and processes without support. However, by first introducing digitization and digitalization, many of the skills needed to utilize these technologies and processes, such as manipulating metadata, will have been integrated into your business. Therefore, by using innovation best practices around digitizing information and digitalizing processes, a business can support itself to cross the digital chasm to achieve digital transformation.

Digitization

Simply put, by making something digital, it has been digitized.

For example, by scanning old drawings, documents and even taking photographs with a digital camera, the physical form has been transformed into a digital form that a machine can read.

Often this transformation is done with little thought, however, a well-thought-out strategy can provide an organization with a myriad of benefits. For example, PD ISO/TR 13028:2010 provides guidance on how to establish a digitization procedure within a business. Through careful consideration of properties such as format, resolution, and compression a “Master Copy” is maintained in an open format with derivates produced to suit the task they will be used for.

Digitalization

Distinct from digitizing, by incorporating digital technologies into a process, it has been digitalized. For example, by applying metadata (data about data) to documents kept in your office, the process of storing, managing, and retrieving these documents has been digitalized.

As opposed to navigating through countless folders and sub-folders, documents can be found based on the information recorded against them. Standards such as BS EN 82045-2 provide a specification for what metadata could be recorded and how to record it; aligning to other standards such as BS EN ISO 7200 so that information recorded within document headers and title blocks matches the metadata being recorded.

For some time Building Information Modelling (BIM) has been used to create digital representations of the built environment, helping designers and constructors visualize and coordinate their creations.

Embracing innovation standards in the built environment

As a first step in digitalizing your processes, it helps to start with BS EN ISO 9001 Quality management systems. This specification details the requirements of a quality management system.

With the foundations in place, your business can turn to BS ISO/IEC 19510 Information technology. Object Management Group Business Process Model and Notation. It provides a system of notation that is readily understandable by all business users, including the business analysts that create the initial drafts of the processes, the technical developers responsible for implementing the technology, and the business people who will manage and monitor those processes. It creates a standardized bridge for the gap between a business’s process design and process implementation.

Once you’ve mapped the process using this notation you can start to assess how the elements of a process can be digitalized in an integrated way.

The Future of Construction Innovation

While information models have been used to support decision-making, the ability to do so improves exponentially when these information models are connected to the Internet of Things (IoT). This connection turns digital models into dynamic tools capable of capturing live data which can be used to provide insights and better inform how decisions are made.

As this data grows in volume and complexity, predictive analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) can be integrated to connect and interpret this data and continually improve decision-making.

To help your construction business better embrace construction innovation and prepare for the technology of tomorrow, add these key innovation standards to your collection today.

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