Five leading Irish digital services suppliers are to present their insights into how to accelerate construction’s digital uptake at a Digital Construction Week event held at London’s ExCel tomorrow (Thursday 17 October).
The briefing and Q&A, organised by Enterprise Ireland, offers attendees the chance to engage with companies the Irish government’s trade and innovation agency is backing to increase efficiencies and reduce waste across construction.
The suppliers taking part at ExCel are GoContractor, Evercam, Flowforma, Geopal and Zutec.
John Hunt (pictured), senior market adviser for construction at Enterprise Ireland, UK, said: “Digitalisation is a key enabler of productivity and waste reduction in an industry that probably wastes more than any other sector. But to achieve that, we need a functioning market for digital products and services that connects companies’ needs with the most appropriate solutions.”
Hunt says construction’s digital ecosystem is “still at a nascent stage” due to the “fragmentation and lack of long-term thinking that have historically led to low levels of technology adoption and R&D spend”. He says the UK is lagging behind the US, Asia and the Middle East – “regions where the sales cycle is a lot shorter than in the UK”.
According to Hunt, the UK government’s BIM mandate and the subsequent ISO 19650 standard “will not only provide a consistent technology interface to identify and replace inefficient processes between and across organisations, it has the added potential for scalability”. He added: “The application of the standard across many other sector verticals and international markets is likely to drive nationally significant levels of investment”. He believes a tightening economic climate makes the adoption of BIM “even more important”.
Enterprise Ireland aims to back the most innovative Irish tech companies, and is said to be the third-largest seed capital investor in the world, with an annual budget of £200m. This is the fifth year running it has supported Digital Construction Week.
Registrations to the event are still being accepted: to attend, click on the link below.
