The UK is a world leader in construction productivity, but this has not happened by chance. A principal driver of this has been investment in digital techniques. Sir John Egan promoted digital design in his landmark 1998 report, and industry interest in digital design and construction grew throughout the early 2000s. I saw this first hand in previous roles at Wates and Skanska, where animated digital modelling (4D BIM) was used routinely to demonstrate build sequences to clients and project teams.
The 2011 Government Construction Strategy introduced the idea of building information in a collaborative 3D environment, with attached data, for publicly procured projects. This became the powerful Building Information Modelling (BIM) level 2 mandate, supported by Government funding for the development of digital construction and spurring investment in digital techniques in all sectors of the UK construction industry. The 2016 Government Construction Strategy reinforced this commitment by promoting the next phase of BIM, including whole life management, incorporation of the internet of things and component interoperability.
All this has provided our industry with many strengths, although many challenges and opportunities remain – waste, defects, financial performance, carbon emissions and safety, to name just a few. The 2018 award of the Construction Sector Deal however represents a further leap towards digital construction pre-eminence, and the means to address the industry’s challenges.
Digital Twins and the Construction Sector Deal
The 2018 Construction Sector Deal comes with £170m of Government funding – through UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) – and the commitment by industry to invest a further £250m over a four-year period. The Government is committed to using its buying power in relation to schools, hospitals, defence, transport, justice and housing to drive improvements in construction, including digital twins. The £170m investment is providing £72m for the Construction Innovation Hub, £36m for the Active Building Centre, £57m for research and demonstration and £2m for the ‘Network Plus‘. The remaining £3m covers core team overheads.
Funding of the Construction Sector deal
The approach in all cases is to use digital techniques to deliver more certain outcomes for construction projects, employ manufacturing approaches, often in factories, and model for optimum whole-life performance. The funding will support a shift to value-based procurement and the de-risking of innovative solutions.
The Construction Innovation Hub (CIH) will develop the kit-of-parts, or platform approach to buildings – an example of which is shown below. This will embrace the physical and digital characteristics of an interoperable set of components for each building type. The component portfolio is in the early stages of development, but the ‘Seismic’ project has already defined standardised steel frames for schools.
The platform concept for buildings is being developed by the Construction Innovation Hub
The purpose of the Active Building Centre is to foster the widespread deployment of buildings that function as power stations: generating, storing and distributing more energy than they consume. Here again, the digital twin concept will come into play in order to demonstrate the benefits of active technology, including investment returns.
From the research pot, £18m has already been allocated to develop and de-risk innovative solutions for construction. These include applications of artificial intelligence, digital techniques for construction and smart assets, and factory-based construction.
The Network Plus unites construction’s academic and industrial communities to create a research and knowledge base dedicated to addressing the systemic problems holding back the sector. Work being sponsored includes benchmarking, user experience, technology transfer and interoperability studies. Further work will be commissioned before the end of 2019.
Wider Investment
It is expected that the £170m Government investment will have a significant stimulating effect on other sources of funding. The construction industry currently reports £650m of annual tax-credit-eligible research spending, much of which already goes towards development of digital capability – and the Sector Deal provides an incentive for both increased spending and increased alignment. I would expect the industry to move past the £1bn annual research spending mark in the near future.
Another favourable trend is the increasing transfer of knowledge and techniques from other industrial sectors. Industry 4.0 solutions are more applicable to construction than previous the phases of mass production and automation. Construction can now capitalise on internet of things networks, digital twins from other sectors, machine learning and autonomous vehicles.
Current and Future Funding Opportunities
The final £36m of the £170m Government investment will be allocated with calls opening on 28 August 2019. The aim of the demonstrator (£26m) and the collaborative R&D competition (£10m) is to present a portfolio of projects which showcase close-to-market solutions that go beyond the current state-of-the-art. Longer term, the expectation is that the industry will work with the Government to build on the success of the sector deal, with further support for retrofit and enhancement of the built environment.
There is no doubt that the Construction Sector Deal and the investments in digital capabilities represent an opportunity to take the UK construction industry from one of the world’s best to an absolute world-beater. I urge everyone to join the revolution in whatever way they can.
About the author:
Sam Stacey is Challenge Director – Transforming Construction at UKRI. He is leading the Transforming Construction challenge, a £170 million research and innovation investment, matched by £250 million from industry, to create new construction processes and techniques for building manufacture in the UK. Linked to the Construction Sector Deal, the programme includes funding for research, a new construction network and the creation of an active building centre and innovation hub.
Before joining UKRI, Sam was Director of Innovation, Industrialisation and Business Improvement at Skanska UK, a Trustee of the Building Research Establishment, and Chairman of the National Platform for Construction. Sam has also worked for Wates Construction and Buro Happold Engineering.
He is a Chartered Structural Engineer with an MBA from Henley Business School and degrees in Civil Engineering, Architecture and Philosophy from Imperial College London and the University of Cambridge.
See Sam at Digital Construction Week 2019
Sam Stacey – The Transforming Construction Challenge; Funding digital construction at the Main Stage at 9.20am on Wednesday 16 October
The Transforming Construction Challenge (Panel) at the Main Stage at 9.40am on Wednesday 16 October
This panel session also features Rosemary Nunn (Chair), Founder and Managing Director of I&K, the Innovation and Knowledge Agency; Keith Waller, Programme Director at Construction Innovation Hub; Jacqueline Glass, Principal Investigator at Transforming Construction Network Plus; and Ahsan Khan, Director of Research and Innovation at Active Building Centre.