AECCafe Industry Predictions for 2019 Part I

Happy New Year!

It’s exciting to predict what may be the technologies of the new year. Many of you have a finger on the pulse of what is up and coming and can share valuable insights with our readers.

Responses below proffer an interesting look into the priorities of the industry going forward.  Because we have received so many responses, they are divided up into different blogs published each week through January.

In this week’s blog, we hear from Bentley Systems, IMAGINiT, Trimble and Microdesk.

Adam Klatzkin, Bentley Systems, Inc.

From: Adam Klatzkin, Senior Director, Infrastructure Digital Twins, Bentley Systems, Inc.

“In 2019, we will begin to see the adoption infrastructure digital twins—digital representations that mirror physical assets—by the AEC industry. The industry will start illuminating dark data—data that is difficult to leverage because it is isolated in native formats—in their projects and begin to put that data to work in exciting new ways. With the increasing usage and maturation of digital twins, AEC professionals will start leveraging real-time feedback and predictive insights (cost, safety, performance, and so on) which will influence the design, execution and operation of future projects.”

Adam Klatzkin is the Senior Director of Infrastructure Digital Twins at Bentley Systems.  His team is responsible for the vision, development, & user success of digital twin cloud services for infrastructure engineering.  He joined Bentley in 1998.  His previous roles have included leading various platform and product development teams including Senior Director of Construction Product Development.   In 2010 Adam co-founded The Engineering Essentials Company (TEEC) which developed SpecWave a software product to help architectural, engineering, and construction organizations intelligently manage their engineering specifications and related codes and standards.  SpecWave was acquired in November 2012 by Bentley.  Adam holds a Bachelor of Science with honors in Electrical and Computer Engineering with an additional major in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University.

Kevin Breslin, IMAGINiT Technologies

From: Kevin Breslin, Professional Services Manager, Infrastructure Solutions, IMAGINiT Technologies

“2019 appears to be another year where development (public and commercial) will continue its positive trajectory and with that, a greater need for enhanced efficiencies and productivity.  Targeted education and optimization of BIM design technologies will continue to be a critical factor achieving greater results.

Collaboration necessity of modern BIM design will continue to drive organizations towards more effective means of sharing data beyond the walls of an office. Greater utilization of modern means of collaboration, including cloud-based technologies will likely see increased adoption as the benefits reveal themselves as justified.  As non-traditional data sharing technologies improve and accessibility to greater data bandwidth and speeds become more commonplace, organizations who adopt these new collaboration/data-sharing technologies will pull ahead of their competition and fan the flames of an even more widespread adoption of these technologies.

Reality Capture technologies will also continue to become more commonplace.  As more organizations recognize the benefits of laser scanning data and how it can be utilized to create accurate as-builts of virtually anything, those who embrace it will find themselves at a competitive advantage over those who are still relying on antiquated data capture methods.  Add the fact that the Reality Capture technology (hardware and software) technologies evolves quickly, this will be another facet of the AEC industry that will continue to be a significant factor in success.”

Jon Fingland, Trimble Buildings

From: Jon Fingland, General Manager, Collaboration Solutions, Trimble Buildings.

“I’d like to share the following 2019 Prediction from Trimble:

“The future of construction is the Constructible Process. Past efforts to utilize Building Information Modeling (BIM) is evolving beyond detailed visualization. Digital transformation is coming in the form of connected workflows, content-enabled projects and rich constructible models capable of field execution. The constructible process is accelerating the modeling process, improving visibility and ensuring predictability across the entire project. Democratized access to data, plans and models is enhancing collaboration between various project teams, from the field to the office. As a result, productivity and coordination between the owner, architect, engineer, general contractor and specialty trades increase dramatically throughout the entire project lifecycle.”

Jon Fingland is General Manager, Collaboration Solutions, Trimble Buildings. He began his career as a Project Manager for a Top 100 general contractor where he specialized on healthcare projects and programs. He later joined California-based Meridian Systems working in various management capacities with the company’s Prolog and Proliance construction program and capital management software. After Meridian was acquired by Trimble, Mr. Fingland led the subsequent acquisitions of WinEst, Vico Software, and Dimension5 for Mobile Field Management, and has since played a major role in the planning and creation of Trimble Buildings Group. Mr. Fingland holds degrees in Structural Engineering and Construction and a Master’s degree in Business Management.

Peter Marchese, Microdesk

From: Peter Marchese, Senior Technical Evangelist at Microdesk

“Looking forward at the coming year I can see a lot of technologies becoming more prevalent and better utilized as their workflows are better understood, and more users take advantage of their features.

From a basic standpoint BIM and VDC will continue to be utilized more and more, with a greater focus on the data that is inherent to our projects and work. Consider that the ‘I’ in BIM has been the most important part, the information, but its only recently that we are seeing more and more companies look at that information and data beyond basic project benefits.

Similar to how the film Moneyball showed how baseball could change things up by using statistical analysis, we are starting to really see data become a useful and powerful aspect of both the design and construction part of our industry and this will only grow from here.

Part of what will make this data analysis possible is the ongoing adoption of cloud-based technologies. Over the last year we have seen a lot of growth in cloud tools and services being utilized by AECO forms. From its usage for project coordination, to its benefits helping project teams work from anywhere on the design its growing by leaps and bounds. This is also shown in the large acquisitions by the companies developing and investing in these tools. Coupled with the need to stay connected, the faster pace of today’s projects and the need to have access to our information and documents when we need them, this growth will only increase.

As part of the cloud becoming an integral part of our work, I expect to see secondary components start to grow in the next year. 5G service is expected to start rolling out this year. This should lead to more connected devices on our projects, like better safety gear. Vests, hard hats and boots that can be used to monitor performance, location and health. We also will start to see more connectivity in site management for devices, hardware and deliveries.

The last trend I see growing in 2019 is Automation. There has been a big push in recent years both in manufacturing as well as design for generative tools that help our designers work though more options and alternatives than possible manually to find the best solutions. These tools will continue to be developed and become more user friendly to grant these benefits to more of our industry. We are also seeing automation in the form of offsite or modularization of construction take place more often. It’s a process that can lead to faster project deliveries, with a more controlled, consistent and comfortable work environment for those engaged in construction. It’s a process that has been utilized more and more where timeframes have compressed and with innovative thinking it’s no longer just used for residential or dormitory type buildings.

I expect 2019 will bring us some new technologies and growth in others we already have, but I expect these will bring the biggest growth and impact this year and am looking forward to seeing it happen.”

Peter is a Senior Technical Evangelist at Microdesk, who specializes in assisting design organizations with integrating Building Information Modeling (BIM) into design processes and exploring innovative uses of non-traditional technologies. He works with national architecture firms to provide on-site assistance and strategic consultation, as well as custom training, content creation, and creating standards and workflows. He has expert knowledge of BIM tools such as Revit Architecture, BIM 360 Field and Glue, AutoCAD Architecture, Ecotect, Green Building Studio, Google SketchUp and e-SPECS. 

Tags: 3D, 3D cities, AEC, architects, architecture, Autodesk, Autodesk Revit, Bentley Systems, BIM, building, building design, building information modeling, CAD, climate change, Cloud, collaboration, construction, design, engineering, engineers, generative design, infrastructure, laser scanning, mobile, point clouds, reality capture, Trimble, visualization

Categories: 2D, 3D, AEC, AECCafe, apps, architecture, Architecture 2030, Autodesk, Bentley Systems, BIM, building information modeling, buildingSMART, construction, construction project management, convergence, data archiving, engineering, field, field solutions, file sharing, infrastructure, Internet of Things, IoT, lidar, mobile, mobile printing, plant design, point clouds, project management, simulation, site planning, sustainable design, Tekla, traffic simulation, Trimble, video, virtual reality, visualization, Year in Infrastructure 2018, YII 2018

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