Max Limper
I’m happy and excited to share my industry predictions for 2025, based on our work in various industry consortiums – but also based on what we continuously learn through our network of business partners that are automate their processes through RapidPipeline.
Naturally, AI as a recent megatrend will continue to shape how the industry works and develops. We have seen many of the early LLM based workflows hitting ceilings with regards to outcome as well as scalability – including the need for massive training data, and consuming vast amounts of computing power. However, at the same time, AI based workflows are becoming more refined and sophisticated with the help of new concepts and separation of concerns, for example with the help of multi-agent systems.
For AEC, the other overarching megatrend that will continue to have a strong impact on how things develop is the further development of digital twin technology. Being so much more than just 3D models for visualization, digital twins will continue to enable businesses to streamline their processes, save costs and achieve more, thanks to linked data across the entire lifecycle of human-made objects – from ideation and construction to maintenance and disassembly. To make this a reality, the main bottleneck will still remain the availability and quality, of 3D digital twin data. To produce high-quality digital twins, processes must be set up accordingly already at the ideation and construction stage. This involves the creation and maintenance of supporting systems like digital material databases, and setting up proper linkage between those systems that support 3D asset creation. At the same time, any existing 3D digital asset data – including 3D design mockups, but also all available CAD data – must be made accessible to relevant downstream applications. Solving these challenges won’t happen overnight, but we will see huge progress in this areas in 2025, and we’re actively working on this from our side with RapidPipeline to make it a reality as well.
These vital aspects, refined AI based workflows and digital twins, must be thought about together to enable the best possible ROI and competitive edge for businesses designing and marketing any kind of human-made products.
On the economic side of things, 2025 will continue to be a rather difficult year for many industries. Therefore, it will accelerate two trends that we currently observe within the digital workflows of many enterprises in AEC and beyond: Streamlining processes and enabling cost savings, on the one hand, will be more important than ever – in other words, achieving more, with less or similar resources. The pressure to innovate, on the other hand, is high as well – outperforming the competition by leveraging the benfits of latest technological megatrends, such as digital twins, is going to be a key differentiator. Both aspects together will lead to an environment where partial automation of established workflows and streamlining of processes with the help of digital tools will thrive, providing teams with the efficiency gains and increased speed in time-to-market that will be critical to succeed in a 2025 environment.
