JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Sunday, July 20, 2025

UK expert: Digital construction can save money

by

PETER CHRISTOPHER
37 days ago
20250610

Mil­lions of dol­lars in pub­lic funds could be saved through the adop­tion of dig­i­tal con­struc­tion strate­gies.

Last week, UK na­tion­al Adam Matthews, head of strat­e­gy and en­gage­ment at Dig­i­tal Con­struc­tion In­ter­na­tion­al Pro­gramme (DCIP), Con­nect­ed Places Cat­a­pult vis­it­ed T&T to meet with key stake­hold­ers on the po­ten­tial use of dig­i­tal con­struc­tion in this coun­try. Con­nect­ed Places Cat­a­pult (CPC) is the UK’s in­no­va­tion ac­cel­er­a­tor for cities, trans­port, and place lead­er­ship. CPC is the host of the UK Gov­ern­ment’s DCIP.

Matthews ex­plained the fun­da­men­tals of dig­i­tal con­struc­tion to the Busi­ness Guardian dur­ing an in­ter­view last Thurs­day.

“Dig­i­tal con­struc­tion is the mo­ment of dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion for the con­struc­tion in­dus­try. Most oth­er in­dus­tries have gone through a dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, bring­ing dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy, in­for­ma­tion stan­dard­i­s­a­tion in­to their work­flows and in­to their out­put de­liv­ery. But con­struc­tion is some­what of a lag­gard in­dus­try. It’s yet to ful­ly em­brace the pow­er and ben­e­fits of dig­i­tal and so re­al­ly what dig­i­tal con­struc­tion is, is about bring­ing those things, tech­nol­o­gy, stan­dards, im­proved skills, in­to the con­struc­tion de­liv­ery process.”

The UK’s DCIP is cur­rent­ly lead­ing the push of the UK’s strate­gic and tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise for the in­tro­duc­tion of dig­i­tal con­struc­tion to na­tion­al and lo­cal in­fra­struc­ture or­gan­i­sa­tions, to pub­lic pol­i­cy units and project pro­gramme teams. Matthews ar­gued that dig­i­tal con­struc­tion has great po­ten­tial to en­hance the pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of con­struc­tion projects in T&T as well.

Matthews said the projects can be in­flu­enced right from the start al­low­ing for ad­just­ments or cor­rec­tions to be as­sessed and pre­dict­ed be­fore the mor­tar is cast.

“You can build that build­ing five times, 10 times be­fore you ac­tu­al­ly start any con­struc­tion,” he said, “ You’re able to de­sign with great ac­cu­ra­cy be­fore you do any­thing, then you’re able to re­duce the like­li­hood of those faults oc­cur­ring. So that’s, the first thing.

“The sec­ond thing is that there is this—you were speak­ing be­fore of con­struc­tion as a man­u­al, tra­di­tion­al sec­tor—but al­so with dig­i­tal you can be­come more pre­cise, more ac­cu­rate. And so you’re able to, for ex­am­ple, en­sure that the build­ing parts, the com­po­nents that you bring to the site ex­act­ly fit, be­cause it is such a pre­cise thing, it’s more like Lego, be­cause it’s so much more pre­cise and ac­cu­rate.”

Matthews not­ed that the process did not ex­clude ex­ist­ing in­fra­struc­ture or small ren­o­va­tions, as as­sess­ments can be made through laser scans which would gath­er the in­for­ma­tion need­ed to guide the con­struc­tion team.

“Whether they are small ex­ten­sions to schools, for ex­am­ple, through to the de­sign and con­struc­tion of those projects, even right through to the op­er­a­tion and main­te­nance of those fa­cil­i­ties. So it’s a whole life cy­cle ap­proach. It’s not just the plan­ning piece and how it does that is be­cause it cre­ates, at the heart of it, a dig­i­tal mod­el, a vir­tu­al twin, if you like, of the ac­tu­al build­ing or road or rail­way, what­ev­er the in­fra­struc­ture as­set is,” said Matthews.

He said dig­i­tal con­struc­tion cre­ates this mod­el, which is more than just a vi­su­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion as it ac­tu­al­ly in­cludes the in­for­ma­tion about the par­tic­u­lar as­set.

“So if we think, for ex­am­ple, about a build­ing, then the glaz­ing, the type of glaz­ing, the ori­en­ta­tion even to the sun, has an ef­fect on the en­er­gy that you need to cool or to heat that par­tic­u­lar build­ing so you can per­form all these sim­u­la­tions be­fore ever putting a spade in­to the ground.”

While he ac­knowl­edged that cost over­runs are of­ten a risk on most con­struc­tion schemes, Matthews said the use of dig­i­tal con­struc­tion can in­crease ef­fi­cien­cy and ul­ti­mate­ly re­duce costs as­so­ci­at­ed with build­ing.

“One of the great­est costs for con­struc­tion is with­in the ac­tu­al con­struc­tion phase. What hap­pens is they over­run and time with­in the con­struc­tion cy­cle is the high­est risk. That cre­ates the great­est prob­lem, and it is the great­est prob­lems for the pub­lic sec­tor around the world, ac­tu­al­ly, be­cause you’re tied in­to build­ing that phys­i­cal as­set, whether it’s a road or a hos­pi­tal, school,” Matthews said, “What dig­i­tal con­struc­tion does is two things. First of all, it op­ti­mis­es that con­struc­tion win­dow down. So the time it takes you to build is sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duced by 10 to 15 per cent. Al­so it im­pacts the ac­tu­al cost changes.”

He con­tin­ued, “The like­li­hood of cost changes is re­duced by 40 per cent. There’s ev­i­dence to this ef­fect. In ad­di­tion, the ben­e­fit, in terms of ef­fi­cien­cies, goes to the in­fra­struc­ture own­er. And this is why we think it’s im­por­tant for gov­ern­ments to play a role in this, be­cause they’re the largest client for most coun­tries, and they’re ac­tu­al­ly al­so, if you think, a proxy and a guardian of pub­lic tax­pay­er mon­ey. So they al­most get the ben­e­fit back by en­cour­ag­ing this ap­proach, be­cause those projects are then more on time, and they’re al­so com­ing clos­er to ex­pect­ed bud­gets. There is a re­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fit to the pub­lic sec­tor.”

While Matthews ac­knowl­edged that the Caribbean faced unique chal­lenges as a re­sult of cli­mate change, he was con­fi­dent the tech­nol­o­gy could be im­ple­ment­ed in the re­gion. He ex­plained that dig­i­tal con­struc­tion strate­gies had been suc­cess­ful­ly used to aug­ment build­ings that had been af­fect­ed by nat­ur­al dis­as­ters in Pe­ru, which height­ened his con­fi­dence that the tech­nol­o­gy would be ben­e­fi­cial in the Caribbean.

“In Pe­ru, in 2017 El Ni­no, of course, you’re aware of the im­pact of it was dev­as­tat­ing for the west­ern seaboard of Pe­ru, and so they were look­ing to re­build their in­fra­struc­ture that had been dev­as­tat­ed for com­mu­ni­ties, in­clud­ing schools, hos­pi­tals, flood de­fences. What they need­ed to do is to re­build those with a change. They call it a change and im­proved de­liv­ery for those schools. So it wasn’t just build­ing the same things back. It was build­ing them back bet­ter, more re­silient for the fu­ture,” Matthews said. “Now, specif­i­cal­ly, what you can do with this ap­proach is that you can mod­el those sorts of nat­ur­al events, floods, earth­quakes, all of these sorts of things. Be­cause you’ve got that, that dig­i­tal mod­el we spoke of, you can then sim­u­late the ef­fects of those dif­fer­ent nat­ur­al en­vi­ron­ments, in­clud­ing cli­mate change, which is sig­nif­i­cant.”

Matthews had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to dis­cuss the po­ten­tial of dig­i­tal con­struc­tion with var­i­ous stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing Min­is­ter of Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion Eli Za­k­our last Wednes­day at the British High Com­mis­sion­er’s res­i­dence. He said there was tremen­dous en­thu­si­asm from both the pri­vate sec­tor and the pub­lic sec­tor on the top­ic.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored

iiq_pixel