Between the Poles

Autodesk signals commitment to BIM + geospatial integration for improving construction productivity

We are beginning to see data from real world projects that offer tangible evidence of the benefits of an integrated BIM+geospatial full lifecycle approach for construction projects.  A few firms such as Parsons Brinckerhoff, Atkins Global, and several Dutch firms including Arcadis and Royal BAM, in the construction sector realized a number of years ago that BIM+geospatial integration provide greater value to projects that involve not just design and construction but also operations and maintenance.  Recently Autodesk, arguably the market leader in BIM design software, has been signaling its commitment to geospatial + BIM integration, joining other firms in the construction software industry in improving construction workflows involving BIM and geospatial data and applications.

The BIM and geospatial interoperability challenge is the latest symptom of the broader problem of integrating AEC and geospatial workflows, that has contributed to low productivity in the construction sector.  Fashioning AEC and geospatial data into an efficient data flow from planning through design and construction to operations and maintenance has been an ongoing challenge for owners for decades.  The Between The Poles blog is over ten years old and one of the persistent themes from the very beginning in 2006 was the challenge of integrating CAD and GIS data and applications into efficient workflows (some examples; 2006, 2007, 2008 ).

A few firms such as Parsons Brinckerhoff, Atkins Global, and several Dutch firms including Arcadis and Royal BAM, in the construction sector realized a number of years ago that BIM+geospatial integration provide greater value to projects that involve not just design and construction but also operations and maintenance. It has been shown that BIM+geospatial integration provide greater value to projects that involve not just design and construction but also operations and maintenance. A leader in this procurement space, Rijkswaterstaat, the Dutch transportation authority, began offering design-build-finance-maintain (DBFM) projects a number of years ago which has motivated private Dutch engineering and construction companies to adopt an integrated geospatial+BIM approach to construction. For example, the firm Royal BAM Group nv/BAM Infraconsult adopted integrated BIM + geospatial because of market developments including more complex construction assignments and an increasing demand from customers for service provision throughout the entire life cycle of a project.   AECOM, which is a US$18.2 billion a year firm in the construction sector and has been ranked for eight years running it has been ranked #1 in Engineering News Record‘s “Top 500 Design Firms”, uses BIM + GIS on design, build, finance and operate (DBFO) projects including the external campus of Denver International Airport, and to lease management at Orlando, Hong Kong, and South West Florida international airports.

Major firms in the construction software industry such as Hexagon, Trimble, and Bentley have integrated geospatial + BIM to varying degrees in their approach to construction for years.  For example, Bentley decided fifteen years ago to support real-world coordinate systems in all of their products including Microstation. Bentley calls this capability geo-coordination and it provides a location-aware foundation which facilitates workflows that require integrated engineering and geospatial data and applications. According to Bentley geo-coordination adds value for asset performance with a very high return on that investment.  Integrating CAD and GIS into an efficient workflow for records management (aka network documentation) has been a challenge for utility and telecom operators for decades. While utility and telecom operators have found ways to address this problem, it is rare to find the benefits for these systems quantified. At Year in Infrastructure 2019 iForte Solusi Infotek presented concrete benefits of a records management system integrating CAD and geospatial worklows that has been in operation for several years for managing their fiber optic networks in Jakarta and on the rest of Java. For these activities iForte estimated that it has realized a return on investment of 203% over three years. The primary benefits of the new system were realized in planning, network maintenance and sales, and there were a number of intangible other benefits.

Over a year ago Jack Dangermond and Andrew Anagnost announced a partnership to build a bridge between Autodesk and ESRI technologies.  I have reviewed the technical progress that the two companies have made in furthering interoperability between the AEC and geospatial worlds which suggests that the new relationship between Autodesk and ESRI appears to be being translated into concrete actions. There is a considerable distance to go yet, but there are grounds for optimism that there is a commitment to BIM and geospatial interoperability so that in the future workflows that involve both AEC and geospatial data and software will be able to surmount the CAD+GIS barriers that have represented major inefficiencies for the construction, utility and other sectors for decades. 

Further evidence of a serious commitment to furthering efficient integrated BIM and geospatial workflows is provided in a recent article in Geospatial World by Nicolas Mangon, Vice President of AEC, Business Strategy & Marketing at Autodesk, has acknowledged that "there is a growing recognition in the collective AEC industry that geography provides a common language for collaborating on projects." Furthermore, "bringing GIS technologies and BIM processes together provides a broader and deeper understanding of infrastructure in the larger context of the built and natural environment by integrating information and content."  Expanding on the recently announced Autodesk and ESRI partnership, Mangon says that "Autodesk is bringing that knowledge from manufacturing to AEC and our ESRI partnership allows us to improve the way we create spatially accurate digtial representations of the physical. Our current plan is to expand the integration further into our detailed design applications like Civil3D but also connect GIS data into out cloud BIM platform."   This is an important statement from the market leader in BIM software and suggests that the days when architects, engineers, and construction contractors work with an isolated 0,0 coordinate system are numbered.

This is another signal from a major player in the BIM design space of a serious commitment to overcoming the BIM/geospatial integration challenge and ending the decades long clash of tectonic plates between the AEC and geospatial worlds that has contributed to low productivity in construction, utilities, telecommunications and other industries.  It will also an important first step toward the development of maintainable near real-time digital twins of urban infrastructure.

ESRI and Autodesk partnership for BIM and geospatial interoperability: one year later

The BIM and geospatial interoperability challenge is the latest symptom of the broader problem of integrating AEC and geospatial workflows, that has contributed to low productivity in the construction sector. After the announcement about a year ago by Jack Dangermond and Andrew Anagnost of a new relationship to build a bridge between Autodesk and ESRI technologies, I thought it a good time to review progress toward interoperability between the AEC and geospatial worlds.

ESRI and Autodesk partnership

In the mid-1990s Autodesk and ESRI, market leaders in their respective areas of CAD and GIS, attempted to collaborate to address the CAD and GIS interoperability problem. The result of the agreement between Jack Dangermond and Carol Bartz at the time resulted in an unsuccessful product called ArcCAD, which satisfied neither CAD nor GIS users.

A year ago Autodesk and ESRI, again agreed to collaborate. Expected benefits cited by Autodesk and ESRI from BIM and GIS interoperability include "unprecedented reductions in permitting through improved stakeholder engagement, more sustainable and resilient design through enhanced project insight, reduced risk via improved end-to-end flow of materials, resource availability and scheduling during construction," and "providing industry and city planners the ability to design in the context of the real world enabling communities to build connected, resilient, sustainable cities and infrastructure." This time around they are probably more aware of the technical and cultural issues hindering AEC and geospatial interoperability.

Integrating BIM and CAD with GIS

Revit is Autodesk's market-leading BIM application that is utilized by designers for vertical BIM (buildings), although there are landscape architects that have managed to use it as well. Revit models include spatial data and related non-spatial information.  With the release of ArcGIS Pro 2.2 in June 2018 direct reading of Revit BIM (.RVT) files is now supported. In the past Revit models had to be imported through conversion to IFC (Industry Foundation Classes) files and then go through a second conversion to a geodatabase.  ArcGIS Pro 2.2 makes it possible to open a Revit BIM model directly. Tools are provided for correctly georeferencing BIM models in ArcGIS. Revit data added to ArcGIS behaves like any other 3D GIS data and can be queried, measured and analyzed.

ESRI has provided for some time a product for AutoCAD users who want to work with ArcGIS data in a familiar context. It allows CAD users to edit GIS data, navigate drawings using location, imtegrate with GIS, and turn CAD data into GIS data. Shortly after the partnership announcement, an incremental release of ArcGIS for AutoCAD 370 was announced with support for the latest versions of AutoCAD. ESRI product management also promised that the future of ArcGIS for AutoCAD would continue with improved integration with ArcGIS Online/Portal. ArcGIS Pro 2.2 provides updated support for reading and exporting AutoCAD version 2018 and 2019 format files. Furthermore ESRI product management said that other CAD/BIM/AEC applications were being considered for future development using a similar integration pattern as ArcGIS for AutoCAD.

Integrating GIS with civil workflows

InfraWorks is Autodesk's application that allows civil engineers to perform conceptual design for roads and highways in context. InfraWorks 19.2, released in September 2018, now supports the Autodesk Connector for ArcGIS. Designers and engineers can bring GIS content from ArcGIS Online into InfraWorks allowing content such as roads, pipelines, and electrical transformers to be directly imported. The link is dynamic making it possible to build an InfraWorks model directly from GIS data published into ArcGIS Online. When the GIS data is updated, the InfraWorks model can be updated and refreshed. With the release of Autodesk Civil 3D 2019 InfraWorks models can be brought into Civil 3D, Autodesk's civil design product. Together these enhancements enable workflows from ArcGIS through InfraWorks to Civil 3D.

Integrating civil and geospatial workflows with BIM

A major challenge is interoperability between Autodesk's own products. A first step for integrating geospatial workflows into Revit is for site preparation. Autodesk offers a Site Designer for Revit plug-in that is intended to enable architects, designers, and planners to shape the terrain for building sites using grading tools to model pads, parking lots, streets, sidewalks, and retaining walls. But the integration between Autodesk's BIM and civil engineering products still inhibits site preparation workflows. Civil 3D was developed on the AutoCAD platform. Revit, which was acquired from Charles River Software in 2002, was built on different data structures. As a recent post from a landscape architecture site pointed out there remains a "gaping hole ... between Civil 3D and Revit".

Improving interoperability between the two products has now become a priority for Autodesk product management. According to the latest Autodesk roadmap associated with the Revit 2019 release, Autodesk is investing in improving how civil engineers and architects can collaborate better on the site design process. The very good news is that according to the Revit product management roadmap, collaboration with Civil 3D and Revit is now an "Accepted Revit Idea", which confirms that Revit/Civil 3D interoperability has become a development priority. Furthermore new features in Civil 3D 2019 includes enhanced structural and civil design collaboration for Civil 3D with Revit..

In conclusion the new relationship between Autodesk and ESRI is being translated into concrete actions to improve the interoperability between the AEC and geospatial worlds.  There is a considerable distance to go yet, but there are grounds for optimism that there is a commitment to BIM and geospatial interoperability so that in the future workflows that involve both AEC and geospatial data and software will be able to surmount the CAD+GIS barriers that have represented major inefficiencies for the construction, utility and other sectors for decades.

Storm warning for the construction industry

At this year's BIMForum conference in Las Vegas Dr. Barbara Jackson of the University of Denver offered what I would categorize as a hurricane warning to the construction industry; change is coming like a very fast train and either the industry has to change itself or someone from outside will do it as Uber and Airbnb have done to the taxi and accomodation businesses and as Amazon is doing to the grocery business. Because in construction resistance to change is much greater than the motivation to innovate and change, under 30 year olds are saying that the construction companies they want to work for don't exist, so they leave.  One of the ways she hopes to help the industry to transform from within is by effecting a culture change by encouraging the under 30s folks not to leave but to stay and transform the industry.

Barb Jackson spent 25 years running her own construction company where she experienced the problems that were facing the industry as a whole. Seriously concerned for the future of the industry, she decided to go into academia to try to do something about them. In her view the key factors that make construction ripe for disruption are

• high segmentation and fragmentation
• low productivity gains - labour-productivity growth in construction has averaged only 1 percent a year over the past two decades, compared with growth of 2.8 percent for the total world economy.
• low adoption of digital technologies - McKinsey Global Institute places construction second to last just ahead of hunting and agriculture
• high level of waste - estimates of 30 % waste and rework are typical
• lack of leadership - construction is good at management (the mantra is plan to work, work to plan) but lacking in leadership
• a culture that discourages change and innovation.

Some have argued that the $10 trillion/year construction industry is not like other businesses, but Barbara's frank response to this is "this is bull, it is."  It is difficult to place all the blame on owners, who the designers and contractors say discourage them from doing anything innovative that raises the risk or the industry folks who the owners say resist any change.  She offered that perhaps the real culprit is lowest bid procurement which resulted such low margins that the only way to make money on projects was through change orders.

The construction business model is outdated and the collaborative economy as exemplified by Airbnb, Uber, Facebook, and Alibaba and what happened to the accomodation, taxi, media, and retail industries is a real threat for construction and an opportunity for an outside entrepreneur.  Companies like Artiman who look for industries that are ripe for disruption view the construction industry as low tech, archaic, wasteful, characterized by low productivity, with an out-dated business model, in a word ripe for disruption.

She cited the example of what is happening to the grocery business as another example of someone from outside effecting change to an industry that has been resistant to change. When Amazon acquired Whole Foods, the stock of Kroger, Super-value, and others lost 14% of its value overnight. Even Costco and Wal-Mart dropped 6%. Massive change had come to the grocery industry, and it was coming from outside-in. It was happening to the industry, not by the industry and investors were placing their bets on the outsiders.

There are already some examples of new business models impinging on the construction industry. The most notable example is Elon Musk's Boring Company that estimates that it can reduce the cost of tunneling by a factor of 10X and the time it takes to bore a tunnel by a factor of 14X. It is already working on a hyper-loop project from New York to Washington DC that would enable travel between the cities in 29 minutes.

Because of her real world experience, Barb's perspective is not a voice from academia crying in the wilderness, but is a serious warning from an industry insider.  Echoes of what Barb is warning about could be found in the opening address at the conference from Eddie Stewart, President of the Associated General Contractors of America (AGC).  The AGC represents 26,000 firms in the construction industry including general contractors, specialty-contracting firms, and service providers, but predominantly small contractors.  He also noted that the construction industry lags most industries in adopting digital technology.  He added that the industry as a whole is facing a labour shortage and the duration of projects is getting shorter.  He also warned that disruption is coming or maybe is already here.

At a BIM conference in Toronto several years ago, Patrick MacLeamy's, Chairman of buildingSMART and CEO of HOK, message was very simple.  In the U.S. buildings are too expensive, too inefficient to operate and maintain, and don't last long. The problem is that the construction industry is too fragmented.  The process of orchestrating many disciplines in an adversarial, litigation-prone environment is too complex and leads to frequent budget and schedule overruns, evidence of a seriously broken business model.

Young people in the industry are asking why things are still done in the traditional way, which they find stupid.  The resistance to change is so-inbuilt that under 30 year olds are saying that the construction companies they want to work for don't exist, so they leave the industry. One of the ways she hopes to help the industry to change from within is by effecting a culture change by encouraging the under 30s folks to remain and change the industry.  Barb is working on putting together education programs to keep young people in the industry hoping that the next generation will help construction disrupt itself before it is disrupted by somebody from outside.

Progress in the UK toward a digital twin of the underground

Productivity Growth – Output per worker (1997=100) Source: ONS

Construction productivity is a challenge in the world's advanced economies. Globally, labour productivity growth in construction has averaged only one percent a year over the past two decades, compared with growth of 2.8 percent for the total world economy. In the Unites States labour productivity in construction has actually declined.  A recent report from the UK Government Infrastructure and Projects Authority, "Transforming Infrastructure Performance", provides evidence for stagnant productivity in the UK construction industry and outlines the government's plan to address this problem including development of a digital twin.

A recent McKinsey study revealed that construction is one of the least digitized industries in the world. McKinsey Global Institute’s Industry Digitization Index combines 27 indicators to measure the digital assets, digital usage, and digital workers in each sector. Construction is among the least digitized sectors in the world, at a level comparable to agriculture and hunting. According to the McKinsey index construction comes second to last in the United States and last in Europe.  Wipro, Booz Allen Hamilton, Aconex,  Jacobs, McKinsey, Hexagon, Trimble, Bentley, Autodesk, and many others believe that the construction industry is poised for a digitization revolution and are investing heavily in technology to enable this to happen including geospatial, BIM and full lifecycle BIM, machine learning, drones, mixed reality, big data, analytics, automation and hyperautomation.  There are an increasing number of technology startups in the construction industry.  There are also promising signs of interest in underground detection and information sharing.

The Transforming Infrastructure Performance report reiterates the widely held view that the UK construction supply chain "as a whole is under‑achieving. It has low profitability and invests too little in capital, research and development and training.” Transforming Infrastructure Performance (TIP) is the UK government’s plan to increase the effectiveness of investment in infrastructure including transport and energy networks, and social infrastructure (schools and hospitals) by improving productivity in the way assets are designed, built and operated.

The Digital Built Britain program is a key part of the government’s plan to develop the UK's digital data capabilities which included developing a ‘digital twin’. In the UK it is estimated that new assets add less than 0.5% each year to the value of existing infrastructure, which highlights the importance of improving the performance of existing assets. It is expected that a national digital twin of the real world estate will help inform government decisions to maximize full lifecycle performance and benefits of assets.

A digital twin includes above and below ground assets. Key dimensions of a digital twin are location and condition of each asset. The UK has two research projects focused on the underground part of a national digital twin. Mapping the Underworld aimed at developing technology to locate in 3D all buried utility assets without excavation.  One of the key outcomes of this project was estimated direct, indirect and social costs of utility strikes during excavation by researchers at the University of Birmingham.  The second phase Assessing the Underworld focused on geophysical tools to assess the condition of buried pipelines and cables, and of the ground in which they are buried, and of the surface transport infrastructures beneath which they are buried.

Combining above and below-ground information into one national single data model/data exchange framework will provide a foundation for the development of smart cities. Project Iceberg is an exploratory project undertaken by the British Geological Survey, Ordnance Survey and the Future Cities Catapult to investigate ways to integrate data and services relating to the underground with other city data. To date two reports Market Research into the Current State of Play and Global Case Studies and Defining the problem space for an integrated data operating system above and below ground have been published.The medium term objective is to take these concepts forward with project partners to develop new digital data demonstrator projects.

A game changer for interior distance measurement introduced at HxGNLive

At HxGNLIve in Las Vegas Juergen Dold announced another very impressively designed device in the BLK line called the BLK3D. It is designed to be a game changer in the interior measurement space traditionally addressed by Leica's DISTO line because of its ease of use, size and paper-eliminating functionality.

The BLK3D follows in the footsteps of the BLK360, which is a game changer in the terrestrial laser scanner space because of its ease of use (one button), size (weighs 1kg / size 165 mm tall x 100 mm diameter), its capability (full 360 scan in less than 3 mins), and range (mm accuracy at 60 m). It it is intended the democratize laser scanning to other professionals beyond surveyors.

The BLK3D is small, somewhat larger than my Samsung Note 5.  It has two photo cameras and two laser range finders. I had a chance to chat with Johannes Hotz, Business Development at Leica Geosystems who explained that it is intended to replace the laborious paper-based measuring processes used in interior spaces. Leica Geosystems worked with architects, designers and contractors who work in interior spaces, and identified paper-based processes that could be replaced by a digital process.

The two cameras on the BLK3D allows you to capture a 3D record on-site that can be taken back to the office and shared as a JPG file. The device does not require anything to be uploaded to the cloud for post processing, it does all the processing itself. Once a 3D image has been created, you can tap on the screen on two locations, and it will measure and display the distance between the two points. if has edge and corner detection so that if you tap near a corner or an edge, it will snap to the exact corner or edge to ensure you get a precise answer (mm precision at up to two or three meters.)  It replaces the process of making a measurement  with a tape measure or laser range finder, writing the measured distance down on a piece of paper and then repeating the process over and over again for every measurement you need,

The BLK3D allows contractors to easily record images of their work at the time they do it so that afterwards if there are legal issues that have a permanent record of their work including what was there before they installed a cable or pipe and what the installation looked like after they completed their work.

This device is well designed as the BLK360 is and really lowers the bar on ease of use much as the BLK360 did for laser scanning.  I have used other Leica DISTO devices which are clearly professional devices.  I actually held and used the BLK3D for a few minutes and the basic functionality does appear to be usable by anyone - take a picture and then measure a distance by tapping on two points on the screen is a no-brainer. There is more advanced functionality which I didn't attempt to use. For example, you can create floor plans and import existing ones. You can also add measurable images. I expect that if I could sit down with the device for an hour, I would be able to use most of its capability.

National digital twin is key to the UK government's transformation of the construction industry

The conjunction of the release of three UK government reports, Industrial Strategy Building A Britiain Fir for the Future, Transforming Infrastructure Performance, and Data for the Public Good, has set the stage for a transformation in how infrastructure is built, managed and operated in the UK. National digital twin is now a key concept for the UK government and BIM and geospatial are foundational for this digital replica of the national physical infrastructure.

Mark Enzer, chief technology officer at Mott MacDonald UK and proposed chair of the Digital Framework Task Group (DFTG) which is tasked to drive these reports’ implementation forward in his keynote at Geo Business 2018 in London, explained that there will be a greater focus on existing infrastructure.  Digital abundance where the cost of everything digital has dropped dramatically over the last couple of decades has transformed many industries from banks to airlines automobile manufacturing. Construction represents about 10 % of GDP and construction productivity has plateaued over the past 40 years whereas general industrial productivity has doubled. Mark pointed out that the UK has primarily mature infrastructure to maintain and operate and construction has to change to reflect this.

Based on the concept that data in the form of a national digital twin is just as important as physical assets, digital delivery and physical delivery go hand in hand. Key to digital delivery are BIM, geospatial, a common data environment, and asset information management.  A national digital twin would include above and below ground assets.

Managing this data is about making sense of it for better decision making. Fundamental to this process is rethinking value, not just the value of a finished building or infrastructure asset, but output per ‎£ over the entire lifecycle of an infrastructure asset. This means moving beyond BIM Level 2 to full lifecycle BIM including operate and maintain.

A coordinated digital transformation landscape is required to achieve this digital transformation strategy for economic transformation. He sees the many organization in the UK infrastructure and construction sector coalescing around ICG, representing Highways England, Network Rail, Crossrail, Highspeed Rail 2 (HS2), Heathrow Airport and others and Centre for Digital Built Britain (CDBB) representing the UK BIM Alliance and others to enable this to happen.  The Centre for Digital Built Britain is a partnership between the Department of Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy and the University of Cambridge to deliver a smart digital economy for infrastructure and construction for the future and transform the UK construction industry’s approach to the way the UK plans, builds, maintains and uses its social and economic infrastructure.

Studies find geospatial proliferating across the world economy

The latest estimate of the annual contribution of the geospatial industry to the world economy of US$400 billion represents a substantial increase over a previous estimate of US$150-270 billion released in 2013.  Both reports agree that the total contribution of geospatial data and technology annually to the world's economy is to be calculated in trillions of US dollars.  There is evidence that geospatial's contribution is increasing.

 AlphaBeta used consumer surveys from 22 countries, big data analysis of online job postings and other analytics to determine the impact of geospatial data, technology and services on the world economy. The study (The Economic Impact of Geospatial Services, AlphaBeta, September 2017) estimates that geospatial services generated annual revenue of US$400 billion per year in 2016 - this directly contributed to increasing the world's GDP. In addition geospatial data, technology and services save time and fuel for the travelling public - this contributes to increasing labour productivity. The study estimates that these efficiency benefits save the public over US$550 billion per year. Together the contribution in efficiency gains and direct revenue are estimated to reach almost a trillion US dollars. This is viewed as a conservative estimate of the contribution of geospatial to the world economy since the study was able to quantify only a few of the ways that geospatial data, technology and services benefit the economy.  The ways that AlphaBeta was able to quantify in which geospatial contributes to the world economy include productivity gains for the travelling public, direct revenue generated by the geospatial industry, and revenue gains and cost savings in other industries from using geospatial data and technology.

Productivity - digital map data and technology shorten traveling time by 12% (estimated to be worth US$ 264 billion). It also saves US$ 20 billion in fuel. Geospatial also enables consumers to make buying decisions faster, saving more than 21 billion hours (estimated to be worth US$283 billion).

Direct revenue - the geospatial industry generates US$400 billion in revenue per year.

Indirect revenue and savings - the study suggests that the increased revenue from geospatial-enabled services is several times higher that direct revenue to the geospatial industry. For example, the study estimates that digital maps drives US$1.2 trillion of sales worldwide. Furthermore the study estimates that geospatial technology improves revenues and costs by at least 5 percent in sectors contributing more than 70 percent to global GDP, for example, retail and mining. This has an estimated value of about US$2.7 trillion.

Other non-quantified benefits - other benefits that are difficult to put a price tag on include creating 4 million jobs, reducing automobile emissions by 1,686 million metric tons, reducing emergency response time by up to to 20% in some countries, and improving emergency preparedness.

To put this in context, according to a report prepared by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in June 2012 the geospatial services industry in the United States generated annual revenues of $75 billion. The BCG report estimated the economic impact of the geospatial services industry on government, business, and consumers to be $1.6 trillion in revenues (greater efficacy) and $1.4 trillion (about 8.7% of the U.S. GDP) in cost savings (greater efficiency).  In 2013 Google released a report What is the economic impact of Geo services ? prepared by Oxera Consulting Ltd. Global revenues from geospatial products and services as defined by Oxera was estimated to be $150-$270 billion per year. The $270 billion estimate was computed by scaling up the BCG estimate for the United States to the world economy.  The latest report considerably increases the estimated direct revenue to the geospatial industry, but is inline with the 2013 report in estimating that the total benefits of geospatial to the economy lies in the range of several trillions of US dollars.  The improvements in revenue and costs in all industries which use geospatial data and technology is estimated to amount to roughly 3% of the world's GDP.

For comparison the most quoted estimate of geospatial data an technology to a national economy is a 2008 a report prepared for the CRCSI & ANZLIC by ACIL Tasman estimated that the spatial information sector contributed between 0.6% and 1.2% of the Australian GDP in in 2006-2007.  The recent Google results suggest that the proliferation of geospatial data and services has increased the penetration of geospatial in the world's economy.

There is other evidence that geospatial is proliferating in the world's economy.  McKinsey has estimated that by 2020 the benefits (difference between willingness to pay and the cost of applications) that customers, consumers and businesses, will enjoy from location-based applications will reach as much as US$700 billion/year. Most of this, about 70 %, will be the consumer benefit from time and fuel saved by using GNSS navigation systems including those with real-time traffic information and mobile LBS applications. The remaining 30 % of the benefits will be through location-enabled applications such as geo-targeted mobile advertising.  Smart navigation applications are estimated to provide $500 billion in value to global consumers in time and fuel saved by 2020. Geo-targeted advertising could represent more than 5 percent of total global advertising spending by 2020.

A major industry where geospatial is already having a significant impact which may accelerate is construction.  Globally construction is expected to grow by almost 70% from $7.2 trillion today to $12 trillion by 2020.   Construction productivity has been stagnant in many advanced economies for decades.  It has been slow to adopt process and technological innovations and its R&D spending has lagged other industries. In a recent report, Imagining construction’s digital future, McKinsey suggests compelling reasons why the construction industry is ripe for disruption and how digitization might contribute to its transformation.  Two of the technologies that McKinsey identifies that will be key in the anticipated transformation are geospatial and BIM. 

Increasing proportion of U.S. jobs require digital skills

In a new report from the Brookings Institution Digitalization and the American workforce the changing requirements for digital skills for job types covering 90% of the U.S. workforce has found dramatic changes in the last 15 years.  As recently as 2002 under half of U.S. jobs required digital skills.  By 2016 70% of jobs required digital skills.  Almost a quarter of U.S. jobs now require high digital skills.

Virtually all industry groups saw increased digital skill requirements increase from 2002 to 2016.  The industries leading the digital charge were professional, scientific and technical services; media; and finance and insurance.  Trailing the pack are education, transportation and warehousing, basic goods manufacturing, and construction.  Looking at construction the report notes that in the period 2010-2016 construction output out rose by 2.7%, wages rose by 1.4%, and productivity decreased by -0.6%, highlighting the continuing challenge of productivity stagnation in the construction industry.  Among occupations construction labourers have the lowest digital skills, perhaps one of the reasons paper drawings still typify construction sites.

During this period the digital skill level of even the least digitalized occupations have risen.  Welders and heavy truck drivers saw their digtial skillls scores triple or more. By 2016 48 percent of low digital skills occupations employing 33 million workers had become medium-digital or even high-digital occupations.  Among the occupations transitioning from low digital scores to medium or high include tool and die makers and bus and truck mechanics.  Even at the very bottom end, the digital skills of construction laborers increased through not by enough to move them out of the low digital skills category.

 

BIM + geospatial essential for improving UK construction productivity

At GeoBusiness 2017 in London, Simon Rawlinson of Arcadis, argued passionately for improving the efficency of the construction industry, which is 8% of the UK's GDP.  Digitalization, in which BIM + geospatial play a key role, is essential to delivering on making construction attractive for private investment.  In the UK construction productivity has not improved in 25 years and right now the construction industry is so unproductive that it can't attract top labour talent, wouldn't attract an Uber or Google and is a drag on the rest of the economy.

Clients/owners have a big role in the transformation of construction.  One of the practices that is responsible for the low level of motivation for construction productivity improvement is procurement.  Lowest bid based on CAPEX does not encourage innovation.  But there are signs that this procurement policy is being replaced in some government procurements by lowest OPEX or TOTEX.  For example, the competition to provide rolling stock for the Crossrail line was based on lowest OPEX and resulted in an important innovation, smart, sensor-equipped trains.  One of the goals of the Construction Leadership Council (CLC), one of several Leadership Councils in the UK, is to lower construction costs by 33% and to deliver projects 50% faster - providing clear benefits to owners.

Another problem is that the construction industry doesn't collaborate very well.  Collaboration needs to be encouraged among folks who have traditionally competed or not collaborated.  There are signs that this is changing too.  Large projects like Crossrail have driven more collaboration, in an industry that historically discouraged collaboration and created employment for the legal profession.  To increase collaboration the construction industry needs to develop common ways of working with shared data by adopting common standards, which will work to increasing innovation by enabling competition based on a common platform.  Much as a BIM model is a digital twin of a building or linear infrastructure, a 3D map of underground and above ground infrastructure is a digital twin of a city or town.  To make this accessible to all requires shared standards for spatial data - BIM and geospatial.

The entire UK economy is moving towards becoming data-driven and construction is lagging behind.  Simon's recommendation is that the new government needs to keep to the existing program and deliver on the goals of Digital Built Britain and Construction 2025 including better management of data and information, digital fabrication instead of on-site development, procurement based on TOTEX, and using regulation, through ofgem and ofwat, for example, to drive digitalization of the construction industry. 

 

Simplifying the integration of reality capture and asset management

The construction industry in the UK, as in many of the world's advanced economies, suffers from low productivity compared to other industries, a situation which hasn't improved in 25 years according to Simon Rawlinson of the Construction Leadership Council.  Various types of laser scanners, software that creates point clouds from photos, and handheld scanners have the potential to dramatically improve productivity, but users of these devices in the construction and asset management industries are finding that these devices are creating a major data management problem which has to be addressed to enable the technology to achieve its full potential.  At Geo Business 2017 in London I had a chance to chat with Pascal Martinez, Director Business Development at Bentley Systems about Bentley's vision for converging reality capture, reality modeling, and asset management assist in improving productivity in the construction and maintenance of building and infrastructure assets.

Pascal was originally with Acute 3D which was acquired by Bentley two years ago. Acute 3D, now called ContextCapture, was originally targeted at creating point clouds from photos captured with an ordinary digital camera.  The latest version of ContextCapture is able to integrate point clouds from LiDAR and photo cameras to generate a common 3D mesh using imagery from both sources.  

Bentley's vision for the evolution of reality capture is to be able to integrate data from multiple sources, both 2D and 3D, to create a common 3D mesh, classify it by associating areas of the mesh with existing data from other sources stored in databases such as Bentley's Assetwise and Projectwise and then link objects in the mesh to information about the specific assets stored in the databases.

At the conference the model of what already exists or what has actually been constructed was frequently referred to as the digital twin of a building or other type of infrastructure (previously BIM).  Associating classified elements of 3D meshes from reality capture with vector elements in the digital twin has a number of applications.  In the case of a new building or new infrastructure it enables monitoring compliance with design during construction, even on a day by day basis, to catch issues early.

Being able to automatically associate areas of a 3D mesh with buildings, facilities and equipment in plants, and linear assets such as transmission lines, railways, and roads would have a dramatic impact not only on the efficiency of construction monitoring but also on asset management by reducing the time require to scan all or part of a facility and compare the captured reality with the digital as-builts. Pascal showed a very simple, but very cool, way to do this now, by placing a QR code on each piece of equipment which then can be clicked on in the mesh (scan) to bring up information stored in Assetwise about the piece of equipment.