P R O J E C T R E P O R T
D I G I TAL TRANS FORMAT I ON I N THE CONS TRUC T I ON I NDUS TRY
DANIEL FEUTZ BECA
imported, low cost labour alongside increasing budgets. This increase in budgets has enabled the required investment (creating the ‘factory setting’) to deliver DfMA healthcare projects. For this approach to become successful in New Zealand there are two key hurdles to overcome • Standardised design: the need to reduce the desire for bespoke solutions • Scale of the market: A commitment
Our government has committed several billion dollars towards redeveloping existing and building new healthcare facilities. With so much capital development planned, high interest from communities, and constant change in the digital technologies space, it’s critical that leaders in healthcare, engineering and digital sectors work together to create long term value and improve healthcare outcomes. Below we’ll be discussing the need to stay agile and work together, issues facing the construction industry when it comes to technology and touching on the healthy city digital twin plus the benefits it could bring to healthcare in the coming decade.
Unfortunately, the construction sector ecosystem uses many sub-contractors (man in a van) and these are not technology enabled. Significant gains leveraging technology is expected to be small in the current eco-system framework for some time.
direction
International trends in efficiency tend to come from parallel activity. Take Singapore as an example, where Beca has delivered several major healthcare facilities, both public and private. The use of modular construction — factory-produced pre-engineered building units that are delivered to site and assembled, is common practice. Known as Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DfMA), modular building has allowed the Singapore government to force the pace of construction efficiency by reducing
to DfMA creating scale, thus a return on investment (ROI).
There is a school of thought that DfMA may offer the industry the opportunity to reduce reliance on a somewhat fractured construction sector eco-system with a ‘factory settings’ workforce approach. Also, creating real savings could free up funding to improve equity for underprivileged communities.
current status
The New Zealand construction industry has a poor record of technology uptake. The challenges and failures of the industry are well- publicised with the blame typically pointed at the imbalance of client- contractor contracts. However, a major contributor is the inefficiency of construction. The technology uptake challenge is routed in the scale and diversity of the industry participants. The construction sector is made up of approximately 10 percent of the workforce. Of that, 95 percent of the companies have just five staff or less, while 98 percent have 50 staff or less.
The physical and societal framework linkages
WANT TO KNOW MORE ? Daniel Feutz | daniel . feutz@beca . com
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