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Very few in the AEC (Architectural, Engineering and Construction) will admit that the industry has to leapfrog into the future leaving behind the vestiges of the industrial economy model. There is no denying it, the AEC industry needs to disrupt it self (or others will disrupt it) to be relevant in the future, a future that is being shaped by technological advances that is going to change every traditional industry on this planet. Technological advance such as Artificial Intelligence, machine Learning; digital manufacturing; Robotics together with others that are being developed will disrupt every traditional industry including the AEC industry.

The technological advances in the AEC industry such as BIM and other such technologies, are advances in a predictable linear fashion while in the digital innovative globalized world technology is advancing exponentially and converging. The linear technological advances in the AEC industry is not leading to a change in the process of Design & construction of built environments. 

AEC industry model cannot survive in the present, it will have to disrupt or another industry will disrupt it and make it irrelevant. Vivek Wadhwa: in his WSJ article on: How the Nature of Competition Has Changed explains: Because you can no longer see the competition coming. Technologies are no longer progressing in a predictable linear fashion, but are advancing exponentially — and converging. Fields such as computing, medicine, artificial intelligence, 3D printing, robotics, nanomaterials and synthetic biology are simultaneously making advances, and combining these allows one industry to rapidly disrupt another — before market leaders even know what hit them.

A study carried out by A Weippert & S. L. Kajewski at the Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia titled: AEC Industry Culture: a need for change highlights some of the issues in the industry.

"Four decades of international Architectural, Engineering, and Contractor (AEC) industry publications reinforce poor communication and information transmission; coordination; and teamwork issues, are the cause of countless performance problems on numerous AEC projects.”

The AEC industry with its three separate players - Architecture, Engineering and Construction has many issues:

  • Drawings from designers are incomplete and are only a set of instructions
  • Implementation of standards - particularly problematic
  • Each building process individually covers an extensive area
  • Difficult to streamline the standards between components
  • Each of the disciplines in the industry uses different terminology
  • Risk is transferred downstream resulting in cost overruns on project
  • Higher capital cost, too labour intensive and protracted timelines
  • Inefficient due to lack of standardization and constructability
  • Lack of predictability of project execution and project risk
  • Spotty safety & quality with large environmental/socioeconomic impact

The industry has to recognize that the culture in the A/E/C industry has for a long time been fragmented and inefficient which has lacked trust and has been short on strategic collaborative thinking. Its culture must become a remnant of the past.

The future of the AEC industry is difficult to predict but it is distributed as there are some indications that others in the industry are doing their bit to disrupt this AEC industry. I will like to share some of these with you:

Architects & Engineers as Inventors and Industrial Designer:

Architects & Engineers in the future will have to work together to extend their present arm length involvement to work as members of one firm and expand into the role of Product Designers with a bent for Manufacturing.  

This will enable them:

Construction Process and Delivery will change:

Technologies such as computing, artificial intelligence, Robogami, Drones, 3D printing, Robotics, and Nanomaterials will force a change in the way construction process and delivery in the future. This will require making changes that require new workflows, new training, and evangelism and commitment to from builders and owners the long-term benefits of transforming how they deliver projects.  Some changes we are seeing is as follows:

  • Create efficiencies in design and detailing by passing on 3D models directly to fabricators, more or less eliminating the need for 2D detailing leading to a convergence of detailing & design. (The Next Evolution in Building: The Convergence of Structural Detailing and Design As the drawings become more complete and detailed, contractors and fabricators become more interchangeable, and their business models will be affected.)
  • Combining Robotic fabrication with 3D printing offers "amazing" opportunities for architecture and could help solve the global refugee crisis, according to Coop Himmelb(l)au founder Wolf D Prix (+ interview + movie).
  •  4 Ways a Robot or Drone 3D Printer Will Change Architecture and Construction Unified, 3D-printed structure and skin would also allow buildings to grow in more organic ways, like trees. “I can imagine the mobility of a device [allowing you to build] off the side of another building,” Shier says. “You don’t need to build scaffolding. You just send a drone up, and it starts growing some form off the side of another building.”
  •  This Giant 3-D Printer Prints Entire Houses The Big Delta is a giant 3-D printer big enough to print buildings. It is, says WASP, the Italian company behind it, the biggest 3-D printer in the world, and it is designed to build homes in developing countries.

Modularity and Build as Lego will be the norm:

It implies a product design approach whereby the product is assembled from a set of standardized constituent units. Different assembly combinations from a given set of standardized units give rise to different end-product models and variations. Thus, modular design effectively marries flexibility (of the end product) with standardization

·         Flexible, fast and functional: Nestlé to adopt modular factories - Nestlé seem to understand the challenge of changing business environment and are making attempts to meet it thorough modular factories, a new type of factory that can be built in half the time of a more traditional one for about 50%-60% of the cost. A modular factory will be made of multiple, easy-to assemble component sections designed to offer a highly flexible, simple and cost-effective solution for creating production sites in the developing world.

  •  New York to Complete First Prefabricated "Micro-Apartments - The modular units will be fabricated at the Brooklyn Navy Yard for stacking in Kips Bay this spring, and are projected to welcome their first inhabitants by the end of 2015. Current New York city zoning and density rules set a minimum apartment floor area of 400 square feet, yet this regulation was waived for My Micro NY in the interests of creating more affordable housing.
  •  Tammo Prinz's conceptual skyscraper would be built from tessellating modules - German studio Tammo Prinz Architects has developed a concept for a residential skyscraper built from a stack of modular cubes and dodecahedrons - using a combination of three-dimensional shapes that tesselate with one another.

Very few business leaders nor education instructions and associations related to the AEC Industry have seen the writing on the wall but for the majority life goes on as they are caught up in the cycle of boom and bust, feast or famine not realizing this digital globalized economy will disrupt the all traditional industry.

This is especially true for AEC industry that have not learned to adjust itself to the digital, globalised economy where society and technology are progressing at a faster rate than institutions and organisations. It is obvious the AEC industry must disrupt as in this disruptive, digital global economy, the AEC industry will find its environment of operation will have to change quickly to survive.

 What’s your take on this? I would like to hear from you.