‘Constructioneering’ is the new buzzword in construction. It is the future. But what exactly is Constructioneering? Why not learn from Topcon, an organization that’s leading the charge to make the term more commonplace alongside Bentley Systems with their Constructioneering Academies.
During our coverage of Bentley YII 2018, we met with Ewout Korpershoek, EVP at Topcon Positioning Group, and explore the nitty-gritty of Constructioneering and other developments in construction.
What is Constructioneering?
The construction industry is one of the least automated industries in the world. It is extremely segmented as the stakeholders often work in their individual silos. In contrast to this individualistic approach, Constructioneering provides a holistic alternative; an overarching approach to automating the entire workflow, including all the silos, instead of just focusing on one particular area (usually the one that customers are involved with).
In today’s way of working, when you move from one phase to another in construction – from conceptual planning to detailed planning, to design, scheduling, estimating and execution –there is a handover between stakeholders. This handover creates data loss, or what we call the ‘digital landfill’. A lot of beautiful data gets generated in one phase, but most of it does not get handed over to the next. These are the gaps that cause waste and inefficiency. This is what we are trying to address with the Constructioneering approach.
What role is the Constructioneering Academy playing in this scenario?
The Constructioneering Academy aims to educate our customers, and especially the various stakeholders, about the process and explain what is possible from a technology and efficiency standpoint today. The Academy also intends to make it clear to everybody involved that we can work differently. The traditional inputs and outputs for the various phases can change and actually should change if we want to be more productive. The Academy is aimed currently at professionals in the construction industry, which can be anybody from owners architects and program managers to contractors and sub-contractors.
Why the strategic partnership between Topcon and Bentley Systems?
The strategic partnership between Topcon and Bentley Systems was created to take away the burden from the customers when it comes to figuring out how to make the different pieces of software, hardware and tools used in various phases of construction work together. Our collaborative aim is to optimize this for them. The users will eventually end up with a much smoother and more efficient workflow, creating significantly less waste, loss of resources and loss of data, and, in the end, generating higher quality work.
The construction industry is moving from 3D modeling to 4D modeling. What is your opinion on this?
Today, we work in a 3D world. The ability to connect the job site with the traditional office in real time, 24 hours a day, allows us to be seamlessly connected. With 4D modeling, we are starting to virtually construct something before it’s actually physically constructed. This way, we can optimize whatever needs to be done out in the field, minimize waste and improve the result.
Does real-time data make construction more efficient?
Yes, it definitely does. It helps to make workflow decisions more efficient. In the traditional way of working, we initially measure and collect raw data at the field, bring it in, process it and gather insight from it. This process takes time, thus elongating the project. The data has to be adjusted, modified, interpreted. With real-time data processing solutions available to the field staff, data analysis becomes more efficient and timely, thereby creating a much smoother workflow.
Topcon uses the term ‘continuous representation of reality’. What does it mean?
That is our vision for surveying. The ability to capture the environment has traditionally been based on point and line measurement methods. With today’s technology, we are able to continuously capture information on our surroundings – essentially, to capture reality as we see it – and create workflows that work in a seamlessly connected real-time environment.
How long has Topcon been in construction?
Construction is in our DNA. Topcon is more than 80 years old and was founded on the principle of creating measurement devices that could be applied in the construction and survey industries. The construction market has been our core customer base.
The construction industry is bringing in AI and machine learning into its processes. What’s your take on this?
Our take on this is that it’s a logical and important step. What we do is automate all activities on a job site that relate to construction. We connect all the tools that are there on the job site and, by doing so, we amass vast amounts of data that can be used to learn from, to help predict future issues, and to monitor and register performance as a job is performed. So bringing in AI and machine learning is actually a logical result of collecting all that executional data.
What’s next in construction?
It’s the implementation of constructioneering. That is the way I see it. Constructioneering is not a product; it’s a road towards working more efficiently, towards automation. Bentley Systems and Topcon are optimizing existing solutions to create the best possible workflows. At the Constructioneering Academy, we take a lot of time learning from our customers, taking their input on board to understand how we can even better optimize workflows. From a technical perspective, we believe there are still a lot of opportunities to help make that happen, so that is where our focus currently is, and it’s where I expect it to be for the coming years.
