Analysing and exploiting digitalisation potential - an interview on the «Guide to Digital Transformation»

The «Guide to Digital Transformation», completed at the beginning of this year, is an analysis and partner-networking tool. On the one hand it gives construction companies the chance to take stock and to be shown in which areas within the firm digital potential can be better exploited. On the other hand, suitable partners, specialist experts and suppliers are proposed to the company, with whose help the digital gaps can be closed. One of these partners is Vanillaplan - and we are delighted to be involved!

Since the topic of digitalisation is very close to our hearts, we interviewed Zafer Bakir, «Head of Digital & IT» at the SBV, about the «Guide to Digital Transformation».

The main theme of Baumeister 5.0 and the Guide to Digital Transformation is the digitalisation of the Swiss construction industry; how do you see the current state of play here?
That is certainly an interesting question, but of course also a question of perspective. From the point of view of a financial services provider, the construction industry does not of course have the same degree of digital maturity as other sectors, although a great deal has happened here in recent years. Above all in the support processes, for example invoicing or calculation, as well as in ERP systems and IT infrastructure, we have seen a very big leap. Digital working, such as accessing documents from the construction site, is part of that too. However, the degree of digital maturity in the execution on site is still rather low. That is because it is difficult to standardise or automate there, since conditions change constantly; sometimes it is wet, sometimes dirty, sometimes you are working on a slope and so on. The contrast would perhaps be timber construction, where a great deal can be automated or standardised during pre-production in an enclosed hall. Approaches involving robotics are now emerging on the construction site too, however, and these have a lot of potential. A great deal has already happened with digitalisation, but a great deal more will certainly happen. Much will change in the coming years, particularly in the context of BIM.

You have already touched on a number of trend topics; can you go into them in a little more detail?
We see several topics that construction firms should be responding to now. We recently created a trend radar and it shows quite clearly that the overarching theme of BIM, with all its facets and use cases, is extremely important. Its relevance comes not only from the construction firms' own initiative, which would of course be nice, but increasingly at the customer's request - the customer demands BIM. Public-sector clients in particular make BIM a requirement in tenders, which then runs through the entire value chain.

If the public sector demands BIM, is it then only a matter of time before private customers demand it too?
Yes exactly, but here too we see that the customers still have to find their own way. That is to say, they are still on the road to finding a generally valid standard for tendering digital requirements including BIM.

How is the topic of digitalisation being received by construction firms?
It is a challenging topic. Classic digitalisation is not a discipline that was previously known on the construction site. It is a new topic, but you can see that companies are now really taking it on. They want to use digitalisation to position themselves better and of course to benefit financially from it too. Three or four years ago the distance from the topic and the uncertainty were considerably greater than today. We notice that our members look on digitalisation very positively.

In your view did Covid-19 have an influence on this development?
It certainly had an influence, not on the execution on the construction site itself, but certainly on the way people work together. Reporting meetings or team meetings could be moved to digital platforms and that certainly gave the whole thing a push. In cooperation with other trades too, platforms such as Zoom or Teams quickly became an alternative. That in turn had a strong influence on raising awareness of digital topics. For me, the simplicity of such meeting tools also points to a critical success factor for all other tools; they have to work intuitively in order to be used.

Now we would like to go into the Guide to Digital Transformation a little more closely - how did the whole thing come about?
I will have to go back a little further here. The role I now hold did not exist before in this form. With my position, a central point of contact for digital questions was established for the first time, so that our members had a direct contact person for digital topics within the association. In doing so we noticed that similar questions kept coming up. Frequently raised, for example, was the question of suitable BIM software, which however hardly allows a generally valid answer. The frequently arising question of which areas digitalisation should be implemented in first, or which specialists could provide support, also requires individual answers. We then looked for ways of answering these questions and needs in an automated manner while at the same time being able to use our existing network of experts and providers. Here we took our lead from other sectors in which digital maturity tools have existed for longer, and then decided to develop a comparable tool for the construction industry. The aim was to show our members their individual challenges and, in a second step, to present ways of tackling them. We accomplish that by connecting them with our digital partners. Together with the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland we then finally developed the tool.

Can you briefly explain what exactly happens when the tool is used?
First the construction company owner registers themselves and their employees in the tool. Then everyone answers a questionnaire on digitalisation-related topics in the company. The owner then receives, on the one hand, an evaluation with a cross-comparison in which they see their personal perception compared with their employees' perception of the progress of digitalisation in the company. On the other hand they receive a benchmark showing how their firm stands in various areas of digitalisation compared with the sector. The owner can then connect directly within the tool with potential partners such as Vanillaplan. That works either by partners being suggested to them whose service portfolio matches the needs identified by the maturity analysis, or, as the other option, by them searching for the various partners themselves within the tool.

What has the feedback been so far?
The feedback has been very positive so far. It does still need a degree of support and also a degree of awareness-raising among our members about using the tool. We do notice that it is not yet widely used, but that is certainly also due to its newness; after all, it has only been available for about two months. We still have to put work in here, above all regarding promotion.

What happens next?
The primary aim now is first of all to spread the tool further among our members. In a next step we want to develop further functions both for the construction companies and for the partners, in order to strengthen the collaboration even more.

Many thanks for the interview, Mr Bakir!

Here is the SBV's «Guide to Digital Transformation».