The Guide to Digital Transformation, completed at the beginning of this year, is an analysis and partner-matching tool. On the one hand, it gives construction companies the chance to take stock and see in which areas of the company digital potential can be better exploited. On the other, the company is suggested suitable partners, experts and suppliers who can help close the digital gaps. One of these partners is Vanillaplan, and we are delighted to be part of it!
As digitalisation is a topic close to our hearts, we interviewed Zafer Bakir, Head of Digital & IT at the SBV, about the Guide to Digital Transformation.
The main topic 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?
That is certainly an exciting question, but of course also a question of perspective. From the point of view of a financial services provider, the construction industry naturally does not have the same level of digital maturity as other sectors, although a lot has happened here in recent years. We have seen a very big leap especially in support processes, for example invoicing or costing, as well as in ERP systems and IT infrastructure. Digital working, such as accessing documents from the construction site, is part of this too.
However, the digital maturity of execution on the construction 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 lot can be automated or standardised during prefabrication in a closed hall. Meanwhile, however, approaches using robotics with a lot of potential are also emerging on site. A lot has already happened in digitalisation, but a great deal more will certainly happen. Particularly in the context of BIM, a lot will change in the coming years.
You have already touched on a few trend topics. Can you go into them in a little more detail?
We see several topics that a contractor should react to now. We recently created a trend radar, and it shows very clearly that the overarching topic of BIM, with all its facets and use cases, is extremely important. The relevance comes not only from the construction companies' own initiative, which would of course be nice, but increasingly from customer demand: 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 clients demand it too?
Yes, exactly, but here we also see that clients still have to find their own way. In other words, they are still on the way to finding a generally valid standard for tendering digital requirements including BIM.
How is the topic of digitalisation being received by construction companies?
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 too. Three or four years ago, the distance from the topic and the uncertainties were considerably greater than today. We notice that our members view digitalisation very positively.
In your opinion, did Covid-19 have an influence on this development?
It certainly had an influence, not on execution on the construction site itself, but certainly on the way people work together. Reporting meetings or team meetings could switch to digital platforms, and that certainly gave the whole thing a push.
In collaboration with other trades, too, platforms such as Zoom or Teams quickly became an alternative. That in turn had a strong influence on awareness of digital topics. For me, the simplicity of such meeting tools also reveals a critical success factor for all other tools: they have to work intuitively in order to be used.
Now we would like to look more closely at the Guide to Digital Transformation. How did it all come about?
I have to go back a little here. The role I now hold did not exist in this form before. 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. The question of suitable BIM software, for example, was often raised, but it hardly allows a generally valid answer. The frequently asked question of which areas should be digitalised first, or which specialists could provide support, also needs individual answers.
We then looked for ways to answer these questions and needs in an automated way while at the same time using our existing network of experts and providers. We took our cue from other industries, where digital maturity tools have existed for some time, and 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 these challenges. We do this by connecting them with our digital partners. Together with the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland FHNW, we then finally developed the tool.
Can you briefly explain what the exact process of using the tool looks like?
First, the contractor registers himself and his employees in the tool. Then everyone answers a questionnaire on digitalisation-related topics in the company. The contractor then receives, on the one hand, an evaluation with a cross-comparison, in which he sees his own perception of the company's digitalisation progress compared with that of his employees. On the other hand, he gets a benchmark showing how his company stands in various areas of digitalisation compared with the industry.
The contractor can then connect directly in the tool with potential partners such as Vanillaplan. This works in one of two ways: either he is suggested partners whose range of services matches the needs identified in the maturity analysis, or he can subsequently search for the various partners himself in the tool.
What has the feedback been like so far?
The feedback has been very positive so far. However, it still needs a certain amount of support, and also some 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 around two months. We still have to put work in here, especially in terms of promotion.
What happens next?
The primary goal 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 construction companies and for partners, to strengthen the collaboration even more.
Many thanks for the interview, Mr Bakir!
Go to the SBV's Guide to Digital Transformation.
