Topcon’s Top Takes from Digital Construction Week 2018

Last week, the Topcon team were at Digital Construction Week at London’s ExCel, showcasing our portfolio of geospatial technology and joining the industry in debating the most innovative technology hitting the construction industry.

Some of the key topics explored included how we prepare for electric vehicles to integrating data across projects, and from data for maintenance to showing the environmental impact of works. Here’s my summary of the key outtakes from the show.

Collaboration is key

The relationship between clients and contractors, and suppliers and manufacturers, making sure all are connected came out as a priority in nearly all of the case studies we heard at DCW. The importance of working together to address a challenge, to work with one another to find the best approach was clearly paramount to delivering a cost-effective and time-efficient solution.

Evolving together

Collaboration can only happen if everyone is evolving together and on the same page. It was regularly mentioned during DCW that we’re facing the challenge of changing the mentality of our industry where there is a belief among some that “it isn’t broken so we don’t need to fix it”. The shift from paper to digital can only happen if every member in the supply chain and service providers get on board, so our collective focus should be on supporting our people to make that change.

Linking and sharing data

There are so many innovations already happening with GIS, and, listening to the many talks from experts across the industry, we’re always bettering the ways we can collect and interpret data. What the industry needs to do more of, is sharing that data. Data for a project that is shared across all parties and teams across a workflow can prove to be invaluable, providing all members of the development team a full view and work within of what can essentially be, a project’s digital twin.

The topics featured at the show really tapped into our ethos at Topcon - we’re embracing digital change and the shift to using technology to make the construction process smoother and more efficient. For example, we’re constantly evolving our software offering and we’ve recently updated the capabilities of our MAGNET suite leading the way in many projects helping more people to understand how easy it is to share data, and how quickly it can be achieved. Find out more about MAGNET here.