HOW DO WE COPE WITH THE GLOBAL INCREASING DEMAND ON INFRASTRUCTURE?

In this blog, Ian Stilgoe, Vice President, Geopositioning at Topcon Europe Positioning, outlines the pressures on our current infrastructure and explores potential solutions.

As a result of increased urbanisation, growing economies and the existing, ageing, post-war infrastructure specifically in Europe, we are experiencing a significant demand for our current assets to be improved, as well as the creation of new infrastructure.

However, the industry currently doesn’t have the capacity required to meet this demand. As an industry, construction has been slow to adapt and develop at the pace of other sectors. The McKinsey report outlines that globally the construction sector has a $1.6 trillion productivity gap. This is the challenge we now face as an industry, how do we close this gap in order to meet our global infrastructure needs?

The key is to challenge our historic ways of working with a much greater focus on collaboration. As an industry, we have traditionally tackled projects in silos. New technology is proving essential for greater collaboration and information exchange.

One example of this is the adoption of the Internet of Things and automation, which has greatly increased connectivity across the entire construction workflow, from the site to office, excavation to asset monitoring. We’re seeing this type of technology increasingly in our homes and offices, so our construction sites should be no different. It allows for real-time communication between all stakeholders involved in a project which enables our customers to work smarter. Automation also increases the speed of processes and reduces overall waste.

At Topcon, we’ve challenged ourselves to find the right partners and organisations to collaborate and develop with to drive efficiency in the industry. We have established long-standing partnerships with the likes of Autodesk, Bentley and Intel, to develop integrated hardware and software technologies that are tailored to the needs of our individual customers. Essentially, this partnership approach helps us ensure that we offer efficient packages of expertise and technology for the specific requirements of a project, which help to increase accuracy and communication across the whole workflow.

Find out more about how we believe technology and collaboration can help to meet our infrastructure demands here.