Our built environments are hugely influential on the climate and our consumption of Earth’s resources. The construction and property industry has started to transition towards greater sustainability and a circular economy, but it is also struggling to cope with productivity, efficiency and performance issues.
70% of the global sustainability goals, including several that concern the built environment, can be achieved with the help of increased digitalisation.
Digitalisation is also crucial in making the construction industry’s processes more coherent, lowering risk levels and ensuring clear management perspectives from the start. This endeavour aims to increase circularity, develop new sustainable business models and lower construction and management costs, as well as creating room for innovative and more tailored architecture which meets the needs of people in their changing everyday lives.
To succeed the industry needs to deliver buildings and living environments as products, rather than as projects with many unforeseen and costly changes along the way. However, the pace of change is still too slow. How can we accelerate development together?
One of the keys to digitalisation for a more efficient and sustainable construction and property industry is the ability of companies to integrate design and data into the business of today and tomorrow. It’s something that most companies are inexperienced with, and do in silos. On average, companies that succeed increase their earnings by 10% to 30%*.
* Fusing data and design to supercharge innovation – in products and processes, McKinsey, April 2019
The integration of design and data is in full swing in all industries and concerns the marrying of two development dimensions in deliveries and business:
1.The availability and utilisation of quantitative data. Data platforms that connect the entire life cycle, real-time analysis, sensors, data science, robotics and artificial intelligence
2.The application of new design perspectives. Especially service design, business design, computational design and circular design
The integration of design and data also accelerates the merger of the built environment and digital technology in new experiences and opportunities for citizens, corporations and society. We call this near future – and White’s instrument to reach it sooner – Digital Matter.
We help community builders realise sustainable built environments through digitalisation, design and data.
