Rebecca De Cicco FCIOB
Chair and Founder of Women in BIM I Director Digital Engineering, DBM Vircon

Navigating digital change for value-driven growth means actively managing the transition to new digital technologies and practices within a company, with the primary goal of creating significant and sustainable business value through innovation, improved customer experiences, operational efficiency and ultimately, increased revenue and market share.

In 2024, Women in BIM embarked on a journey of discovery for new technologies and digital processes to cultivate greater connectivity across the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) sector. For 2025, are goals are to utilise these discoveries as enablers of digitisation across the sector globally.

Generating over $12 trillion worldwide, the AEC sector is one of the biggest industries in the world, but historically it has been among the slowest to digitise and innovate.

However we are witnessing a seismic change with the development of AI, digital twins and smart technology. We are seeing increased capabilities in both software and hardware, improved remote collaboration tools, better quality data capture and new sustainable materials are only the beginning of worldwide digital adoption.

As a result, the AEC technology ecosystem has experienced an explosion of investment and a wave of start-up launches, with an estimated $50 billion being invested in AEC technology between 2020 to 2022 – 85% more than in the previous three years.

There is no doubt the technology scene is maturing, but to achieve scale, business owners and investors in construction technology need to eliminate the barriers to digital growth.

Interoperability is one way to break down these barriers – offering the ability for different software platforms to seamlessly exchange and analyse data, allowing information to flow freely between various project stakeholders without manual data entry. Managing information this way will ultimately improve project efficiency and allow for better, collaborative, decision-making by creating a unified view of project information. Who doesn’t want an easier way to input, manage and use their data for improved project management and delivery?

A digital first approach would seem the most obvious choice, but there are also barriers to change and until Clients can be reassured that a digital approach will be the most cost and time efficient way to deliver our projects, we still have an uphill struggle.

A bold, yet not unrealistic vision is to look at the whole AEC technology ecosystem and cultivating collaboration and connectivity on the whole asset life cycle from conception to operation and decommission. Then mapping the technology ecosystem with a circular economy – now this is asking a lot for Clients to embrace, but the rewards will be worth it. And we will be a step closer to interoperability and global net zero construction targets!

This is not blue sky thinking, it is already happening, some forward-thinking organisations are digital leaders in the sector, which is why other companies can look and learn from the most successful AEC digital innovators and disruptors and start navigating their own digital change – and enter 2025 with a new vision for value driven growth, led by the power of digital.

As a final comment, AI has not featured heavily in the solutions presented here to digital adoption, AI does have a very important role to play, but as the best friend, not the leading actor!

When digital construction is implemented (and implemented correctly), even in its most basic form, it allows all parties to communicate and share data more proficiently for more efficient and cost-effective projects while enabling them to speak a common digital language.

With world economies fluctuating, it may seem counterintuitive for companies to invest in new technologies right now, but with the ability to focus on improving business processes, this may be the perfect opportunity to prepare for the future.