The biggest scientific conference for Built Environment - World Building
Congress 2016 - is taking place this week in Tampere and PATI team members are
presenting papers from the research project. It is amazing to see so many
professionals gathered in one location and discussing about the Intelligent
Built Environment for Life and brainstorming how the future of Built
Environment will look like.
Here, I will try to capture the first day presentations and topics that
have been discussed and hopefully at the end of the week we will have a
comprehensive overview of the conference and the idea where the future will
take us.
So, the day started with two keynote presentations by Dongping Fang from
Tsinghua University, China, and Matti Kokkala from VTT technical Research
Center, Finland. Both of the presentations quite nicely captured the future
direction of built environment. Prof. Fang introduced initiatives in China for
resilient urbanization, while Prof. Kokkala
discussed how digitalization is shaping building and construction sectors.
Today 130 papers were presented in more than 20 sessions and workshops.
What an intensive day it was! As you imagine, it is hard to cover everything as
physically I was able to listen to only a small fraction on those. But from the
ones I’ve heard, I can say – the future looks very interesting!
The first session I participated covered usability issues, and
researchers discussed about knowledge creation processes, work environments,
and effects workplace has on the organizational performance. The new ways of
working and an end-user approach suggest many discussions in the research
society. The importance of increased
productivity and performance seems to be clear in the research but I keep on
wondering: is it also well understood in organizations?
Similar thoughts were introduced in presentation related to BIM –
Building Information Modelling - topic. Simon Ashworth from UK introduced his
research on how FM experts use BIM in their operations. His results showed that
FM service providers and their customers are not that familiar with BIM and
rather use asset management standards than BIM standards, although BIM is
already widely used in construction phase. BIM can have (and will have) a
significant impact on FM in a long term by providing the data about the
building, and simulations based on that data. Mr. Ashworth suggested that FM
practitioners understand the benefits but so why is it that FM practitioners
are still not implicating that in the real life (researched showed, that less
than 10% of FM service providers use BIM in operations)? Is it just the lack of
experience? Is there something else that is hidden under this resistance for
change?
Another interesting topic I could introduce here was the workshop
related to Smart Cities. 5 panelists from Hong Kong, USA, Norway and UK
discussed how the future of cities might look like and what are the main topics
that need to be researched. According to panelists, the Smart city is an integrated
system, covering energy management, building networks, urban planning issues
such as land use and infrastructure, transportation, and community.
Digitalization seems to be the key enabler, empowering innovation and
co-creation in the field. With the help of digitalization, new ecosystems and
value chains are created, and built environment is changing towards service
business, like building-as-a-service, energy-as-a-service, X-as-a-service, or…
Workplace-as-a-service! Aren’t we on a hot topic right here? J
But… There were many more interesting topics covered today and I could continue
for a while but you will probably get bored by reading it. One needs to be in
place to feel the spirit and get excited about it. I have gained very valuable
knowledge and connections, and believe this will add value to PATI project as well.
And if you’re around there, let’s keep in touch! We always talk about
collaboration and co-creation, so let’s make it happen in real life!
Yours truly,
Vitalija
