Welcome to Building Transformations: connecting people, building communities, and growing businesses. This is the beginning of a new transformational chapter of our organization and our industry, and we are excited to present the first issue of Innovation Spotlight under our new branding, focusing on the interconnected innovation economy across our industry. We highlight examples of executive leadership who are managing change within their organizations, as well as share insights into several startups who are bringing new creative solutions to the market.
We have been at the forefront of technological innovation in our industry. We have hosted the conversation, which has reshaped the way we manage and deliver projects. We have driven the use of new technologies that have fundamentally changed the way we collaborate. And yet there is so much more to do.
Our world needs more high quality affordable housing. We need faster, reliable and efficient public transportation systems. We need resilient infrastructure that delivers clean water, clean energy to the heart of our largest cities and our most remote communities. We need a building industry that can keep pace with demand to build and maintain the critical systems that support the economic flow of our society. And we need to do this much, much faster.
To realize these goals we need to transform. From the skilled trades on the job site, to the innovation leaders who are implementing improvements on projects to the executive leadership driving the vision of their organization. The acknowledgement that industry must transform dramatically is reaching a critical mass. As an industry, we are facing many challenges; project complexification, supply chain bottlenecks, material cost inflation, and increasing energy costs to name a few. At this moment, we are all grappling with labour shortages, and to be clear, this issue will only get worse as dependency ratios continue to widen. We face these challenges while driving a higher standard of care around environmental, social governance, pandemic related operational safety, and sustainability requirements.
As we enter this new chapter, we will transform. Companies must find new digital solutions to automate their processes. Our building and infrastructure assets must be developed, designed, built and managed with a new level of integration that will maximize time, material, labour, and create cost efficiencies without compromise. Job site activities will have to become more streamlined and mechanized. Design and engineering solutions will be governed by considerations which enable physical automation on the job site. Complex building assets will be managed using thousands of data points from a single, simple automated interface. Companies will become more vertically integrated, not just to capture margin, but also to control the entire process and thereby ensuring reliable and predictable outcomes.
This close interplay of all stakeholders is slowly being moved into a single digital process, where data flows from one party to another in a tightly controlled sequence. The end result of all these forces will be a significant and meaningful transformation; the digital industrialization of our entire industry.
Enabling our members to shape this future is our mission. Our role is to accelerate the development of these fundamental technologies. We are building the ecosystem of international collaborators necessary to unlock these massive social and economic opportunities. As a community of Innovators, we are defining the future practices of the building and infrastructure industry. We are the catalyst for digital transformation, delivering the technology and innovation that shapes our Civilization. We have bold and ambitious plans for the future; join us as we build transformational change in our Industry.
I’m proud of what we’ve done so far, and I’m extremely excited for what’s coming next!
Thomas J. Strong
Chair of the Board of Directors
President, CEO & Co-Founder
