For decades, the delivery of infrastructure has followed a predictable path: plan, design, offer and creation. Sprinkle in some technology where it is adapted (think about the creation of information models, sensors or drones) and hope of marginal gains.
But the challenges of current infrastructure are exposing the limits of this approach. The moment we find is no longer a matter of increntance isolated. It is a nucleus rethinking: we must redesign how the infrastructure is delivered from the base, using digital as a foundation, and not as a later thought.
This is not just a curve on the road, but a fork. One Path maintains technology on the edges, a collection of tools for specific phases. The other path requires a complete digital reinvention of the project’s life cycle: from planning and design through construction, operations, predictive maintenance and capital renewal.
This transformation is not hypothetical. The tools are here.
Future infrastructure owners already use digital twin platforms throughout the company to simulate construction schedules, optimize HVAC performance in real time and foresee maintenance needs before failures. They see a measurable impact on the reductions in life cycle costs, increase in assets, the longevity of assets investments and the delivery of faster projects for months, not days.
This path requires new thought by most infrastructure owners, program managers and construction leaders. Means to change from:
- Project teams fragmented to collaboration based on the platform
- Unique digital pilots for the transformation of the entire company
- Static designs to adaptable systems rich in data
There is the tension here: technology is ready, but systems, processes and government models are not completely linked and used. Technology will not transform the delivery of infrastructure … Leaders with vision and commitment.
But leadership, alone, is not enough. To truly reimagate the infrastructure, we must also reimagate the property of datawhich is the founding layer that based on all digital and operational decisions.
The current infrastructure is not affected by the lack of technology, but by the lack of reliable data connected. Design files live in one system, the sensor feeds on another, maintenance records in spreadsheets, or worse, on paper. This fragmentation limits not only visibility, but also the effectiveness of any artificial intelligence or intelligence effort. We cannot drive the smart results of disconnected entries.
What is now emerges is a new paradigm: a unified data property; It is not a BIM model or a partial of solutions and spreadsheets, but a platform enabled through digital twin technology of business quality. These platforms gather space data (what and where), static data (model/ make number, insurance registration, guarantee, work tickets, what is inside, how it is to operate, how it is used and who last fixed it), and the living data (what is happening now, what happened in the past, what could happen in the future) in a unique system of reality. When this paradigm disrupts the industry and becomes current, it remains the days of a registration system.
When it is accompanied by the operational IA, this unlockets a change of reactive to proactive operations:
- Real -time optimization of equipment and energy performance.
- Station of maintenance based on data that prevents failures before they occur.
- Adaptive use of space and resources, informed by employment and real use patterns.
- Capital Planning fed by simulations and models of risk for the future.
- Capital Investment Recommendations Based on AIs that would choose prioritization based on corrective maintenance records, conditions of conditions and life cycle of the asset.
This transforms infrastructure into something fundamentally new: not only a set of physical assets, but also a learning system, one that becomes smarter over time and provides measurable benefits through cost, time of time, sustainability and service provision.
The involvement is deep: the future of the infrastructure will be obtained by those who process data not as by -products, but as a basic requirement for each operational asset and what is important with technology suppliers to recreate the future of infrastructure.
Not only do we manage buildings and systems. We are managing intelligence. In doing it, we are redefining what it means to operate, optimize and drive in an era digitally defined.
The window for increase is closing. Infrastructure leaders will be defined not for what they build, but by the decisions they make to link data throughout the project’s life cycle, from now on.
Khaled Naja is the CEO of Core Group Partners. He is a veteran construction engineer and technologist, a member of the National Construction Academy and a world-renowned C-C-C-executive.
