Dinosaurs of the construction industry
- March 19, 2020
What does the extinction of dinosaurs have to do with digital construction?
Dinosaurs lived happily for 165 million years.
They populated the Earth and although they were a bit clumsy as cold-blooded animals and they were slow to respond to stimuli, everything went well. Along with them, a seemingly insignificant tiny furry species evolved. This is a new generation of life that worked differently. It was warm-blooded, faster, and could hunt at night, even in the cold.


The new species were able to adapt,
and the dinosaurs became extinct within a few decades.
Then a natural disaster occurred that changed the circumstances.
What does this have to do with the digitalization of the construction industry? Well, the same pattern is emerging today.
Exciting times ahead for the dinosaurs of the construction industry.
Planning has remained virtually unchanged for the last 500 years. Our tools may have changed, but the methods have hardly changed. Designers make drawings, put them on paper, and build from there. A bit cumbersome, maybe even slow at times, but it worked.
But our world has changed radically in the last 5 years. A preliminary form of artificial intelligence has emerged to speed up our work in more and more areas.
Today, designers have become virtual builders who design and build digital replicas of buildings.
In the meantime, it is constantly being filled with information and turned into shared knowledge through apps. This makes the work much more efficient and no longer ends when the plans are delivered. It becomes a complex service throughout the life of the building.
A new digital ecosystem is emerging. The next generation of technology is rewriting the way the construction industry works. The speed and efficiency of processes, visualization, and the importance of place.
Meanwhile, a natural disaster occurred that changed our circumstances. This has sealed the fate of many previous generations of companies. Those who survive this will face another challenge, as the old methods will lose their competitiveness in the next 3 years. First on large and complex projects, then on simple ones.
The choice is ours. We start to learn about the new world and sacrifice to use the new tools that technology offers, or we ignore it and follow our habits.
The good news is that we will soon find out whether we made the right decision. Evolution has accelerated and this change will be much faster than in dinosaurs. In any case, these are exciting times for extinting species
☛ The digitalization of the construction industry, the emergence of BIM, is turning the lives of industry dinosaurs upside down. If you’re interested in the new mindset and toolset that the new workflow requires compared to the classic one, click here.