Although the core ideas had been established, the next question was how this concept would be physicalised in a way that preserved and enhanced its potential value, in a business, like all, with multiple levels of moving parts..
As such, onsite IoT technology is a key area of interest for the company.Lamont feels we need to slow down to go faster here, deploying simple, smart construction technology solutions to unlock sites.
Afterall, construction sites are temporary in nature, and contain vast amounts of data which isn’t currently being tracked, but easily could be with existing tech.In reality, there’s no need for 5G technology in order to obtain the data we’re looking to gather onsite, Lamont says.Still, that’s primarily what we’re hearing about these days.
In actual fact, what we really need are low-power devices to gather information about simple things.We need to know where a particular machine is located, whether it’s vibrating, how noisy it is, and what the light and temperature readings are.. All of this information can be done on devices that are already in plentiful supply.
All that’s needed is something like a LoRaWAN network to connect to.
LoRaWAN is a long-range, wide-area network on a different frequency band to WiFi.These are the people with the higher level skills who can land straight into management roles of organisations and really make significant shifts in how things are done.
Moreover, organisations need to create space for people with these skills, because this isn’t always the case at the moment.. It’s also important to acknowledge the work that is already being done in this area.Bryden Wood’s digital configurator apps are deliberately aimed at lowering the barrier to entry, while Professor Glass notes that at UCL there’s a part of the faculty entirely composed of data scientists looking at the built environment.
There’s work for everybody to do on this, we just need to make a home for people in the sector.On a somewhat similar note, the industry also needs to start making better use of its existing data.
(Editor: Adjustable Streaming Gear)