Most owners adapting digital workflows on projects

Owners are more deeply engaged with digital workflows than other project team members, according to a new report released by Trimble and Dodge Data & Analytics.

“Connected Construction: The Owner’s Perspective,” says that 85% of owners surveyed are already implementing digital transformation. This finding is significant because owners are highly influential in the design and construction industry and are often essential to driving change. It suggests that owners’ influence will boost the use of these tools.

Recognizing the value of connecting internal workflows with external workflows, 69% of owners frequently include contractual requirements for contractors to use digital documentation and practices. In addition, 60% of owners report having digital workflows for at least half of their project data between internal departments, learning from their experience with digitizing internal workflows to help them digitize external ones.

There is room for improvement on that point, though, as only 28% report a similar level of digital data exchange with external companies. Owners using digital workflows are far more likely to be able to trace the root causes of delays and errors on their projects back to specific activities than those that do not use them, the study found.

New York City has two very large buildings dedicated to answering the 911 calls of its five boroughs. With more than 11 million emergency calls annually, it makes perfect sense. The second of these buildings, the Public Safety Answering Center II (PSAC II) is located on a nine-acre parcel of land in the Bronx. It’s an imposing 450,000 square-foot structure—a 240-foot-wide by 240-foot-tall cube. The gleaming aluminum cube risesthe equivalent of 24 stories from behind a grassy berm, projecting the unlikely impression that it might actually be floating. Like most visually striking structures, the building has drawn as much scorn as it has admiration.