The real estate industry has been traditionally slow to move with the times – until now, according to participants at the second Asia Pacific Leadership Symposium – The Future is Now in Hong Kong organised by the Urban Land Institute (ULI) and by the World Economic Forum (WEF).
In areas ranging from computer-aided design, to development of new construction materials and technologies, to the use of augmented-reality marketing solutions, new technologies are starting to gain traction. The Future is Now white paper summarises the symposium discussions, and argues that with so much new tech on the horizon, the issue for developers is how to pick out the most promising new technologies. “Cutting-edge tech that may seem appealing at first glance may still be unsuited for real-world applications because it is either underdeveloped, too expensive, or too hard to scale,” the report stated.
One area that developers highlighted is the potential of new software design tools to manage construction work, with one participant saying: “That’s where the mojo is—it’s going to transform current practices.”
The system gaining the most traction is building information modelling (BIM), which replaces traditional hardcopy blueprints with 3D computer modelling. BIM, combined with the easy availability of handheld devices allowing
the concept to be applied onsite, gives it “a game-changing advantage
over legacy paper-based systems, helping architects and contractors to
collaborate more easily and make on-the-fly alterations to existing
designs,” the report says. A BIM success story is Sweden’s newly-opened 12,000-room New Karolinska Hospital, the world’s
biggest-ever public-private partnership hospital project. This complex project was wholly executed using a BIM platform.
The symposium also discussed post-construction. BIM is being used at New Karolinska for handling overall facility management. “As the hospital’s BIM model contains all construction data in a single plan, managers know immediately which materials are used in any part of the building, where all components are located, and exactly what part will be needed to repair any given equipment breakdown,” the report said.
The symposium also identified hindrances. As one participant pointed out, the useful life of buildings is long: “A 60-year-old building may not have the high-speed lifts and all the bells and whistles,” he said, “but it’s not unoccupy-able. This means the useful life of buildings is extremely resilient, which in turn is one of the reasons why the pace of tech growth has been so slow.”
There is resistance from the status quo too. Contractors are still reluctant to invest in new technology, even as tech costs continue to fall.
The report states however that the biggest roadblock of all is regulation. The high level of oversight in Asia’s construction industries is a result of a “need to ensure building safety, creating deep bureaucratic roots with a byproduct of this culture being that widespread adoption of new technologies requires wholesale changes in existing building codes and approval processes”. This is a tall order in an environment where bureaucratic mindsets remain generally backward-looking and have little reason to push through new rules.
While in a few markets, notably Singapore, governments have encouraged the industry to embrace new technology, “bureaucratic inertia is the invisible hand inhibiting change.” In Hong Kong for example, alterations are prohibited until an occupation permit is issued meaning that customisation on the go is impossible.
While most participants were fairly pessimistic about the short-term prospects of persuading regulators to adapt the existing prescriptive framework, one person suggested, that consumer pressure could lead to a move from the current specifications-based mindset “towards a more performance-based approach enabled by technology that can monitor building performance.”
“This symposium once again highlighted the importance of the partnership between ULI and the WEF. Together our global organisations are considering issues that are of profound importance to the industry and society at large,” said John Fitzgerald, CEO, Asia Pacific, ULI.
“We are nearing a global tipping point and digital transformation is an area that the real estate industry cannot ignore. ULI will continue to alert our members to the relevant technological developments in our industry, and we hope that ULI and WEF will continue to provide the leadership and platform for relevant and constructive cutting edge idea sharing” added Nicholas Brooke, Chairman of the ULI – WEF Symposium.
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