27 minute read
construction
Autodesk forges ahead with construction
Autodesk’s refocus on construction has never been so clearly evident than at this year’s annual user event in Las Vegas. Using all possible technologies, Autodesk is seeking to digitise design and fabrication, while easing collaboration and enhancing the process with machine learning
by Martyn Day
Under its previous CEO, Carl the collaboration hub, the construction BIM managers were there ten years ago? Bass, Autodesk doubled BIM and the best connection to digital Industries change, new roles are created. down on development in the fabrication. Winter is coming — well it is Anagnost took a look at his home town highly competitive manufac- November, what do you expect! of LA and how it will build necessary turing area, producing products such as infrastructure to host the Olympics in Fusion and embracing digital fabrication. Anagnost keynote 2028, while leaving a positive legacy for Of course, as this is Autodesk we are talk- As if to prove automation will not take all the city’s inhabitants. Anagnost looked at ing about, the company covers multiple our jobs, the keynote opened with people technologies like Autodesk BIM 360, markets, so this wasn’t the only area dancing with a robot arm. Anagnost start- which can provide collaboration with which developed — the ground was laid ed with automation and concentrated on real time feedback, showing constructafor cloud and the move to subscription. how it can help with making things ‘better’. bility, cost and risk, building a Digital
The new CEO, Andrew Anagnost, now In 1900 40% of the USA worked in Twin. This also works for manufacturin his second year in the role, has made sig- farming; today it’s 2%. The value chain ing, with everyone working together, nificant changes, de-focusing from prod- for food extends well beyond farm to looking at the options for a design, with ucts that are not yet commercial, culling market, but we now have more access to the computer choosing those that are easones that were not reve- iest to make, replace etc. nue generating and investing in the products that ‘‘ A monumental effort is being put into BIM 360 We operate today on designing and manufacare currently being used by customers. The commitment to the cloud has and Forge as Autodesk pushes itself to deliver enterprise quality platforms for collaboration turing in constraints which are self-imposed. Using automation we can continued and the compa- and application development free ourselves from this, ny has made a number of key acquisitions. The one area Anagnost has always food than ever before - cooking shows, ’’ as the computer will stop design hazards before they ever happen and customers can highlighted is the potential for the con- plant-based meats, gluten free every- design these tools themselves. struction market to revolutionise the way thing, etc. Farming is making better use it works, and benefit from digital fabrica- of land, producing great yields and repet- Borduin keynote tion and automation. From what we, at itive jobs have been replaced. Now we Over the summer, Autodesk lost a numAEC Magazine, have seen on our travels have organic farmers as well as industri- ber of long standing execs, including Jeff this month, he is not alone in this alised food production. Kowalski, the company’s CTO. His thought. Bentley Systems, Microsoft, Transportation is going to change. The replacement, Scott Borduin, is actually a Dassault Systèmes, Siemens, Trimble and US currently has 4 million people long-standing Autodesker who once held others have all placed construction as employed as drivers, and while in the the role of CTO. their key market. Next year promises to future this will decrease, there will be more Borduin talked about how data flow be a real-life Game of Thrones, as we will opportunities, moving more people, more and automation can bring benefits. But witness the battle of the CAD giants for efficiently than ever before. How many historically, data flow is hard when the
data is getting bigger and every firm has unique workflows.
Borduin said that Autodesk, on its journey to the cloud, realised that moving a product like Revit to the cloud would only change the location of the application. It needed to develop a solution that would allow customers to define their own workflows and provide a pipeline for that data to flow and for tools to plug into, even those of its competitors. Part of this is Forge, Autodesk’s development platform, which enables applications to access and manipulate design data held in Autodesk’s cloud.
Dr Erin Bradner, Autodesk’s robotics expert, then gave an example of a concept for a landing vehicle, designed by JPL to investigate one of Jupiter’s icy moons. Using Autodesk Generative design tools, JPL removed one third of the weight in the design, but also designed for additional competing issues, such as manufacturability and cost.
By analysing dozens of designs, optimising for 3-axis and 5-axis milling, making the generative design manufacturable with today’s technologies, the JPL engineers were only presented with design options that fitted their criteria. They didn’t waste time looking at designs that failed to meet their performance envelope. This was pretty amazing stuff. Looking at a single part, Autodesk’s generative software can give geometry solutions which fit the manufacturing resource available: additive (3D print), cast, 5-axis or 3-axis CNC. Autodesk CEO Andrew Anagnost concluded that
Moving on to buildings, Anagnost sets out his automation will need new Autodesk has been helping vision for Architecture, Engineering and skills, bring better jobs and Daiwa House Group Construction there will be a scarcity of skills, (daiwahouse.com/english) solve not a scarcity of jobs. The talk challenges around Japan’s chronic short- finished with three new terms, age of build space. The Japanese company Adaptability, Resilience and Community, builds houses, care homes, hospitals, saying he and the company felt they had a shopping complexes — pretty much any- moral and social responsibility to address thing — and is focussed on automation the challenges and help its customers. and BIM to fabrication.
When spaces become available, Daiwa AEC keynote House uses generative design tools to Game engine visualisation and Virtual identify the best small pockets of land Reality (VR) is becoming big business in and develop speculative uses. They then AEC. At this year’s AU, Autodesk approach the land owners to see if they announced a strategic partnership with are interested. The software assesses Unity, which will provide the developers plots quickly and runs through many of the real time 3D development platform iterations until the best design and with sub-level access to Autodesk’s applireturn on investment is identified. As cations to integrate its VR tools. This will each project is done, machine learning is lead to seamless integration with Unity, applied to enhance future proposals. allowing geometry, meta data, textures to
At the end of the presentation, flow into VR environments without any Anagnost announced that the company need for end-user translation. will expand from offering product-based Eventually the data flow will be both training to role-based certifications, so in ways with designers being able to change addition to Revit, customers could also the designs in Unity and have that flow qualify as a BIM manager. back to update products such as Revit.
Anagnost felt that upskilling for careers With a target date of October 2019, the is more important than how to run a spe- company says that some of the links will be cific individual product. Autodesk will delivered earlier. move from offering physical training to This is an unusual move for Autodesk, more digital training, with a new learning as it has a suite of VR/AR developers engine in development. The company is working on tools for its platforms, includworking with four US labour unions and ing Epic Games (Unreal Engine), IrisVR, firms such as Village Capital, Nexus Edge, Enscape, Lumion and Twinmotion. blendoor and sorcero. Autodesk also had/has its own game
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engine viz / VR tool called Revit Next year there will be industry’s well documented mate mundane tasks. Live. Selecting one developer to gain special access isn’t usually streamlined workflows between the Unity 3D game engine and Revit, inefficiencies. Added to those problems, 95% of firms can’t • Customisable check lists for issues, identify causation and resolution. in Autodesk’s playbook, unless plus other Autodesk find enough skilled workers, • Dashboards all now in one place. it has bought them. With Unity applications 20% of the industry’s work force • Reports can be sent to anyone. that is highly unlikely. is about to retire and 35% of • Machine Learning to analyse the data.
Unity does have two advantages over architects are over 55 years old. Part of the • Predictive analytics for projects now the others in that, for the last year, it was answer is deploying new technology and ready for use. the first developer to access the Autodesk workflows. Autodesk is concentrating on FBX SDK for Max and Maya, seamlessly collaboration tools, automation tools and Autodesk customers — Mott MacDonald, sharing assets for in-game iteration. It’s predictive tools to look ahead and identify Lera Consulting Engineers and Paric — possible the success of this brought Unity trouble before if happens. all gave examples of how they used closer to the development teams. The A raft of new features related to Autodesk technology to innovate within other being that Unity supports 28 differ- Autodesk BIM 360 was shown on stage: recent projects. ent interactive target platforms.
It seems Autodesk’s efforts in • A new BIM 360 ‘site collaboration for Project Plasma game engine viz and VR for the AEC sec- Civil 3D and Revit’ was shown, linking Remember that big article we did on tor will be phased out, as they were civil data with Revit dynamically. Project Quantum, the future of Revit and never that competitive to the third party partner applications in the market. ‘‘ Anagnost has always highlighted the potential the cloud? (tinyurl.com/ quantum-AEC). Well, after going into stealth mode, the This is perhaps the first sign of Autodesk choosing to vacate the market, to for the construction market to revolutionise the way it works, and benefit from digital project has been re-branded Project Plasma and is back on track. Our underconcentrate R&D dollars fabrication and automation standing is that some of the on something they have better competency on, or greater opportunity. However, it does • Model co-ordination in BIM 360 can ’’ technologies that were being developed were going to be so useful to all Autodesk customers somewhat leave Unity’s competitors at a now run automatic clash detection and products that some of that technolodisadvantage. between models. gy needed to be examined in a platform
Traditionally Autodesk has bought the • A new PlaceMe tool lets you place context, as opposed just to Autodesk’s one developer to own that space. I can’t an icon within a 2D drawing and call Quantum sphere. help but feel that this is some kind of dere- up a 3D view of where that is in the By all accounts the development work liction of duty of a software developer. 3D model. is now looking really good. We hope to However, with ESRI and now Unity, • New timelines for tracking project bring you a deeper insight into where the Anagnost’s tenure looks to be different to progress and collaboration. project has got to and the basic benefits of any previous Autodesk CEO, in that a • New approval workflow process in collaborative working and connecting strategic partnership is sometimes good BIM 360, initiate and sign reviews, design to digital fabrication. enough. Unity’s Pro offering does come in organised in sets. at the high side of its competitors. • Assemble Systems for quantities and ESRI partnership
Jim Lynch, Autodesk’s vice president & building elements in BIM 360. One of last year’s biggest announcements general manager, construction business • Cost management model added to was Autodesk’s strategic agreement with unit, talked about the benefits of adopting a BIM 360 linked with change orders. ESRI to co-operate and work together. manufacturing-led mind set to defeat the • A new freeform rebar tool to auto- The development teams have been hard
at work and the fruits have been first today but there are now a number of large number of mature DWG work-a-likes seen in the release of ‘Autodesk examples of customers and developers available including BricsCAD, Graebert Connector for ArcGIS’, which links who have deployed Forge components to ARES, Dassault Systèmes Draftsight (creAutodesk InfraWorks with the ArcGIS share, analyse or collaborate their designs. ated by Graebert) and ZWCAD. online system. This capability improves Developers have wanted to run with We understand that Autodesk’s BIM workflows by directly connecting to some of this technology but have been planned significant price hike in mainteGIS data in a more seamless way, versus frustrated with the rate of development nance to ‘persuade’ customers that an import with no ability to refresh if GIS of certain components, together with a ‘Subscription makes more sense’, comes data is updated. All attributes of the GIS meandering business model. A key com- into effect in March 2019. This will see data are added to the InfraWorks model, ponent being Revit.io – a cloud version of 20% added to the cost of maintenance for making the 3D context model more Revit which developers can call on to non-subscribed applications. In general, robust and accurate. access Revit functionality. When this sta- this is to be seen in the context of a gener-
ESRI will also be linking ArcGIS’s bilises, I expect we will see a raft of com- al trend of increased cost of ownership online, vector, image and map data to Civil mercial applications based on Forge. for Autodesk’s products, for those out3D, Map and AutoCAD. ESRI will add sup- Autodesk has hired ex-Google cloud side of subscription all the way to those port for Revit at some point too. This ability platform guru Sam Ramji as VP cloud with enterprise licences. was demoed earlier this year at ESRI’s user platform, to come in with deep cloud It will be interesting to see if there is event in London. Both companies are experience to stir up Autodesk’s develop- any dent in the subscription rate with working on an integration between ArcGIS ment and ensure Forge is an enterprise customers seeking alternatives or if the and Autodesk BIM 360. The partnership level, robust cloud API. Ramji was stickiness of customers and their will be really exciting for those wishing to incredibly impressive on stage and can be AutoCADs proves durable. design in context or access geographically watched here (tinyurl.com/ramji-AEC) sorted data. There is a special offer for Conclusion Autodesk customers to have a complimen- Rebel dealers Autodesk University this year was all tary subscription to Esri ArcGIS till the In recent years, Autodesk has been about BIM 360 and Forge. A monumental end of 2019 (tinyurl.com/GIS-free-AEC). reducing the number of dealers it has effort is being put into both those elements worldwide and the margins on product as Autodesk pushes itself to deliver enterRobots in Construction sold and subscriptions. The net fallout prise quality platforms for collaboration On day one, AU hosted a special ‘Connect has been approximately 600 resellers and application development. Just as we & Construct Summit’ which featured a whole day of future gazing talk ‘‘ Autodesk realised that moving Revit to the cloud were going to press, Autodesk announced a breathtaking $875 miltopics, together with hands-on workshops. There was quite a bit would only change the location of the application. It needed to develop a solution that would allow lion acquisition of PlanGrid, a developer of construction productiviof content looking at customers to define their own workflows ty software that delivers current experimentation with automation onsite and in factory settings. On the have either sold up or closed up shop. As ’’ blueprints, project docs, markups, RFIs etc. on synchronised mobile devices. I suspect show-floor, some of the work Autodesk Autodesk drives the subscription model this is the biggest acquisition in Autodesk’s has completed with customers was and increasingly goes direct, the days of history. If there was any doubt about the being demonstrated, including a ship- the small Value Added Reseller (VAR) company’s focus on construction, here’s ping container with two robot arms have been numbered. 875 million reasons to believe them. which had been used to experiment in What we have seen is a number of very The construction market is certainly creating and assembling structures. large resellers have continued, usually heating up with big developers hoping
Autodesk is bringing its knowledge offering expanded services, but many of to get a slice of the market. Oddly, everyfrom the manufacturing space into the these are now struggling with the loss of one seems to be going for the same core AEC world and working with R&D teams margin on commodity product, especial- areas – cloud-based management, cofrom large architecture firms to experi- ly AutoCAD LT. One large and respected ordination and collaboration. I guess ment and build using new materials and European reseller and developer, Graitec, when everyone identifies inefficiencies production methods. Autodesk’s Build broke ranks just before the show to offer in a federated or fractured process, it’s space facility in Boston featured heavily its own, in-house developed IntelliCAD- the go to destination to look for a soluand it now seems to be recognised by based clone called Advance CAD, as an tion. However, there will also be battles architectural firms in the US as a place to alternative to AutoCAD LT for DWG edit- over the construction BIM and how to go and try out the impossible. ing at just £300. (graitec.com/advance-cad). connect design to digital fabrication as This is a significant departure for a chan- well as interoperability – CAD compaAutodesk Forge nel that has traditionally been very loyal. nies have inherently failed to be truly One of the key messages of the conference We expect others to follow. open while preaching that they are. As was that Autodesk web development plat- Perhaps the 2D drawing market will, the battle moves from desktops to the form, Forge, was for developers, dealers, after decades of domination, now see cloud, it will be interesting to see if customers — anyone — to develop and increased competition, with perpetual access to APIs and data is or isn’t shared create their own workflows and products. licences costing a fraction of a full equiva- amongst competitors. It’s taken quite a while to get where it is lent Autodesk subscription. There are a ■ autodesk.com
What AEC?formean blockchain does really
Randall Newton cuts through the hype and explores what impact the distributed database technology could have on BIM, contracts and even people
When the popular business advisers and father-andson team Don and Alex Tapscott turned their attention to blockchain technology in 2016, it set off a firestorm in the business world. “The blockchain is an incorruptible digital ledger of economic transactions that can be programmed to record not just financial transactions but virtually everything of value,” they wrote in “Blockchain Revolution.” The praise was up and down the corporate ranks. No longer was the hype just about Bitcoin, but something more useful. The reaction from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was typical: “This book has had an enormous impact on the evolution of blockchain in the world.”
Fast forward to late 2018. Where are all the blockchain solutions for business? More specifically, where are the blockchains for AEC? To answer, let’s back up a bit. Because hype seems to travel faster than reality, let’s start with definitions.
“Blockchain is a distributed database where many copies of the data are replicated and synchronised,” says Casey Mullen, vice president of technology strategy at Bentley Systems, one of many companies in BIM software examining the use of blockchain tech. “It solves the problem of trust — or lack thereof — among two or more parties.” Data is replicated and synchronised, but not copied, a key distinction. Blockchain offers a new type of Internet, where digital information exists in a state of consensus — not a state of “copied” — among two or more parties.
In financial technology (fintech) circles, blockchain is often called “distributed ledger technology” because the ledger of transactions is distributed among all nodes of a vast peer-to-peer network, generally thousands of computers. The network uses cryptographic techniques to
verify transactions, reward nodes on the toral research, Mathews took a close look ‘proof of handshake’ to prove the BIM network with a tradable token (where at how new technologies could improve Manager, the architect, [and others] agreed cryptocurrency comes from) and prevent collaborative processes between contrac- on the model,” says Gueguen. “We believe corruption of the ledger. The blockchain tors and their supply chain partners. “The this will be able to replace the scattered ledger establishes its trust because every process of procurement seems to be set papers-and-signatures process with an copy of the ledger must always be in against trust,” Mathews says. indisputable system.” Bimchain is using agreement with all others. Once written Two years ago Mathews started looking the Ethereum blockchain, the second-largto the ledger, a transaction cannot be at other disciplines for ideas and technol- est cryptocurrency by market capitalisaunwritten. Terms such as “trustless,” ogies. “A convergence of language” led tion and the first to introduce specific “immutable,” and “decentralised” also Mathews to examine blockchain. “I see big smart contract tools to the blockchain ecodescribe blockchain technology. database companies like Oracle and system.
The first blockchain came with Bitcoin, Google taking an interest in design and the digital currency invented by the anon- construction,” Mathews says. “It is a tril- One step at a time ymous programmer(s) known as Satoshi lion-dollar industry ripe for disruption.” “The typical AEC project involves tens if Nakamoto. In Bitcoin the blockchain is a Mathews believes blockchain technology not hundreds of parties,” notes transaction record created by the con- can be the catalyst, despite the distraction Autodesk’s Sheppard. “Unfortunately, stant solving of cryptographic puzzles of Bitcoin as a very public financial phe- the interaction of so many parties can that generate coin. Notes, records, and nomenon. “It colours the public view of lead to confusion. Sometimes this confuagreements can be appended to coin what blockchain is; we need to divorce sion is significant enough to lead to lititransactions. For Bitcoin and other cryp- blockchain from currency. Blockchain will gation. Blockchain is a technology that tocurrencies, those transactions are gen- have more impact in the world than can help reduce confusion and resulting erally buying and selling of the currency. Bitcoin will ever have.” litigation.” Sheppard is quick to point out But it doesn’t have to be. Newer block- that, while Autodesk employees are takchains including Ethereum, Hyperledger, BIM and blockchain ing a close look at blockchain, the compaIOTA, and EOS offer various forms of “BIM is very data-centric, and the best ny is not commenting on any specific “smart contracts” which enable parties to way to establish trust is to trust the data development initiatives that may or may record and monitor transactions. There itself, which is not the case today,” says not exist within the company. Such a cauare ways to minimise or eliminate the use Arnaud Gueguen, co-founder of tious attitude is typical of established of cryptocurrency tokens for such transactions, depending on the blockchain used. ‘‘ Bimchain’s Proof of Contribution module, players in any industry. When the major players in AEC, like Autodesk, Bentley, or Trimble “The basis for blockchain security is encryption,” says Scott Sheppard, a long-time is where contributions, agreements, and validations are certified on the blockchain move into a new technology space, they generally do it by acquisition. researcher and tech evangelist and made part of the Revit BIM model Moving slowly into such with Autodesk Labs who now works in the office of Autodesk’s chief technology officer. The Bimchain.io. The French startup is work’’ potentially disruptive technology is about more than software developers wanting to get it right. encryption uses key pairs, one public ing on a web-based application to track The current methods — as inefficient as and one private. The public key is a ran- communications and commitments they are — are deeply entrenched. domly-generated string of numbers rep- between project participants in the com- “Everyone trusts the old system with its resenting a user’s address on the block- plete design and build ecosystem. The inherent faults, and may even be deeply chain. The private key is like a user’s app will connect directly to Autodesk vested in mitigating those faults,” says password that gives the user access to Revit. Gueguen is seeking beta testers Mathews. “The same or greater level of their assets in the blockchain. As part of willing to use Bimchain on a real project. trust must be demonstrated and mainensuring that assets on the blockchain To Bimchain, trust means “everything tained in any new system in order to be are incorruptible, users must safeguard on the signed paper, not the 3D model,” adopted and lead to commercial success.” their private keys much in the same way says Gueguen. “All the legal signed stuff. The use of blockchain in AEC “is quite a they protect their passwords. All instanc- That was our entry point into the solu- fundamental thing,” says Abel Maciel, a es of cryptocurrency theft happened not tion, trying to connect the contractual director at Design Computation, Ltd., a because somebody hacked the block- paper base with the operational digital London consultancy. Maciel is also a chain, but because they stole private keys data.” Bimchain’s goal is to make the founding director at the Construction or hacked apps that work with block- model the unique source of truth. “Today Blockchain Consortium (CBC) and a faculchain data. BIM data is not contractual; there are ty member associate at the many sources of truth: BIM, PDM, DWG, University College Fragility of trust in AEC paper,” says Gueguen. “We believe using London in both “Trust in the design and construction Revit as the single source of truth will industry is a very fragile thing,” notes make the model far better.” Malachy Mathews, a senior lecturer in Bimchain’s first step is a Proof of architecture at the Dublin Institute of Contribution module, where contribuTechnology. The industry is “not tions, agreements, and validaset up to deal with trusting rela- tions are certified on the blocktionships, even though we need chain and made part of the them.” While doing doc- Revit BIM model. “It is a
architecture and blockchain tech- long it took BIM to hit the 50% tipping Mathews. “Why wouldn’t we have a facilnologies. “There is so much point in design firms, blockchain adop- ity to comment on people we have improvisation in construction now. Things tion has a long road ahead. worked with? This changes the dynamic arrive on the job site wrong, broken, or not “It is all a bit theoretical and hypotheti- of the working relationship.” Mathews as ordered.” Maciel gives the example of cal at the moment,” notes Mathews, “but I foresees a system whereby coin is awardcast pipes and folded ducts. They have think there is merit in it.” Mathews ed to suppliers by clients “like merit very different performance purposes, are believes, that like most AEC technologies, badges not currency.” Contractors could used for different things, but they look it will be clients that drive adoption not win new work based on certified reputaidentical and sometimes come from the practitioners. “How did the handshake tions written onto a blockchain. same factory and can be mislabelled. If the develop? It was simple. I have a chicken, “Construction has been notorious for duct is used in a high-pressure applica- you have the beans. We hold hands to not only inefficiencies and ineffectiveness tion, it could explode. make the exchange.” Blockchain as the but also for traditionally importing inno-
“How do we avoid such a problem?” new transactional handshake will vations from other sectors and adopting asks Maciel. “Blockchain could de-risk the require AEC firms holding the deliveries them in an ad-hoc manner,” notes Eleni process.” A tightly controlled manufac- and clients holding the money to be will- Papadonikolaki, a researcher at UCL turing environment could be certified and ing to “shake” on the trustless, immuta- Bartlett School. She foresees blockchain posted to the blockchain. The result could ble, decentralised record found on their being just one of several new technologies be “de-risking the construction process blockchain. “There can still be independ- gaining adoption. ‘The Internet of Things, and creating a better designed asset. The tendering process would be accu‘‘ Today BIM data is not contractual; there are Artificial Intelligence, and BIM all promise to provide simplification, transparenrate, with real costs.” By using Ethereum smart contract technology, “we can many sources of truth: BIM, PDM, DWG, paper. We believe using Revit as the single cy, and an accountability chain not only to the transactions across the construcmove away from the idea of source of truth will make the model far better tion supply chain but ‘every two weeks of signing Arnaud Gueguen, Bimchain.io also for the interactions is good enough.’ We can build a smart contract to trigger payments based on validation.” ent operators from project to project but ’’ between physical and digital systems.” The construction industry in US and
Maciel and Robert Aish, known to they will have trust among the group. UK are “notorious for being largely many as the father of generative design They won’t be tied to legacy necessities. adversarial.” The hierarchical nature of technology, are working through the CBC Interesting things could happen.” contracting relationships is also an issue, to launch three open source projects relat- But is blockchain the answer? “We Papadonikolaki notes, especially at a ed to BIM and blockchain. One for distrib- must always ask, ‘is blockchain better time when network relations are proving uted financing, one for smart procure- than the current solution?’” says to be more efficient. Blockchain could ment, and one “most ambitious” project Mathews. The three crucial elements of help eliminate the doubt and mistrust. related to the use of blockchain, machine blockchain — a record of value transac- “The supply chain map is a mess. It is a learning, and BIM for design processes. tions, the formation of consensus, and the ‘blame the customer, don’t trust, don’t coin or token — are all needed. In block- share’ environment.” What’s next? chain the coin or token is the incentive, Blockchain for AEC is neither pie-in-the but the incentive does not have to be Randall S. Newton is USA Contributing sky or pie-on-my-plate at this moment. money. Mathews thinks reputation can Editor for AEC Magazine, and managing But the day is close when AEC firms can be tokenised in AEC. “Reputation is a director of Consilia Vektor, a business advisory try out applications and see how they currency. Look at Uber, Airbnb and oth- service working at the nexus of blockchain and might improve workflows. Based on how ers offering comments on services,” says design-based industries.
Not waiting for the academics
Not everyone who thinks blockchain for AEC is a great idea are working through the theory or creating consortiums; entrepreneurs are hard at work. The following list should not be considered as an endorsement; due diligence is always prudent when considering new technology. Most of these companies are actively seeking investment funding as well as working on their products.
Buildcash (USA) says its new cryptocurrency product “is freely tradable digital money, developed to revolutionise the construction industry through real-time, peer-to-peer payments of goods and services.” (buildcash.com)
Bopti (France) is a cryptocurrency from the makers of Batopti construction management platform. The French company claims “a leading European insurance company” is supporting the initiative. (bopti.io)
CustomCoin (Switzerland) is a project to streamline the formation of capital for construction. (ccnowpro.com)
Builderium (Switzerland) is building a reverse engine bidding system to connect clients to contractors. (builderium.io) BitRent (UK) is building a cryptocurrency platform to help users “land reliable investment deals” for construction. (bitrent.uk)
Etch (UK) is focusing on construction as one of the primary users of its blockchain-based payroll platform. It is working with the global accounting firm KPMG and the Construction Blockchain Consortium mentioned previously. (etch.work)
