37 Convening and collaboration on digital transformation
really important to select and integrate technology wisely as part of the wider solution.” Individual organizations
contemplating digitalization need to be prepared to embrace change, says Mark. “Digital transformation does involve change and you need to be upfront about that. It means moving from where you are now to a better place. And to do that intentionally, you need a strategy, a roadmap, because it requires prioritization, focus, making choices and investing in the right areas.” Digital transformation at a sector
level presents a different set of challenges: “If every organization goes through digital transformation in isolation we will end up with businesses in digital silos. What it needs is more coordination and collaboration. A great example of this is what the Infrastructure Client Group is doing with ‘enterprise digital transformation strategies’ – encouraging shared strategies across a client’s supplier ecosystem. “Fundamentally, the industry needs to share and adopt good practice. And there is already plenty of good practice in the industry – there are businesses doing brilliant things – but
the greatest challenge is to get the wider industry to adopt the good practice that already exists, rather than reinventing the wheel.” Mark says standards will play a massive part in this, but the speed of digital development challenges standards-makers to codify good practice that keeps pace with new processes and ways of working, and in a format that can be readily shared. “You can’t wait for good practice
that’s settled over 20 years,” says Mark. “In the world of data and digital, you have to identify good practice on the fly and share it quickly. So, it’s encouraging that BSI has developed agile standards that are able to take feedback onboard as new learning comes along and share it quickly.” Mark acknowledges that part of the
problem with the uptake of digital transformation in the construction industry is that so many of the businesses that work in it are small, often just ‘a person and a van’. “The challenge is to show SMEs that standards are actually enablers and not just bureaucracy. We’ve got to change that narrative. As a sector, we need to communicate more effectively that good practice is out there in the form of standards.”
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Mark distinguishes between bottom-up standards where you ‘learn by doing and progress by sharing’, and top-down standards, which are more expert-driven. In the former category he includes guidance, agile standards and PASs. “These are hugely impactful and important facilitators of change”, says Mark. “However, there is also a need for
top-down standards, particularly in areas such as secure data sharing, where we need standards to ensure systems can interact with each other – you can’t have 100 different ways of
Digital transformation in the
construction sector needs collaboration across the industry
doing interoperability. “BSI has a major role to play as a convenor, bringing people together to develop standards related to data, and then getting them shared and widely adopted.”
Mark concludes, “Ultimately, digitalization can help us to address the really big existential challenges that we face like climate change. But achieving net zero, climate resilience and a circular economy are all systemic challenges that simply can’t be solved in silos. That’s why digital transformation also needs collaboration across the industry.”
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