The future of collaboration in the Construction Industry
Watch the episode on YouTube right here!
We’re not going to scale by hiring more people. That’s not going to happen in the future of the Construction Industry. We have to look at alternative approaches to our work. We need to do more with less. Do more with the people we already have and remove all the inefficiency.
We created a podcast episode: “The future of collaboration in the Construction Industry” with BLOXHUB director in Global Networks & Partnerships, Martine Reinhold Kildeby. Join us when we dig a little deeper into what we believe is going to bring value to the industry in the future.
There is a very important but also very simple key point here:
If everyone in the industry is trying to solve a problem in isolation, we’ll only solve it for ourselves. We won’t understand how it’s affecting everybody else outside the silo we’re working in.
We solve a problem momentarily and just for us.
Who cares what happens to the other stakeholders?
This is the traditional way of looking at problem-solving in our industry. But if we cooperated more we could all benefit from getting the specific challenge solved. And clearly see the gaps in the market.
This could open up for new partnerships and innovation journeys – but only if we dare collaborate.
That’s why we look towards BLOXHUB today.
In the following article, we’ll discuss:
- What is BLOXHUB, and what is its mission?
- What are the main topics being discussed by BLOXHUB’s clients?
- What does the future look like for BLOXHUB and the Industry?
Why is BLOXHUB the place to go if you want to understand the future of collaboration?
What is BLOXHUB, and what is its mission?
BLOXHUB is a nonprofit organization.
The original idea of BLOXHUB was to move the Construction Industry forward. To make people collaborate in new ways. In the last 8 years it has gained more and more partners within Construction and the Urban environment.
Basically: BLOXHUB is looking into how to create our built environment in the future.
They have a defined mission: To create better, sustainable, more livable and resilient cities worldwide.
Now they collaborate with 400 members – companies, institutions and organizations. Martine hasn’t found any other hub doing exactly what BLOXHUB does. It’s probably the combination of activating all the knowledge and having a focused mission that makes BLOXHUB so unique.
The organization is located in BLOX. This is very essential for the development of their mission.
BLOX has become this hub and place for knowledge sharing because the building contains a huge amount of organizations and companies from the Industry.
In the last 5 years Martine have seen changes like:
– Different stakeholders discussing challenges with each other.
– The willingness to put some competition aside in order to learn from each other.
– The big key players in the Danish Building and Construction Industry have gone together and asked for more regulation from the ministries in order to give them an equal base to live up to more ambitious standards.
As previously mentioned: BLOXHUB now have 400 members. They are able to make huge changes.
But what about these members?
What’s on their minds?
What are the main topics being discussed by BLOXHUB’s clients?
Worldwide, some stakeholders are still discussing whether there is value in information management.
But over the last 15 years, BLOXHUB have shown the world that there is value in this type of change. A lot of BLOXHUB’s clients have already moved beyond questioning the value in information management towards asking “when” and “how” they should implement these changes.
The key question being: “How do we scale”?
Luckily, many companies are working within this area today, and scalability is very much on everybody’s minds.
At workshops with BLOXHUBS stakeholders, they discuss the questions on how to scale, and how to share the risks of doing it. Essential questions, when we look at the need of labor force in the industry. We need more people, but there aren’t enough.
That’s why we must look towards a digital mindset. And even more importantly:
We have to change our way of processing data.
To be able to think data in new ways, we have to ask questions like:
- How do we use the data we collect?
- How do we optimize the collaboration between people working with data?
- How do we change the way we present this data so we can use it across different stakeholders?
Basically: we need more focus on the soft skills.
When you know who you’re presenting to, and what they are asking for, then you can start to create and gather the specific data.
This is one of the biggest shifts in the industry: Not necessarily the digitization but the mindset in changing the ways we used to do things.
Keep reading if you want to hear suggestions for the future of the Industry.
What does the future look like for BLOXHUB and the Industry?
BLOXHUB will keep working to increase collaboration across borders.
They already have a lot of work in the USA and Japan. Countries, which are looking towards Europe for new strategies to implement in their industry.
USA and Japan are definitely ahead of us in other areas, so this is also an opportunity to learn from each other and to create new solutions together.
BLOXHUB will also prioritize the soft skills even more.
Soft skills, as previously mentioned, are something the whole industry have to look into in the near future. Something, which will make it possible to fill in the gaps between solutions, and all the different stakeholders making decisions and implementing those same solutions.
That’s why the main role for BLOXHUB, is to be the glue between all the stakeholders.
A glue, which will continue to tie the Danish Industry to international players.
The industry in Denmark has a good chance of staying ahead in both the digital transition and in soft skills because Denmark is already very digitalized. But as for the Danes as much as for the rest of the world:
The key to the future is communication.