DBL Symposium 2018

A summary

Last 25 and 26th October 2018 I attended the Annual Symposium on BuiltTech of the Digital Building Laboratory of Georgia Tech in Atlanta, organised, among many, by Prof. Dennis Shelden (Gehry Partners, Gehry Technologies, MIT)

This is the second edition of the symposium and it was my second attendance. I really think is a great opportunity to discover and discuss BIM, digital design and technological construction trends in a small-sized, almost intimate event, with top-notch speakers and presenters.

This year’s motto was Data Experience and Environment, and over the two days of sessions, panels and conferences we covered many angles around BuiltTech leadership and the state of the art of BIM, reality capture, startups and construction. You can access the recordings of all sessions in the DBL’s Facebook Page. What follows below are my notes on the ideas and experiences shown.

A brief summary of the DBL Symposium 2018

The symposium presented a great mix of roles and interests, from designers, artists, academics and engineers to contractors, specialty subcontractors, lawyers, software developers and investors. We could describe it as an INDUSTRY gathering, with top players like Gensler and Skanska represented but even so, my feeling is that the notion of sector, of industry, is very fragile compared to others, it is certainly stronger that in Europe, not to say Spain, but the size of the event and the audience makes me think the vision of BuiltTech is not mature yet in the USA. To me this means the opportunity is huge.

As happens in other sectors, the event gave a great deal of importance to entrepreneurship and private investment for capital endeavors. Larry Harper from Stanley Black & Decker Ventures said they were aware of the fact that less and less graduates want to come a work with the old boring construction player so they have to invest in smaller companies to be able to be part of ongoing innovation. I wished we saw an equivalent view in Europe. There were many mentions to WeWork (with a business and delivery model that raises dozens of doubts in me) and Katerra and smaller companies were able to present, like Tonic DM, Hypar, Hosta and Cove Tool.

As happened last year, and despite I am not really interested in the VC culture, the panel about Ventures in the Built Environment seemed amazing to me. Ian Howell (Built Environment Strategies) provided a panoramic view of the opportunities for investors and companies in our sector. With a complementary spirit Reg Prentice of Tonic DM acknowledged that his company was self funded -bootstrapped- as it would need to navigate a slow changing sector. So yes, there is a big opportunity for returns but you need a long, long term vision. That takes a completely different kind of investor.

On the digital professional practice, nothing radically new: Islay Burgess from Gensler, David Epps from Winter Construction , Hannu Lindberg from DPR, Tim Dumatrait from WeWork and Mike Carrancho from Smithsonian shared their organisational approach and technical advances. The digitalisation of top practices has been strong in the USA for years and I guess the next frontier lies in making the information flow across stages. Of all the keynotes only WeWork showed some success about it, but with such an amazing rate of growth I guess not everything is gold.

A common thought that surfaced in almost every panel were the consequences of robotization in the construction site. The threat of losing jobs was confronted by the opportunities for improvement and reduced risks arising from the application of robots.

On the closing panel, but also with other scattered sessions across the two days, the DBL Symposium tried to throw some “outside-the-box” inputs with Cyber-Physical Experiences. I really liked the work of Situ Studio as presented by Brad Samuels and Novel Projects, as presented by Jonathan Proto, and found attractive the presentations by Refik Anadol on Media Arts and Teresa Hull from Visual Workhorse on Lighting. Go and check them.

Personal Takeaways

The DBL Symposium is not a large, well established event yet, but under the appeal of Prof. Dennis Shelden and Prof. Chuck Eastman it managed to gather in one small room some of the finest BuiltTech in the world. For me it was a unique access opportunity.

Europe is almost irrelevant to the BuiltTech industry in the US.

We need to foster a shared vision for BuilTech, including all types of players, mostly private, and support small companies with investment opportunities. In Spain we have some of the largest construction companies of the world, we should convince them to play along.

Modelical Takeaways

I also take advantage of these conferences to break away from the routine of the office and think about what’s next? I recognise three main learnings for our company:

There is a need for more Case Incs out there. Companies that help others be more digital and that eventually start integrating solutions themselves. Let’s follow that path.

There is much more than BIM to the industry. Just pick two or three technologies and combine them, the opportunity is huge!

The US is a huge market, and even if another recession hits, there is so much room for improvement that it seems logical to be around in some way or another.

See you in Atlanta next year!