Part II: Upendra Dharmadhikary talks to about the Internet of Things in construction

In the second part of the interview, UK Construction Online’s Abigail Burr talks to Upendra Dharmadhikary about IoT in the construction industry, BIM and the workforce.

Upendra has over 24 years of experience of business transformation consulting, the design and delivery of enterprise business solutions including Business Process Management and emerging digital technologies. An Engineering Graduate from NIT, he also holds an MSc (Telecom) from the University of London and is a certified ITIL professional. He also chaired the BPM Technical Forum for 3 years in the Tele Management Forum. Upendra has played a key role in defining and implementing digital service transformation roadmaps for various Telco’s and Enterprise verticals and has set up a Customer Experience Centre at Milton Keynes, UK. He is now leading the SMART CITY initiatives for Tech Mahindra and defining Innovative Digital solutions for Citizens and Businesses.

Can you tell me a little bit about the Internet of Things?

The internet has been around for years but the cost of networking has now become cheaper, meaning low cost networking is now available. We still have some challenges when construction takes us to very rural places and we end up with different layers of connections to help you connect to the internet. We add the intelligence and the machine learning so that things can make decisions for you and rather than having to collect all the data and go through much longer processes, and so we save a lot of time. An example is the nest, the learning thermostat, which really takes you to a different level of maturity.

How can the IoT help manage change within construction projects?

The IoT can help across the entire life cycle of a project. An example could be looking at design validation. Lets imagine you’ve done the design and you go to the area of land where you know the project is being built.The whole design of the place is probably done by architects who have designed and created visuals and models. That whole area can change with the I0T because we can show a 3D model done in real time. It’s very easy to use virtual reality in the design, and through the virtual reality, be able to see how long it will take for a elderly man to walk across the platform, how close by the toilets are in case of emergency, etc..You could be getting real-time data information on the progress. A lot of data is managed through different methods. Mobile phones can capture images and videos, and IoT can provide you with input, and show the progress of the construction project. Once the project has been executed, service management is priority. The building needs air-conditioning, checking the occupancy of the building. IoT will give a huge amounts of data points.

How does this fit in with BIM?

IoT and BIM fit hand in hand, but we ask ourselves how we can mature on the BIM level and have the IoT connected. People have gone to level one, many are at level 2. With IoT it allows the physical model, and the logical model with the BIM solutions and software. It’s just a question of how to connect the two.

What further advancements do you envisage over the next five years or so?

Making a very bold statement here, what I see is that we could reduce 40% of the cost of executing the projects by using digital software solutions. Some of the mega projects like HS2 have major cost overruns, and when I see that, it’s clear that the estimations, pricing, productivity, side productivity and are inaccurate, and I think these are the areas we are going to be very helpful in.

What response do the innovations get from workers on site? Do you find they are willing to embrace new methods and technology?

I think there is a challenge and we will have two sets of people. One set will struggle to accept these changes but I tell them, who doesn’t want a new iPhone or Samsung? Who says they want to switch off the digital TV and go back to an analogue radio? You will get a better wage, exert yourself less and yet get a better output from it for everyone. The technologies are providing a comforting, and an intelligent way of doing surveys and executing projects.

For Part I of the interview, please click here

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