The COVID-19-induced crisis has undoubtedly impacted our day-to-day lives, and that may well be the understatement of 2020. The Coronavirus outbreak has not only derailed the global economy, but has also disrupted our habitual way of conducting business amidst the nationwide lockdown. As most of the population around the world is practising social distancing, its effect has completely halted in-person communication and collaboration.
On the economic side of things, entire industries are trying to cope by finding ways to serve their customers, sustain their employees and maintain cash flows. Although these circumstances have stirred perplexity in the minds of individuals around the world, certain industries don’t necessarily have to come to a standstill in this time – including several components of the building industry, which may come as a surprise to many.
Despite being one of the fastest-growing sectors of investment worldwide – and the crucial nature of the output it produces – the building industry still relies largely on conventional methodologies, inefficient workflows, and regrettably outdated modes of communication and coordination. This lag in the adoption of key technological interventions to facilitate communication and collaboration has caused operations within the industry to come to a grinding halt with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Necessity necessitates invention – and innovation, of course. As we face a global crisis, new solutions are emerging every day to keep business running as usual. One of these solutions – that offers immense promise – is immersive technology, especially within the building industry.
Let us dwell on what ‘immersive technology’ really means: it refers to technology that strives to simulate a physical world through the means of an interactive and intuitive interface that provides a sensory immersion. Immersive tech has the potential of becoming one of the most useful tools for design communication. As quick and effective communication and streamlined collaboration become the need of the hour, immersive technology is giving people the opportunity to work remotely without a hitch.One of the key offerings of this technology is its ability to ensure virtual co-location of teams: at a time when we can no longer meet in person to ensure the transmission of key messages, immersive tech makes it possible to transfer our carefully calibrated work cultures into the virtual world, and remain efficient. These offerings are pertinent not only to the lockdown period: up to two-thirds of all projects in the building industry suffer from time and cost overruns due to communication gaps, and this has been a recurring challenge. This also includes the frequent pain point of all designers and architects – the gap between what clients approve on paper, and what they want from the end-product. A simple reason for this gap is a client’s inability to perceive space from the 2D media of drawings and renderings – and frequent iterations to match expectations become an unavoidable toll on project resources.
It is here that immersive tech can help – by making the switch from an individual’s visualization of data, to a uniform interpretation for all stakeholders. In an immersive environment, all project stakeholders can ‘walk’ inside the project before it is built, and perceive the space uniformly. By ensuring that everyone has the same depth of understanding of project data, we can facilitate reduced errors, faster and better decision-making, and ultimately greater business impact and profitability.
At present, immersive tech comprises AR (Augmented Reality) and VR (Virtual Reality). Of these, AR still has some way to go before mass adoption in the building industry, while VR is closer to being used on a day-to-day basis in design and construction. From paper drawings to computer drafting to 3D modeling, the next potential avenue is naturally that of total immersion. Promising new integrations within this domain – such as the availability of exhaustive libraries of virtual twins of real catalogue products, and BIM (Building Information Modelling) data compatibility – will only make this technology more viable, lockdown or not. In fact, in this period of crucial social distancing and self-isolation, where physical mock-ups and on-site prototyping are no longer viable, such online libraries are already adding a layer of accuracy to design projects without the added cost of shipping materials and iteratively fine-tuning specifications over extended periods.
In this challenging time, embracing new technology is the key to working with our teams without delays, interruptions or miscommunications. Immersive technology can play a major role in transforming the building industry, regardless of the lockdown – by empowering each stakeholder to take better decisions, hence saving time and money, and at the same time offering a global reach through a truly transformative way of experiencing, reviewing, and modifying projects before they are even built.
(Source: Economic Times)
