Tomorrow’s ocean freighters may convey hospitals across the seas, pre-fabricated and “flat packed” to be assembled on-site after delivery.

Operations:

Ubiquitous digital connectivity, cloud computing and “big data” will combine to make 2030’s buildings much more aware, adaptive and useful.  Building services and operations will be driven not by today’s crude implements, such as switches and thermostats, but by complete digital “nervous systems” integrated into the very fabric of the construction.

Embedded sensors will allow the project to “feel” how it is operating and respond to specific conditions of occupancy, weather, energy availability, even maintenance state.  Mechanical components -- air handlers, for example -- will “call for help” to the building management system when sensors within the devices, realize that bearings are about to fail or the unit is operating outside of design parameters. 

Connected to the cloud, a host of such sensors will help the building accumulate knowledge about itself and “learn” to optimize its performance—all of which would have been predicted and benchmarked in the original, model-based simulation when the design was created.  Perhaps collections of such “aware” buildings could compile their performance data into “super sets” that would both record their performance history and provide a rich database for each building to learn more about optimization strategies. 

And of course, system failures of all sorts—from the need to replace carpet to compromises in structural integrity—will be anticipated long before serious problems occur.  The industry will collect this information for reference on future projects.

What This Means to the Industry:

I expect we’ll see changes within the industry along two complementary but orthogonal axes: Design and Construction/Assembly and Operations.  All will become more complex and require much higher levels of specialized engineering and design skills, with greater specialization deployed on every project. 

Working alongside architects and engineers will be data wranglers who collect, organize and maintain the vast amounts of information that will flow.  At the same time, the segregated silos of design, construction and assembly will require integration with fewer hard barriers between companies, business models and risk management strategies.

We’ll all need to get much savvier about both the bits of the design and construction world, and well as the big picture

The business structures to support this will likely look quite different from today, too. The business case behind the evolution will have evolved since building performance will be accurately predictable, value will be defined based not on lowest first cost, but on actual,  performative outcomes.

The companies that can deliver deep technical competency, great design, precise and careful construction and assembly, and generate profits from how well their projects perform, will lead the way to this future.