Digital Built Environment
"It is not the strongest of the species that survives but the most adaptable."
Charles Darwin
Working Group Initiatives
The construction sector is the largest industrial sector with a portion of approx. 10% of the entire European GDP. Changes brought around by „virtual planning, production and operation“ will have the largest economical impact across the whole European construction market. This is especially the case when it is taken into account that the construction industry has under-proportionally participated in developing new technology in this area.
The planning and production methods of other industrial sectors, such as the automobile or the shipbuilding industry, have been subject to fundamental changes in the past years. The core element of this change is virtual product development using computer models. Before a product is produced it has already been designed and constructed in 3D within a virtual environment. This makes it possible to do sustainable analysis and calculations over the entire product life cycle at a very early stage, i.e. from the design idea right up to the final disposal of the product. Especially by simulating the production process and the operation period products can be optimised. These developments will not take halt before the construction industry.
ENCORD member companies are prepared to face the challenge of implementing these revolutionary approaches to our way of working.
ENCORD VCP members and other partners have also initiated the 5D Initiative with the goal of describing common requirements of the European construction industry for the development of new innovative tools by the hard and software industry. See the webpage www.5d-initiative.eu for more details.