November 20198 IN MY V EWThe digital revolution has transformed industries as diverse as finance, health, media, law, and manufacturing. Now, digital transformation is disrupting the infrastructure industry, with new tools and processes enabling greater awareness of asset condition and performance and the potential for much-improved asset management.What will this digital transformation look like? Exciting technologies like robotics, artificial intelligence, and AR/VR may be the first things that come to mind, but information is the golden thread that joins everything together. We need to recognise that infrastructure is an information-based industry in which better decisions based on better data lead to better performing assets, with benefits to our clients, their customers, and wider society. This `information value chain' demonstrates a direct connection between data and outcomes. So we need to start treating information as an asset, with coherent digital transformation strategies in place to unlock the value of the information at all stages of the delivery process.The value of informationDigital transformation applies to every aspect of the built environment; not just the delivery of new infrastructure, but also the operation, maintenance and use of existing assets. Building information modelling (BIM) can be seen as a key foundation of digital delivery, which is why the UK government mandated it for public projects, and many private clients followed suit. Digital component catalogues are increasingly popular, and it is easy to imagine end-to-end delivery platforms that could facilitate digital design and delivery across the industry. In the coming years, it would be good to see the delivery process looking more INFORMATION: INFRASTRUCTURE'S MOST VALUABLE ASSETMark EnzerBY MARK ENZER CHIEF TECHNICAL OFFICER, MOTT MACDONALD
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