International Construction Conference to showcase the future

International Construction Conference to showcase the future

An international construction conference being held in Auckland early next year will showcase leading edge technology, construction innovation, practices and methods that have the potential to transform the sector and improve our built environment.

The ‘Constructing our World - People, Performance, Purpose’ conference will take place from 22-24 March 2017 and is being hosted by the New Zealand Institute of Building (NZIOB) in collaboration with the Australian Institute of Building (AIB) and the Singapore Institute of Building (SIBL). Subsequent international construction conferences will occur in Australia in 2019 and Singapore in 2021.

NZIOB chief executive Malcolm Fleming said, “There is a global groundswell underway that is rapidly changing the construction industry. Across the supply chain, construction is becoming increasingly technology rich and innovation focused. The ‘Constructing our World’ conference will bring speakers who are at the forefront of these changes to New Zealand to share how the next wave of construction ‘best practice’ could transform the sector and our built environment.

“Like the NZIOB, the AIB and SIBL uniquely represent the entire construction sector in their home countries. This conference is therefore an exciting opportunity for the NZIOB and our Asia Pacific partners to showcase global construction trends across the supply chain.”

‘Constructing our World’ will feature speakers from Australia, Hong Kong, Sweden, the UK, Singapore, South Africa and the USA, in addition to leading New Zealand industry representatives.

One of the conference’s keynote speakers is David Philp, an early adopter of practical change and purposeful collaboration. David is Global Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Information Management Consultancy Director for AECOM, the international engineering design and services firm.

He will discuss international best practice and the lessons learned from the UK BIM mandate. The UK’s Government Construction Strategy has made BIM mandatory for all Government projects since April 2016. This has resulted in a marked uptake of BIM so that the UK now ranks alongside Singapore, USA and Scandinavia (in particular Finland) in terms of BIM usage. BIM enables all those who are involved in the Design, Documentation, and Delivery of construction projects to optimize their actions, resulting in a greater whole life value for the asset.

Helena Lidelow, Associate Professor at the Lulea University of Technology in Sweden, is another confirmed keynote speaker. She will present on ‘Industrialised construction in Sweden - from single-family homes to multi-family buildings’.

Helena is the Platform Manager at Lindbacks, Sweden’s leader in the industrialised construction of apartment buildings. Helena believes that a “systems builder must manage technology, the building process, and the business situation simultaneously. The balance between the three is more important to master than optimising each of them separately.”

She has a PhD from Lulea University of Technology on timber structures and has been teaching part-time at Lulea as an Associate Professor since 2009.

Dr George Quezada from Australia is an innovation scientist with CSIRO I Data61. His keynote presentation is titled ‘Scenarios for the future of construction’. George will present findings from a recent scenario planning study on the future of Queensland’s construction industry, the Farsight Report. This project, undertaken in partnership with Construction Skills Queensland, engaged 80 leading experts across the state.

The Farsight Report asked what the industry could look like in 20 years’ time, and how might job profiles and skills requirements change? To explore answers to these questions, four scenarios were developed: the digital evolution; smart collaboration; globally challenged; and the rise of the robots. The future of the construction landscape under these scenarios is barely recognisable from today. This presentation will discuss important implications and strategies for navigating this digital age.

NZIOB acknowledge the support of platinum conference sponsors GIB® and AECOM.

Malcolm Fleming said, “Constructing our World’ is an exciting opportunity for the NZIOB and our Asia Pacific partners. We are aiming to provide access to global construction trends that will enable our members to innovate and build ‘better, faster, cheaper’ and so deliver an affordable, sustainable and quality built environment for New Zealand.”

ENDS

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