Digital construction is evolving every day

'The management of health and safety (H&S) information in the construction industry is often unstructured, disconnected, and complicated' says Joseph Mady CEO of Digital Construction Technologies Group

What's your name?

Joseph Mady

What’s your current job?

CEO of Digital Construction Technologies Group

How long have you held the position?

I have been in the current position for just under two years now.

Can you describe your daily work routine?

Highly variable as my role often requires travel for either customer or business development opportunities. In addition, it can require travelling to the site to monitor the progress of our large projects.

What is your professional background?

I started my time as an electrician, then headed back into college and attained a BEng Tech and BSc degrees in Electrical Engineering Services Design and an MSc in Applied Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Management. I am a member of the CIF 4.0 Committee (which looks at all policy developments and matters in the area of lean construction, BIM, innovation and continuous improvement), a member of the NSAI Technical Committee on BIM and a member of the CitA BIM Eastern Region Steering Committee. I am also a part-time lecturer at TU Dublin, lecturing on the Construction Site Management Degree.

You are speaking at the forthcoming 2019 CIF Health and Safety Summit in Croke Park, Dublin. What is the focus of your talk?

Our round table discussion will aim to review the use of building information modelling and digital technologies to enhance progress on health and safety on site. Furthermore, the collaborative sharing of structured health and safety information throughout the project and asset life-cycles.

What have been your highlights in business over the past year?

DCT Group has experienced considerable expansion over the past year with employment growing from 1 to over 20 in that time. Now, with offices in Ireland, Argentina and our staff working remotely in South Africa and Croatia, DCT Group has built up a reputation as the leaders in the virtual design and construction arena in a very short period of time.

In order to be at the forefront of digital construction, we must be strategically innovating to ensure we deliver the best service to our clients. Utilising the latest state-of-the-art hardware and software our experienced, knowledgeable and highly trained teams enable DCT to provide our clients with the highest level of cutting-edge digital expertise.

What’s next for your company?

Our business is now very much focused around making ourselves a diversified, global organisation that is not confined to any particular sector or region.

Due to a massive skills shortage in relation to digital construction or knowledgeable BIM staff in Ireland, we were forced to go abroad to meet growing demand from our clients for our expert digital services. The company is still very much committed to its Dublin roots and the head office will remain located in Glasnevin. We endeavour to raise the awareness of digital technology throughout the construction industry, we have been attracting more projects from markets outside of Ireland, particularly across Europe. Our new offices in Argentina and Croatia allow us to engage with a diverse range of international clients.

What is your opinion are the key obstacles for innovation in the health and safety sector?

The management of health and safety (H&S) information in the construction industry is often unstructured, disconnected, and complicated. It is not uncommon for the management of H&S information to be done with spreadsheets and transferred between parties via email. While this approach may work on some smaller projects, it becomes increasingly difficult to remember who owns each risk and what they need to do to mitigate it on larger ones that could have hundreds or even thousands of risks. If the industry is further digitised it may lead to structured data been utilised in real-time in the cloud to reduce waste, save time. track lessons learned and enable our construction sites to be safer places to work.

How do you see the industry being changed by digital disruption over the coming decade?

Digital construction is evolving every day and will continue to do so as the hardware we utilise develops and the rate at which we can share information in the form of the new 5G technology can be utilised improves. This in addition to the software that we use within the construction industry is always developing to allow us to transition the information generated during the construction of the building for utilisation with its digital twin allowing the building owner to utilise this information for the full life cycle of the building.

Joseph Mady is moderating a roundtable discussion at the CIF’s 2019 Health & Safety Summit on Nov 12 in Croke Park.

Seewww.cifsafety.ie

for full details.