Why Create Digital Buildings
The construction industry has long been dominated by traditional, labor-intensive methods. These practices result in low industrialization, inefficient production, excessive resource waste, and high construction costs. Such challenges severely hinder national transformation, upgrading, innovation, and development strategies. Faced with pressing issues like green transformation, an aging population, and rising labor costs, the transformation of the construction industry has become a national development priority. Simultaneously, advancements in the Internet, big data, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence have ushered in a new era of digital construction. Under these pressures, the shift from industrialization to digitization in construction is inevitable.
Policies Driving the Transformation to Digital Buildings
In recent years, the country has clearly prioritized the innovative use of digital technologies. National strategies now emphasize big data, the Internet, and artificial intelligence. The focus on the digital economy and the vision of a digital China demonstrate a strong commitment to building a networked, intelligent society in the new era.
Data shows that the digital economy accounts for a significant portion of China’s GDP — 30.6% — and has created over 2.8 million new jobs. For the construction industry, whether through emerging markets driven by cloud computing, big data, IoT, mobile internet, AI, or through the upgrade of traditional construction sectors, the digital economy presents tremendous new opportunities.
What is Digital Architecture?
Digital buildings are the virtual counterparts of physical structures, representing their digital embodiment. They encompass not only the corresponding physical components but also BIM data, related documents, and the relationships between these data sets. This integrated digital model provides a complete representation, serving as the foundation for driving digital business processes.
Functions and Benefits of Digital Buildings
Digital buildings excel at organizing data. They manage the connections between document data and component data flexibly, as well as the relationships among components themselves. The strength of this organizational capability depends largely on data standardization—the more standardized the data, the more powerful the data management.
Here is an example:
In a tunnel project in the United States involving 600 suppliers and contractors, a simple data platform was developed for data delivery. This platform saved 20 hours of management time per week, reduced report production time by 75%, and increased file transfer speeds by 90%. In another case, a $50 billion project saved over $1.1 billion in costs, and greatly improved review and approval efficiency through work automation. Compared to domestic enterprises, this efficiency gain is expected to grow exponentially.
Current Development Status of Digital Architecture in China
China is the world’s largest construction market, yet many companies still rely on traditional methods, with digital building transformation just beginning. Compared to international developments, the application of digital architecture in China remains scarce. Domestic construction industries often depend on foreign technologies during this transformation, highlighting an urgent need for competitive products and technologies to drive the upgrade from traditional to digital buildings.
The Future of Digital Architecture in China
The recent trade tensions between China and the United States have underscored the importance of core technologies. Owning competitive core technologies prevents dependence on others. The construction industry is no exception. As digital applications abroad gradually become monopolized by software, the consequences are clear. Therefore, self-innovation is essential to develop digital buildings with uniquely “Chinese characteristics.”
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