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MEMBER ASSOCIATIONS, RESPONSE, CHALLENGES AND ADVOCACY - 7 April 2020

The first in FIDIC’s series of Covid-19 webinars, which took place on Tuesday 7 April, was an outstanding success with around 500 participants from around the world attending.

The webinar was aimed at FIDIC member associations (MAs) and their members to better understand how MAs and firms are responding to the current crisis and how they are adapting their activities going forward given the ramifications and implications of COVID-19.

Chaired by FIDIC CEO Nelson Ogunshakin, webinar speakers included John Gamble, president and CEO of ACEC Canada, Nicola Grayson, CEO, Consult Australia, FIDIC president Bill Howard, Maurizio Boi, vice-president of the Italian member association, OICE and Prashant Kapila, chief operating officer, Intercontinental Consultants & Technocrats, India. The speakers shared their experiences from across the world and offered help and guidance to member associations and firms facing the challenge of dealing with the current crisis.

The gravity of the COVID-19 crisis was laid bare by all the webinar speakers as they each outlined the situation in their respective countries, highlighting the current number of coronavirus cases and deaths. This was a sobering moment during the webinar and put the issues being discussed into perspective.

FIDIC president Bill Howard and CEO Nelson Ogunshakin opened the webinar by praising the FIDIC staff for arranging a large number of COVID-19 webinars in such a short period of time. FIDIC was doing its best to provide its members and the wider industry with as much relevant information as possible on the crisis and help the consultancy and engineering sector deal with the significant challenges it currently faces.

In Coronavirus era "Collaboration is inevitable not just necessary"

Eng. Maurizio Boi, CEO of Tecnolav Engineering and TE.x Srl and vicepresident of OICE - Italy has been invited in FIDIC online webinar panel to discuss about MA[1]’s response and challenges and advocacy from Italy which is one of the countries hardly affected by Covid19 in the world. While most of the speakers were talking about the measures taken by government to support the member firms financially and to plan for after Covid19 economy collapse as an opportunity, Eng. Boi was the only speaker who instead of giving statistics or surrendering to economy crisis, has proposed a feasible solution to use during this period to save consulting Engineering industry. He highlighted his speech with this sentence: In today's Coronavirus era "Collaboration is inevitable not just necessary".

He introduced the solution as follows.

SCORE, Smart Collaborative Engineering is a block chain based platform designed for exponential engineering.

It is a smart collaborative platform for remote working. Remote Collaboration is not something that is improvised, but rather it is the result of a well-structured project, requiring focus on results, to be distinguished from simply work done with others. Furthermore, Remote Collaboration does not necessarily have to be just between people that is why we have bet on the Blockchain, which has the potential to transform the construction sector by creating the right ecosystem where machines and people can interact and collaborate. Blockchain helps us to be transparent and trustful within information exchanges and this “Cognitive Collaboration” makes it possible to use robotics and 3d-printing in construction phase.

As an operative example of Smart Working, an exponential organization that uses an agile core team of 15 employees can have a network of 1,300 technicians which is equivalent to 600 people in a traditional company.

To create an innovative and efficient ecosystem for the implementation of engineering works,

There are two platforms used, Collengworld - the community where professionals and organizations interact and Score - the collaborative platform where projects are elaborated.

The collaboration becomes Smart through implementing new technologies such as Using match algorithms for Optimizing research and information costs, by using Smart Contract to reduce costs necessary to reach, draft and manage contractual agreements and by Using an effective reputation measurement system we can manage the reliability  of the parties involved.

In Score, the main participants of Smart Contract are the Producer, Performers and Verifiers. The Smart Contract steps are, first to define project goals then the service development, the quality control and the last step is the final delivery and fee payment.

The big Room is the real or virtual place where collaborative engineering projects are elaborated. The platform is designed to create a virtual assembly line for collaborative processing by facilitating coordination among the stakeholders. The Exponential Project Manager leads the digital assembly line via the digital dashboard and has all project monitoring and progress data available in real time. By active planning of the project, each team receives the daily tasks to be carried out directly on their computer in accordance with previously coordinated and agreed upon schemes. The information network is coordinated by a dedicated team. The latest technologies are available, such as BIM and virtual reality that can be used as visualization and simulation tools.

You could find more information on EFCA[2] FUTURE TRENDS 2018 –2019 -2020 booklet.

And to conclude Eng. Boi added : «The digital assembly line is an extraordinary instrument to manage smart working during a Coronavirus period»

[1] Member Association

[2] The European Federation of Engineering Consultancy Association which represent FIDIC