 Hi, my name is Denise from InterGioTV and I'd like you to welcome you to the Tech Talks, today about the digitalization of the construction industry and construction software. And of course with me are two experts, two guests virtually in the InterGioTV studio and I'd like to welcome Katie Catherine Broder and Christian Lüttenberger from Hexagon. Hi, hello. Hi. Hello. So everybody is connected and can hear and see me, this is perfect. So I'd like to introduce you Catherine Broder or Katie is vice president building solutions at Hexagon Geosystems and Christian Lüttenberger is vice president, Hexagon Geosystems for heavy construction. And yeah, we have a challenging global situation. The pandemic is really accelerating the digitalization of many, many industries and of course also the construction industry. So when we look at the situation, so what is the current state of this industry? From the construction side, I would like to say that despite the difficult situation, we have seen quite some activities in many markets and even in the even in the so-called lockdown time, we have seen that there were businesses and the construction projects continuing and especially also during the summer season where typically it's vacation time, there have been companies and markets that have been proceeding with the projects. Recently, we've also seen some new projects starting, although there I would say it's still not very clear how the funding and the project planning will be, but in overall I would say it's carefully optimistic. Okay, so what is your view on the current situation, Christian? Yeah, it's also still optimistic. I mean, of course, there's a lot of uncertainty in the market, but how construction or how a construction site is operated, that hasn't changed a lot now also during this situation. It's still the same that one of our clients used to say, our customers used to say you make the money in the office and you lose it in the fields. So right now, it's still the same that the challenge in heavy construction today is that all the tasks and also the 3D models they need to work on do get more and more complex, so we will come to that later on and that's what all the talk will be about. Our industry is still looking for new technologies so that they can build on time, on budget and on specification to secure their margins and profitability on a construction site in the end. So that hasn't changed a lot since the last couple of years. Okay, so what actually is, how is Hexagon helping to support this industry during the situation? Yeah, I mean, for us, we try to continue to develop solutions and new technologies for our customers because to be able to build on time, on budget and on specification on a construction site, it is not new that our customers are already using from us more and more technologies like on total stations, drones or even now scanners to generate point clouds to be able to manage the workflow on a construction site better. Now more and more, we're also talking about of a digitalization of a construction site, which is very similar to the industry 4.0 idea or the BIM idea or approach, so the building information approach. Digitalization will help us to better define, execute and verify the job in between various resources and faces on the construction site, whether we will design a ditch, grading a surface, changing a curbside, laying the right amount of asphalt, validating a slope or documenting the results. There are many ways to get the job done, but the right digital workflow will optimize time, cost or rework issues and that's what we are heavily working on. Same for you, Katie. Yeah, actually building on that, what Christian said, I mean, traditionally the building construction trade is quite conservative and I think this year especially the digitalization has been really, I would say, accelerated in this time due to just the need of productivity and also reduced access to job sites. And coming back to your question on what we offer to that industry is that we provide a complete ecosystem where our users can actually more or less pick and choose from sensors and software solutions and also tie into market leading standards. Christian mentioned the BIM, of course, this is a key point for everybody just managing the data and the information and having a real time verification of what's going on in the field in the office and back and I think this is something, especially in these times, productivity and efficiency has become even more important than maybe even before. Can you give some specific examples of where hexagon technologies have been used on construction sites? I mean, there are so many different working activities and levels and yeah, just tell us about that. As you said, where to start? Let's look at an average construction site. I mean, how could it be average? I think building structures, be it now concrete or woodwork or steel framing, everybody has and everywhere there's a need for accuracy and to make sure that the data is reliable and to be able to take decisions where we can be most effective. This means in the field or in the office and I think there exactly when we're looking at our Leica icon portfolio that we have, which is a complete suite for the building construction industry to have the possibility of sensors like total stations and the software suite to that to be able to onsite, do the layouting verification, transfer that back to the office actually throughout the entire workflow of the building and I think one part to say they're not just in the design engineering and construction phase but actually also throughout the lifecycle of a building which also goes into the operation maintenance phase as well. Christian, you have to add anything? Yeah, I give you one example. I can remember a very nice project we recently had in Norway. It was a 43 kilometer expansion of the E6 motorway in Norway. The contractor has been Harre, one of our biggest machine control customer with more than 300 construction machines equipped with our machine control solutions. The majority of these machines are excavators, drillers for blasting and soil compactors and they are also using a lot of our survey equipment as Katie mentioned before for stakeouts, volume measurements and for instance as per checks. So on the job site the excavators would dig down to the rocky surface and they do have a lot of rocks in Norway. Then following the digitally defined drilling pattern drill rigs are then used to drill holes into the rock for the blasting. The drilling patterns are automatically sent via our cloud solution to the machine so that saves them all of time so from data from the office to the fields and then the machine control solution would then guide the drill rig to the exact location where the drilling needs to take place. So for instance no survey on site is needed to mark the location like it used to be in the past and by that that made the project and the machine itself about 50 percent more productive and mistakes can be avoided. And to finalize, to describe the project a little bit, after the blasting the debris rock is used as road fill so the soil compactors and excavators equipped with our machine control solution are used then for building in the material and for compacting or for the compaction of the grounds to avoid that the ground would freeze then in the winter. Now the nice thing in this project has also been that the work process the machine has done was automatically locked by a software and the data was sent back to the office. So for instance the information or the project manager in the office can not only immediately see the progress on the site but also use, can use the data as as-built quality documentation which then can be sent to the building authority to prove that it has been built on specification. So that's just one example of a typical road project in Norway but it has been a very nice project where IO technology could help a lot to be on time on specification on a budget for the project. I see Katie has also another idea where the technology can solve more problems give us also some practical insights as just Christian did this was very interesting. Yes sure and I think one part to just also liaise to what Christian said is that we are enabling non-surveyers on job sites to do the tasks and this of course comes down to the solutions that we offer which of course you need to understand the application but it's intuitive so the the center and the software solution is something that can be done on the job site by many people which of course means there's no downtime you don't have to wait for the surveyor to come on site you have the possibility to just perform as you go and I think all of us know that especially logistics on job sites is some of the big challenges not really knowing when concrete pouring will be finished and you know the materials there or the teams are delayed and this gives a lot of flexibility of course I think especially when we're talking concrete pouring because that's something which is critical it has to happen when it's planned and and you can really you know generate a lot of waste or delays if you cannot perform the tasks and I think in that sense really this is coming back to the ecosystem that we provide it's kind of a more of a holistic solution that we can provide to the job site with many different stakeholders that can tie into a workflow do you see when we have a close look into the future I mean you just mentioned so many examples for the digitalization for more more data machine software at the construction site when we look at the future and so where is the construction industry going you just mentioned models with BIM and connectivity and more data yeah where's the future going in the construction industry I think there's not a simple answer to that I would say because it depends also a little bit in which markets we are looking some are more advanced than others but I think in general generating data is something that has been happening already since I would say decades and the key point from the building industry side is clearly to make that data digestible for the users and this is I think is one of the the key parts going forward where more people want to access data where maybe before they were too hesitant because of you know point clouds and just overwhelmed which now there's really an openness of the construction people to have access and to take the decisions themselves which comes back to us as a solution provider to make sure that we can tailor the information as needed which of course is something which is not simple to do it requires an absolute understanding of the workflow so to answer in short applications will be the same I think more users will become more digital and have also the requirements to get access to data and to generate data and to make sure that the data is accurate and reliable so that decisions can be taken I think there's going to be a productivity gain in the industry that we have not seen before yeah this is what you want to underline Christian or if anything else yeah yeah I totally agree what KT just said and thinking about the future on a construction side of course we could talk about that for hours but I think really as a to me for the heavy construction industry as a summary I think we will have three main technology drivers which we already do have in place today but I think they will develop further and will help the construction industry to become more productive one is as we mentioned before is the digitalization that means more concretely as said before that sensors do capture exact location data that software processes the data to become as Katie said meaningful and data flows that connect the right people machines and objects but because at the end of the day what will be more and more important that for instance the site engineer the project manager can well you could say even in real time can see what has been done on site and what needs to be done next another level is then or let we call it the next step of the of machine control or machine automation that means that the operators will have less and less functions to do and the construction machine itself will get more and more autonomous and maybe in the future we already do see it in mining today but even on the construction sites there might be no operator anymore and the on the machines and some machines will be completely autonomous and to me a third driver is the generation of point clouds so that the physical reality on site becomes a so-called we call it digital twin to be able to visualize the project progress in real time but of course that the construction industry is accepting and adopting these technologies as Katie said before our solutions need to be simple or easy to use they need to be compatible to the existing ecosystems they're having and our solution needs to be a true fact of simplicity so that also non-surveys or generalists can work with our solution the impact for the industry will be definitely that they are more profitable it will be will be good for the industry because that would all mean less hours better quality on site less resources needed and lower risk on the construction site well I'm part of the integer communication team and of course we only have a few weeks I mean even more days to go until integer 2020 will start in a purely digital edition and yeah let's let's use the chance also to make some visitors to hexagon curious what they can expect for the construction software what will you present there at integer 2020 can you give us a short description or inside so you would like a sneak preview huh from that okay well from from the construction software side clearly to show how we can stitch together sensors that we already haven't had you know since many years in the in the organization with a software workflow that is really very tailored to the user group as christian mentioned before understanding kind of the simplicity and the ability also to enable more people to work and use the data that is provided and to be able to take decisions I think this coupled with visualization which comes back to the users now we're all humans so we we think in graphics or in pictures and this is clearly something where we will be able to show really examples and workflows how we can already today enable with the offerings that we have christians you also want to say something to the visitors of integer 2020 and the hexagon booth the digital booth and the presentations and lectures yeah katie katie has just she has just said it yeah there is nothing more to add from my side it's really what we are focusing on because we understand the workflow on our construction sites now what we are trying to do is to to bring everything together to make it easy to send data from the office to the fields data from the field back to the office so that everyone involved in the construction process is always up to date that we make it easy for the foreman for the site engineer for the project manager to analyze the data to see what happened yeah at the end to become more productive on site thank you very much and for all of you meet hexagon live at integer digital 2020 and dear katie dear christian thank you very much for this interesting tech talk about the construction industry and yeah I hope to see you from the 13th to the 15th of october and you will join us too of course but thank you thank you bye