Martin Perks

Collaborative delivery models only work when everyone is looking at the same trustworthy set of numbers. Assurance is not a bolt-on to the integrated client. It is the connective tissue. The way infrastructure has traditionally been bought and delivered is, in the blunt words of the Institution of Civil Engineers' Project 13 work, broken. The transactional model piles up interfaces and hand-offs and pushes risk down the chain rather than sharing it. Everyone protects their own position, and...

The appetite for digital change in construction is real. So why does adoption keep stalling? The blocker is rarely the engineers. It is usually the people holding the purse strings. A commercial director on a major rail programme was recently asked how ready the construction industry really was for a proactive, digital approach. His answer turned the question on its head. The appetite, he said, is already there. Most larger consultancies deploy artificial intelligence and digital tools as a...

Put artificial intelligence on top of inconsistent cost data and the result is not better answers. It is wrong answers, delivered faster and with more confidence. The foundation has to come first. The pitch is everywhere. Add artificial intelligence, point it at your cost data, let it forecast and spot anomalies in seconds rather than a fortnight. There is something to it. But the pitch usually skips the awkward question underneath: what, exactly, is the tool reading? On most major...