John Pelton MBE, Enterprise Programme Director at Costain, highlights the importance of digitalisation in the infrastructure industry while recognising the challenges that the industry faces in exploiting digitalisation.
The Blog entitled ‘What's stopping digital innovation? Rethinking the relationship between the parties’ discusses some of the main factors that ‘militate against effective innovation and digital innovation in particular’. John Pelton argues that “the industry continues to struggle to catch up with other digitalised industries; it struggles with poor productivity and remains constrained by processes and systems that have yet to evolve to enable the benefits of digitalisation to be fully exploited”.
The blog ultimately calls for reconsidering the format of the collaborative approach between the various parties involved in infrastructure projects and the negative impact that so-called ‘transnationalism’, which focuses more on outcomes rather than outputs, has on "the development of a shared purpose amongst the organisations involved". The blog closes with a positive note that "there is hope and there is much great work being done". John Pelton emphasises that "digital innovation is forging ahead whilst the portfolio of projects and programmes in the UK provides an unrivalled opportunity to exploit digital innovation".
Read the full blog here