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The year 2020 has been exceptional in many ways. The pandemic indeed has disrupted billions of lives and livelihood worldwide, with an economic impact that is still immeasurable. The World Economic Outlook by the International Monetary Fund projected a 4.9% decline for the global output in 2020. This has caused unprecedented challenges, necessitating aggressive collaborations & innovation to ensure business continuity in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry.
A year of resiliency & transformation
The challenges of the health crisis we witnessed also unveiled an opportunity: it presented all of us, including you and your customers, with a rare platform to accelerate our digital transformation and understand further what it takes to build a more resilient future.
The urgent and sudden need to adapt space usage and business processes to the new normal has been a strong accelerator of change and technology adoption. Together, businesses have found new operational models, ranging from work-from-home, new collaboration methods, healthier and safer spaces, and new commutation methods.
This transformation in building resiliency in infrastructure designs and business operations wouldn’t have been possible without the AEC industry and its many stakeholders’ involvement as a whole. By digitizing as much of the value chain and workflows as it could be, we have seen more collaboration, more mindful usage of resources, and agility in 2020.
The means of embracing the new normal
The transformations triggered in 2020 will continue to influence our future. When looking at design workflow, digital has become the new keyword. Employees now collaborate on projects without meeting face to face, thanks to the new tools that allow design, review and risk management virtually, way ahead of actual construction.
When looking at design practice, the search for customized, sustainable, and future-proof solutions that can be quickly tested and validated has surged with a surge in innovative projects to test and validate new ideas and models. All this, and the workforce’s impressive adaptability, allowed some drastic productivity gains and business model validations that proved key learnings and will be scaled.
Rik de Smet and Parsable CEO Lawrence Whittle expressed it best: ‘Digital transformation is not about technology, but about connecting people with platforms.’ We are together part of this integrated ecosystem where design skills and knowledge can meet with technology and execution know-how to empower you to be ahead of the curve in understanding and resolving consumer challenges.
At Schneider Electric, we take these new demands seriously. We constantly explore new ways to help you ensure designs to be more efficient and robust, also easier to be adopted, with proven technologies, better collaboration between stakeholders.
The way forward
To support your endeavors, our exclusive mySchneider Consultants, Designers, and Engineers program offers you a complete ecosystem including design resources, upskilling avenues, tools and support for your teams and business globally.
As we leap ahead into the New Year of 2021, we look forward to furthering our collaboration with our partners to work together on a more sustainable, reliable and safe world. We believe that together, we can unleash the energy and ideas to empower the change and make us unstoppable. You can learn more about how we can collectively be Coming Back Stronger Together by downloading this brochure.
This is only the start of the journey and all of us at Schneider Electric are really looking forward to the coming year as we will have a lot to show and share, so do stay connected!
