This is a website i created for to gather my thoughts and some resources for an academic paper i am writing on BIM+Blockchain.

Links to my presentations on the subject.

Collaboration and Partnering in Irish Construction Procurement Conference 2016

and

BIM Show Live 2107 http://www.bimshowlive.co.uk/

My presentation at @BIMShowLive 2017

I am currently researching at Ph.D. level into the social dynamics of collaboration driven by the industry adoption of BIM technologies. One of the areas that have come to light from my reading is the rising tide of Blockchain adoption and particularly the synergies that i started to see between BIM + Blockchain.

I have referenced material from different sources to support my ideas but two,

in particular, have been before where some of us are treading now.

Valero F (2016) can be found at http://blog.grantthornton.es/2016/08/31/bim-blockchain-smartconstruction/ and http://blog.grantthornton.es/2016/08/31/bim-blockchain-smartconstruction/ is sole authorship and intellectual property of Grant Thornton Spain – Grant Thornton S.L.P. also

Robles DR (2015) Smart Contracts for Construction Extracted from http://www.naic.org/cipr_newsletter_archive/vol19_blockchain.pdf and http://www.ingenesist.com/

My Details:

Malachy Mathews, PhD Candidate

MSc Applied eLearning,

Dip Arch Tech, NUI Dip Computer Studies

PG Cert 3rd Level Teaching Learning,

Lecturer, Dublin School of Architecture,

College of Engineering and Built Environment,

Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland.

Board Member International Congress Architectural Technology ICAT

malachy.mathews@dit.ie

@malachymathews

Malachy Mathews Linkedin Profile

But first things first:

There is evidence all around that we are witnessing a digital transformation in the design and construction industry. The technologies of this transformation are disruptive to the existing procurement process.

This is a good thing.

Because, it is from this disruption that new innovation can spring forth and we are working towards a multidisciplinary collaborative procurement process that has the potential to be a leaner, efficient and more cost effective process.

Up on till now, there have been well researched reports calling for a more collaborative process in building procurement (witness the Latham and Egan reports in the UK) while these have been accepted by industry as correct and viable the recommendations have been difficult to implement, this is because of a number of factors: one of which and is essential is:

TRUST

The “culture change” that we hear called for as a mantra of BIM is actually a call for more trust among the stakeholders in the design, construction and building operations industry including clients, designers, contractors and FM.

In traditional building procurement we have developed systems which are heavily reliant on contracts which often pit the client against the contractor in a lowest tender scheme and are administered by a third party. Often the third party has "skin in the game" and walks a fine line in between acting on behalf of the client and in the interest of the contractor. Nothing new here.

However what is new is that:

The nature of the building information is changing, because we are moving from representation to simulation.

This is the essence of the disruption, ongoing in the digital transformation of the design and construction industry. The nature of a digital disruption is that

• • it knows no boundary's,

  • it disrespects existing hierarchy's and

  • it regularly slays scared cows.

Witness the music industry, the publishing industry, the travel industry, the financial services industry and on and on.

The design, construction and building operation industry is perhaps the last surviving major industry that has not felt the full force of a digital transformation. But that is no longer the case and at the heart of this transformation is BIM and now i believe Blockchain.

While BIM is the current best solution for the creation and management of building data

Blockchain is a possible solution to the problem of TRUST.

That is what makes Blockchain so interesting because: in order to establish trust we need to provide evidence of trust.

Blockchain's Big Innovation is Trust, Not Money

It’s been referred to as a "revolutionary technology" by IBM, and a "once in a generation opportunity" by PricewaterhouseCoopers. But perhaps the most descriptive title came from The Economist when they dubbed blockchain "the trust machine".

http://www.coindesk.com/blockchain-innovation-trust-money/

What BIM technologies allow us to do is to construct the building virtually to a very high level of detail. The Building models are shared among the designers and the contractors and the client and can provide an important step in the “evidence of trust” trail. However the sharing of models is only part of a solution to trust.

What Blockchain can do is allow people who may not have established trust with each other to be able to transact (value) with one hundred percent confidence. Blockchain provides security, accountability and transparency on the transaction that is in essence "immutable evidence of trust".

So how did Blockchain arrive onto the scene.

Many of you will be familiar with Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency. Bitcoin has a reputation and not always a good one but Bitcoin was born in 2008 when 3 three individuals file a patent application for a new sophisticated encryption technique based on heavy mathematics. The three also registered the name Bitcoin.org and then an anonymous white paper was put into circulation under the name of Satoshi Nakamoto, it revealed a purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash to the world. In this vision they managed to solve the problem of money being copied securely, which provided for a vital foundation to Bitcoin that foundation was known as the Blockchain.

What is of interest to us is not Bitcoin but the theory and technology behind it and this is distributed ledger theory more commonly know as Blockchain.

A distributed ledger is essentially an asset database that can be shared across a network of multiple sites, geographies or institutions. All participants within a network can have their own identical copy of the ledger. Any changes to the ledger are reflected in all copies in minutes, or in some cases, seconds. The assets can be financial, legal, physical or electronic.

Wall Street Journal (2016) extracted 3 Oct 2016.

The blockchain allows a distributed network of computers to reach consensus without the need for a central authority or middleman.

Banks and financial houses tried very hard to suppress the cryptocurrency. They failed and were left with no option as in “if you cant beat em then you better join em” there are currently 90+ banks pouring huge amounts of time, effort and money into researching and developing methodology's for Blockchain use.

I don't have time in this presentation to go through the mechanics of how Blockchain works, but i will play a short video clip that will help explain Blockchain, but it is important and significant to note that

Blockchain is here, it cannot be uninvented, and it will play a major role in the disruption of current centralised systems.

Blockchain: Changing our social contract forever a deeper dive into the real implications of blockchain on the economy, society and life.

Catherine Mulligan is Research Fellow and Co-Director at the Imperial College Centre

for Cryptocurrency Research and Engineering. You can follow her on Twitter @API_Economics.