Companies have to constantly look for more efficient, easier ways of delivering projects for customers and clients, according to Ben Corrigan, Founder and Managing Director at Bluehaus Group.

He was speaking at the recent CoreNet Global Middle East Chapter meeting held at Zabeel House by Jumeirah, The Greens, Dubai.

He said that there is a need to provide services with value in mind. “We really have a responsibility to think beyond what is basic. We have to look at new ways of delivering a better service, better products, and better outcomes. This is something I firmly and passionately believe in.”

Giving the example of Bluehaus Group, a leading design and engineering consultancy firm, he said, that the company has been utilizing laser scanning since 2016 on projects it works on to start “with trusted information”. 

The need for this arose because as-built drawings are often unreliable as they don't contain accurate information.

“We can never trust as-built drawings because the data in them are never as built; they're often as-designed drawings. No one gets them verified. It's never accurate. So we realized that there was a need to work on trusted information. We were so fed up with untrusted as-built drawings, which ultimately come back to bite us. So we now laser scan projects, whether the client wants it or not because we've got to start from a trusted place. We then take that laser scanning, whether it's point cloud or the finished model, and then we start our design process.”

Data collected during the design process can be later carried forward into operations such as FM or towards creating digital twins.

Such innovations are easier to adopt when working with a well-aware client. Because many times, “the data that we're creating, its use currently stops at project delivery, nine times out of 10,” he said.

Giving the example of the Du headquarters, which Bluehaus Group recently worked on, Ben said, “Even during the bidding process, they had the FM team in the room. So as a client, they were already thinking about the building post-occupation. That's quite rare. It's happening more and more these days, but it's quite rare.”