ICE strategy session to focus on eliminating error

Using technology to eliminate error will be the focus of the next ICE Strategy Session which will take place on 26 May. The online session, which is open to all and free of charge, will feature presentations from ICE vice-president Ed McCann, GIRI director Tom Barton and Ross Stobo, who is BIM development manager at Tony Gee & Partners. 

Last year McCann suggested special registers of civil engineers deemed competent enough to sign off on designs for construction may be needed, to arrest the decline in quality of design information being sent to construction sites.

“People are talking about an intergenerational low in the quality of design information; they are talking about design drawings that are incomplete, incoherent, uncoordinated and they arrive at site and have to be redrawn and reengineered,” he said.

In this session, McCann, who led the ICE’s 2018 review into professional skills will reflect on the significant changes to the way the industry operates that have taken place: the abolition of fee scales; the fundamental shift in the way work is procured, with design and build now commonplace; and also the digital revolution in the 1970s when firms started to do computational modelling.

Digital engineering is clearly central to the debate and, used correctly, critical to increasing productivity and reducing error. However very little is known about the barriers that hamper and impede adoption.  

Tom Barton will discuss the findings of the research by University College London, commissioned by GIRI, which looked at the barriers to adoption of digital technology, and will set out how they are being used to inform the GIRI workstream, reviewing potential solutions to provide the industry with advice and guidance to overcome these barriers.

For more information, and to register, visit https://www.ice.org.uk/events/using-technology-to-eliminate-error-online