Two of our colleagues, Juhász Márton István and Ballay Zsolt, attended a special conference on behalf of bim.GROUP. The Advancing Computational Building Design conference held in Chicago explored issues such as how to optimize organizational strategy while taking into account the requirements of digital transformation, and how effective data collection and management strategies can be developed to improve future performance. Juhász Márton reported on the experience gained at the conference.

What did you think of the presentations and programmes?

The conference was very well structured. I would divide it into three main parts, and the programme covered these very effectively: client relationships, the introduction of computational design into an organization, and technological solutions and research in computational design. There were many Q&A sessions, where the audience engaged very actively with the topics and received honest answers. The schedule was kept very precisely, with practically no delays. As a design engineer, it was highly inspiring to attend the conference.

How do you see bim.GROUP's position after the visit compared with the international level in terms of knowledge, projects and so on?

I think, and I believe Zsolt and I reached the same conclusion, that we are in a particularly strong position regarding parametric design. Our capabilities and design workflows are fully comparable with those of similarly sized companies present at the conference, and in some respects I believe we are even ahead.

We are also strong in architecture and cladding design, although there are still opportunities to improve workflows in the other disciplines. What larger companies have, and what is different or more developed there, is a dedicated specialist team created to exploit computational design techniques. These teams usually include enthusiastic engineers, IT developers and even UI designers. Such teams focus specifically on algorithmization, automation and digitalization, thereby supporting the general engineers working on projects, who can in turn concentrate even more effectively on technical engineering problems.

It was also good to see that international colleagues are facing the same challenges: there are enthusiastic young people who would like to move ahead quickly; there is the management layer, which must be convinced of the return on investment; there are those who resist change, prefer traditional working methods and fear the unknown; and of course there is the client, who, after seeing an overly optimistic presentation, no longer understands why weeks or months of work are still needed on a project.

What were the most important observations and experiences you brought home?

I think it is worth emphasizing that computational design is daily practice on the international market. I find it inconceivable that a design office focused on the future can remain successful without it.

I have always been interested in programming, but it is clear that because of certain characteristics of the construction industry - a large amount of unskilled labour, the lack of mass production at building level, meaning that every building is a prototype, multi-project environments, dirty construction sites and so on - engineering disciplines adopt new digital technologies at the very end of the chain. There are many attempts in relation to AI, machine learning and VR/AR technologies, but these are currently forced and research-oriented. Where I believe there are significant untapped opportunities at both bim.GROUP and KÉSZ Group level is data management, data sharing and data visualization. To achieve this, we need standardization, properly configured systems, analyses and some discipline. I can say, however, that even in the short term it will become a very powerful decision-support tool.