Madis Avi recently visited China as part of a fact-finding mission organised by the Estonian Digital Construction Cluster. He shared his thoughts on the trip upon his return.
– Party insistence on the adoption of modelling has seen the field come along in leaps and bounds in China, despite the country’s size. Estonia’s progress in the digitalisation of construction has been thanks to cooperation between everyone in the sector, which is what the Digital Construction Cluster was created for.
– Even on building sites, digitalisation plays a big role in making the construction process more effective. For example, in China, cameras use AI to track what workers are (or aren’t) doing, which enables all sorts of things to be analysed: their movements, their safety, how tired they are and the reasons for stoppages on the site.
– Urbanisation and the climate change linked to it are major challenges in Chinese cities, which have very high levels of pollution. Even Shanghai – which has a population of 24 million and where the air pollution is as bad as it is mostly due to construction and the production of building materials – has set itself a target of becoming carbon-neutral by 2030.
These issues are faced by bigger and smaller countries alike, so by working more closely together across the construction sector we’re doing what we can to help deal with them in Estonia as well!
Photos: Aavo Kokk & Madis Avi