Submitted by Angela Walters on Tue, 11/08/2020 - 09:10
The Smart Infrastructure Index is enabling members of the Digital Twin Hub (DT Hub) to measure their digital maturity and benchmark their progress against their peers. This is a key step in the journey towards a National Digital Twin as the Index results will not only reveal where members’ currently are on their digital journey, but it will help identify how best to support members and guide the industry towards building a smarter nation that improves lives and creates a more sustainable planet for the public good.
The Smart Infrastructure Index was developed from Project 13 to measure the digital maturity of asset owners and their wider supply chains. Developed specifically for infrastructure and the built environment, the Index provides a holistic view of digital maturity: from customer insights to digital transformation; modern methods of construction to whole-life asset management. It is already used for benchmarking by the Infrastructure Client Group – who collectively invest over £20bn per year in their assets, and is rapidly becoming established as the standard measure of digital maturity in the UK built environment.
To complement the existing benchmarking process, the DT Hub have worked closely with Mott MacDonald to create an additional question set specifically for asset owner/operator members, to identify common challenges faced by digital twin owners and help tease out best practice in the industry. Completing the Index will provide benefits at an organisational level, as well as for the DT Hub as a community, and the more responses received, the more that is learnt from the data.
Last year’s annual benchmark by the ICG’s Digital Transformation Task Group was informed by over 150 Index responses from all sectors, providing data that underlined gaps within the industry’s understanding of its digital skills; highlighting areas for improvement for organised information which currently prevents its full value from being realised; and the need to better balance innovation and risk to fully benefit from the UK’s existing ecosystem of digital start-ups. As well as cross-cutting industry recommendations, the results will also enabled the DT Hub to identify their own examples to share as case studies and raise industry’s collective performance.
The survey is available to all existing and new DT Hub members. Asset owners can register to become a member and members can email enquires@digitaltwinhub.co.uk to receive their own unique link to complete the survey.