Excerpts from the interview with Damodar Katti, Managing Director, Design Group Engineering Consultants LLC is on the way forward in the design and engineering industry and how the company is embracing digital as part of its growth plans.

How Is DGEC Expanding Its Footprints In Various Sectors? What Is The Construction Industry Outlook?

The Oman construction industry is expected to rebound in 2022. It is projected to register growth of3.3% and then expand by an annual average rate of 4% over the remainder of the forecast period (2023-2025). The government’s programs to promote the development of affordable housing, transport & renewable energy infrastructure, and mining are expected to continue supporting the expansion of the industry in the coming years.

Looking further ahead, while Oman continues to enhance its oil
recovery techniques to boost oil production, it will continue pursuing its diversification plan Vision 2040’, and construction will continue to be a major contributor to growth in Oman’s non-oil GDP, offering solid prospects for economic diversification. The prospects for capital expenditure projects in the tourism and manufacturing sectors will be the key to the construction industry recovery; these sectors have been recognized as long-term drivers of revenue diversification and economic growth for the Sultanate. Oman’s 10th five-year development plan 2021-2025 was launched with an aim to diversify the economy and reduce reliance on oil revenue.

The government plans to increase the contribution of transformative industries in the country’s total GDP from 10.8% in 2020 to 12.2% in2025, the transportation and logistics sector from 6.4% to 7.5%, the education sector from 4.9% to 6.2%, the tourism sector from 2.5%
to 3%, fisheries wealth from 0.9% to 2%, and the mining sector from
0.5% to 0.7%.

How Do You Ensure You keep up-to-date With The LatestEngineering Trends And Techniques?

Some of the latest engineering trends in the construction and civil engineering technology are:
• Building Information Modelling
(BIM)
• Drones or Unmanned Aerial
Vehicles (UAVs)
• Virtual Reality
• Augmented Reality
• The Intelligent Built
Environment
• Prefabrications
• Predictive Analytics
• Self-Healing Concrete
• Modular Construction
• Smart Buildings

At DGEC, we spare no opportunities to stay on top of industry trends. Keeping up to date with the industry may be daunting given the business; work pressure, and we, therefore, encourage our experts to adopt the few easy strategies. Besides providing us growth opportunities and a competitive edge, our clients and the geographies that we operate also benefit from these as a result.

1. Enlist a mentor or industry buddy Catching up with a mentor or friend with industry experience gives a chance to branch out from the workplace and gain knowledge in a
   social setting. Being able to ask questions without judgment is the key to building a knowledge base and seeing things from another perspective.

2. Build skills while studying a course can be a great way to refresh the skills for a job or learn new skills that can help advance career prospects. Online and part- timecourses, coupled with work- from home which has scope for idle time-slots, afford to continue working while studying.

3. Get in the loop online subscriptions to trade journals, blogs, magazines, and other publications – read as per convenience.

4. Network encourages our personnel to attend Webinars, industry events, and training sessions thus giving them an opportunity to absorb new information as well as networking simultaneously. This enables us to reach out to clients, suppliers, and professionals from the industry and get a wider understanding. Networking and events can also help to remain up to date with competitors’ strategies.

5. Relevant Forum Online forums and discussion boards are a treasure trove of information on industry topics. This also provides an opportunity to contribute to discussions as well as absorbing new information.

6. Social Media
Social media has become one of the best up-to-the-minute sources for industry
news. By following experts and industry leaders on Twitter or Instagram, employees can absorb the latest information and opinions.

7. Read, listen and watch the digital world is full of media to immerse oneself in, through whatever format that is best suited. There are plenty of independent websites that are as well-followed and informative as traditional media. Publications are available at local bookstores to learn from. Podcasts can be a great way to make the most of a commute. The vast amount of titles out there includes all domains of design engineering consultancy, as well as leadership worth you’re listening to.

How Is The Design Engineering Sector Evolving And Embracing Digital Disruption?

Digital technologies can enable better collaboration, greater control of the value chain, and the shift toward more data-driven decision-making. These innovations will change the way companies approach operations, design, and construction as well as engage with partners. Smart buildings and infrastructure that integrates the Internet of Things (IoT) will
increase data availability and enable more efficient operations as well as new business models, such as performance-based and collaborative contracting. Companies can improve efficiency and integrate the design phase with the rest of the value chain by using building-information modeling(BIM) to create a full three-dimensional model (a “digital twin”) and add further layers like schedule and cost early in the project rather than finishing design while construction is already underway.

This will materially change risks and the sequence of decision-making in construction projects and put traditional engineering, procurement, and construction(EPC) models into question. Automated parametric design and object libraries will transform engineering. Using digital tools can significantly improve on-site collaboration. And digital channels are
spreading to construction, with the potential to transform interactions for buying and selling goods across the value chain. The COVID-19 pandemic is only
accelerating the integration of digital tools. Specialization. To improve their margins and levels of differentiation, companies will start to specialize in target niches and segments in which they can build competitive advantages. And they will specialize in using different materials, sub-segments, or methods of construction.

The shift toward specialization will also require companies to develop and retain knowledge and capabilities to maintain their competitive advantages. Obviously, players will need to weigh carefully the effectiveness, efficiency, and brand positioning that greater specialization enables against the potential risk or cyclicality benefits of a more diversified portfolio.

What Are The Benefits Of Digital Construction?

Benefits of Digital Transformation in Construction

• Improved productivity. When crews can first understand design in the office and bring them to life in construction in the field, we see productivity go up.
• Safer operations
• Higher accuracy
• Better communication
• More innovation
Digitalization can be implemented easily in new construction projects since all documentation can be managed digitally from the start.

How Digital Documents Improve Efficiency

Printed construction drawings have several limitations. They can be damaged or lost, and copies may not be available immediately. Printed documents have necessarily to be handled by personnel, which makes them prone to infectious diseases. Also, if there is a change order, the site personnel must wait for the updated document to be printed and delivered.

Digital documents accessed from handheld devices mitigate the issues described above.

Since data is stored in a company server or cloud database, they are protected from physical damage.

• The same document can be accessed from many devices simultaneously, allowing discussion and annotations without physical contact.
• Annotations can be reviewed quickly by architects and design engineers, making the flow of information more efficient.
• Change orders can also be managed more easily, by simply updating the
document that is accessed by site personnel. This saves on paper and
transportation costs.

Considering that physical documents require storage space, and a construction firm can
accumulate a large archive over time. For a collaborator not familiarized with older projects, finding a specific document can be difficult. On the other hand, digital documents can be found in seconds using the right keywords, regardless of how much the database grows over time. Reorganizing a physical archive consumes plenty of time,
while a digital file system can be easily sorted by project, construction date, file size, etc.

Another advantage of digital documents is that sections can be easily copied to be reused in other projects.

Can You Tell Us More About the digital Implementations At DGEC?

We are the first ones to implement BSM in Oman in the year 2010 and
from there on we have been constantly improving on how best to convert ourselves into a Digital office. We are now in a position where we can call ourselves a BIM compliant
office and our next target is to adopt digital Twin. We have trained our resources to enhance their skill set with the vision of being a BIM compliant office and accordingly upgraded our infrastructures on both the fronts i.e. hardware as well as software.

What Are The Sustainable Construction Methodologies That Organisations Are Adopting?

Here are some of the top sustainable building methods.

• IoT Integrated Automated Building Systems.
• Green Roofs.
• Grid Hybrid System.
• Passive Solar.
• Greywater Plumbing Systems.
• Electrochromic Glass.
• Solar Thermal Cladding.

The global construction industry is the world’s largest consumer of raw materials, and constructed entities account for between 25 and40 percent of total carbon emissions in the world.

The industry is projected to grow at 4.2 percent annually between 2018 and 2023 in terms of market value, with expansion opportunities in residential, non-residential, and
infrastructure projects. This expected growth and the imperative toward decarbonization
signaled by the Paris Agreement have created the impetus for sustainable
construction.

Construction companies are becoming increasingly accountable for their contribution to global emissions and are facing pressure from investors, banks, regulators, contracting authorities, and consumers to mitigate their climate risk and find new solutions to reduce their carbon footprint. In response, the industry is making inroads toward addressing these concerns.

What Is The Future Of The Construction Industry?

The Engineering and Construction sector has been slow to adopt new technologies and has never undergone a major transformation. Productivity has stagnated over the last 4 decades, or in some cases, even declined. This looks set to change very soon, and quite dramatically. In fact, profound changes are already taking place– though not yet on a sufficiently wide scale – in many aspects of the construction industry. The key is digitalization.

More and more construction projects are incorporating systems of digital sensors, intelligent machines, mobile devices, and new software applications – increasingly integrated with a central platform of Building Information Modelling(BIM). The challenge now is to achieve widespread adoption and proper traction. Wherever the new technologies have properly permeated this fragmented industry, the outlook is an almost 20%reduction in total life-cycle costs of a project, as well as substantial improvements in completion time, quality, and safety.

Gathering momentum

On average, uptake of these transformative technologies has been slow initially. They have faced some resistance to adoption, and some companies that do deploy them have struggled to capture all the potential benefits. However, the obstacles are being overcome. More and more companies are now embracing the opportunities, with productivity starting to rise and promising to soar.

The gap between digital leaders and laggards is widening – for construction companies themselves, for technology providers, and also for governments in their role as project owners and regulators. All these stakeholders need to master the dynamics, upgrade their competencies and investments, and adapt their processes and attitudes, or risk losing out competitively.