merger

Digital technology has never been more important to the built environment, and its importance grows every day. The way we manage the lifecycle of the buildings and infrastructure we build is more connected and integrated, and data has been fueling a shift towards productivity improvements. However, this shift has been slow.

While there are many contributing factors to the slow pace of digitalization, fragmentation is a major theme. It runs deep through many aspects of our industry and creates an environment of unaligned understanding, scattered directions, and perpetually reinventing the wheel. It’s difficult to move forward when we don’t know what direction forward is.

Digital Built - National Capital Region (dbNCR) and the Toronto BIM Community (tBIMc) have recognized this issue on a personal level. Both organizations have similar goals for improving the industry through the use of technology, but we were not collaborating as closely as we should have to achieve them for the Province of Ontario. We were creating redundancy and not maximizing our impact on the neither the industry, nor our members. For this reason, dbNCR and tBIMc have been working together to plan the next chapter for our organizations, and have decided to merge together to form Digital Build Ontario (dbO).

dbO’s mission is to increase productivity in Ontario’s buildings and infrastructure industry through the use of technology. We will achieve this by bringing leaders from around the world to share their lessons learned and best practices, and by sharing Ontario’s success nationally and globally, reducing the fragmentation of our industry.

While technology has become more integrated in large firms, it still lacks in smaller organizations. This is especially important, considering companies with less than 100 employees deliver approximately 60% of the value of the industry in Canada while making up 70% of the employment pool. There is tremendous untapped value in this market segment which dbO will address through more intentional outreach and inclusion.

Further, there is fragmentation among the different disciplines and roles in our industry. Each project is handled differently, and the value creation of digitalization rarely extends beyond each discipline or firm. There is an opportunity for asset owners to deepen their recognition of digitalization’s advantages and provide direction to project teams to extend the value through the whole lifecycle.

We are excited to begin working on integrating our industry, and helping Ontario become a global leader in digitalization.

Kirk Stalkie

President, Chair

Akira Jones

Vice President, Vice Chair

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