Strategies for digital built asset management

Ever-tighter asset management budgets and higher requirements for compliance aggravate the challenges in the modern practice of managing built assets. In this regard, digitalization technologies are increasingly important in built asset management. Demands and challenges arise from the built asset’s data-to-day operational management and an urgent organizational-level agenda for an adaptable and sustainable digital built asset management strategy (DBAMS). This chapter aims to provide a review and analysis of these demands and challenges by discussing the following topics: (1) the definitions of DBAMS; (2) the digital built asset management requirements; and (3) the interplay between construction business models and digital technologies. In the first section of the chapter, DBAMS will be defined with the help of closely related concepts, and core functions of DBAMS will be explained with some digital-related examples. Then, a strategic analysis will be conducted to review the digital built asset requirements from different stages in the project lifecycle and different perspectives (i.e., economic perspective). Finally, three traditional outsourcing business models (the shared service centres [SSCs], the public-private partnerships [PPPs], and the outsourcing model) for the construction industry will be reviewed against their two general ways of interaction with digital technologies. This chapter is intended to provide university students, academics, and practitioners in the built asset management domain with the up-to-date mindset, strategies, and practical examples of embracing new digitalized built asset management routines.