The building blocks of construction and IoT

This week we attended the 10th annual Batimatech conference, at the junction of construction, technology and sustainability. Given that just about every Internet of Things (IoT) project we work on happens in and around buildings, we were curious to explore how in future those buildings might be fitted with IoT infrastructure during construction, rather than retrofitted thereafter, as is generally the case today.

Listening to conference speakers and talking to vendors, it didn’t take long to establish that we were unlikely to witness such a change anytime soon. When asked about their greatest challenge, most innovators in construction cited, without hesitation, industry inertia, or resistance to change. That didn’t come as a surprise to us, as we’ve faced the same challenge in many verticals with regards to IoT adoption.

What did come as a surprise, however, came from a panel on innovative building technologies for resilient housing, where one panelist emphatically cited three keys to success with which we are very familiar:

• modularity
• documentation
• standards

If you asked us the secret to the versatility, accessibility and interoperability of our open source IoT middleware, we’d probably say its modular architecture, developer-friendly documentation and adherence to observed standards. Was that also the secret to reliably building affordable housing that is readily adapted to both its occupants and environs?

Thinking about it more, those are arguably the keys to success in most projects involving a heterogeneous mix of products and processes. So how come we don’t hear about modularity, documentation and standards more? Perhaps because individually, they are each, frankly, boring.

What isn’t boring, however, is all that can emerge from good documentation, established standards and a modular architecture (yes, this term applies equally well in construction and technology platforms). Both a beautiful building and a novel IoT solution can be built on these foundational (another common term!) principles.

So, in construction and in IoT, as with anything, it’s probably best to lead with the outstanding outcomes and leave the boring bits behind—but not overlooked. Modularity, documentation and standards always merit a mention as universal building blocks!