Just Because
"Just becuase it's always been doesn't mean it will always be"
Sadly, I too a LTL (Long Time Liberal) but can’t vote for them due to the myopic approach to this issue (but must add hate the Internet Filter - it'll never work).
Facts are the NBN (National Broadband Network) is not about technology, it’s about productivity and creativity by using applications and communications built upon the platform.
Bigger Pipe = Richer Applications = Greater Creativity/ Problem Solving = Revenue & Profits
The main problem is most people don’t utilise the technologies already available today yet alone can envisage what applications will be available or on-demand tomorrow.
Today we are already beginning to see rich media multipoint (multiple people) conferencing and collaboration platforms benefiting major projects worldwide.
To illustrate a very practical example:
Build it they will come
Let’s take one very inefficient industry we all know – the Australian building and construction industry -
The industry is about $77B/ 7% of GDP & 900K people employed. (Upstream and Downstream industries approx $150B contribution)
Approximately 85% of the people are self employed in small businesses
About 40-50% of building and construction costs are labour related – that’s the time you and I are paying for their business activities (quoting; supplies, project management; working; tools; invoicing etc).
A majority of small businesses don’t have a website BUT do have email.
How much technology improves productivity depends on the business BUT what it does do is provide greater communication capability, information access, communications and transparency.
In many ways email is like having a digital recording of every conversation.
BUT today – the majority of building plans are still printed out on paper AND as a result what is finally built is nearly always different from the original plans.
There are many reasons why – what the architect designs or specifies initially may be impossible/ impractical to build on site; the client changes brief; wrong version of plans and so on.
So what happens is variation upon variation information is lost on bits of paper down the sequential project information line.
Business Best Practice
A rapidly increasing number of companies are moving their business applications to the cloud (integrated web).
As you may know in a Google Apps spreadsheet – multiple people can work simultaneously on a document.
From a construction perspective what you want is a single audible building plan “truth”.
Version allows the ability to easy see what was changed by whom
Leading International design and construction firms are already using Web-based project collaboration across product development including online collaborative 3D design software integrated with their supply chain partners and customers.
That is customers, designers, engineers and suppliers etc all working together in a rich multimedia collaborative environment.
This information then allows for easier asset management through the complete Building Life-cycle – from construction to build, asset mangement to final demolition.
From a finance perspective – risk is dramatically reduced.
$46B investment fades into insignificance given the overall productivity savings across 100 years of typical buildings.
