News Interview with Micol Filippetti, CEO of the Filippetti Group and founder of Evolvea

Friday, May 19, 2017

Evolvea was created within the Filippetti Group in 2013 and offers an international reference point for services regarding control and checking for Quality, Health & Safety and the Environment. It is composed of Environmental Engineers, Chemists, Physicists, IT experts with multi-disciplinary skills aimed at providing innovative services in the HSE context. That which makes Evolvea innovative and gives it a competitive edge is the use of facilitating technology that permits the implementation of Smart solutions a low cost and low impact, such as the SmartNetwork, a pervasive network infrastructure, self-powered (by batteries lasting over 5 years) and self-configured.

1. Why is IOT important (or will be so) in the construction industry?
In the construction industry, due to several factors, owing to the excessive fragmentation of the value chain and to the objective complexity of the organisation of a supply chain order and production system, it is now almost impossible to think about implementing continuous improvement programmes that might lead to making the productivity and resilience of construction processes comparable to those of the manufacturing sectors. Methods such as World Class Manufacturing, which in other sectors of industrial production make it possible to significantly improve process efficiency, appear to be completely off the scale in construction because of the total lack of capillary and collaborative management methods and tools.
Global competition won’t delay in involving the construction sector too, helped also by the off-site reorganisation of production models, moving on inevitably to a rationalisation and streamlining of processes that will demand reciprocal interconnection and inevitable digitalisation. In this scenario, IOT, and cyber-physical systems in general, play a role similar to that of the nervous system which, in real time, allows perception, cognitive elaboration and the active interconnection of all the organs.
This role in construction is even more important than in the manufacturing sectors due to the increased dynamism and exposure to disturbing agents in the production processes.

2. You already utilise IOT in various situations, both industrial and on-site. What are the advantages?
IOT is radically transforming intelligence processes by bringing engineering to a more holistic dimension, able to optimise and manage complex and dynamic systems in real time. In other words, engineering methods and management methods are contaminating each other reciprocally, based on the pervasive and continuous availability of data that permit the improvement of performance through the management of their systems.
It is a process similar to that adopted during the development of a racing car whose design must make it possible to carry out tuning in order to benefit from the data gathered during races. Today, in the same way, it is possible to plan systems for production, logistics, maintenance, safety and quality management that can continually improve performance automatically utilising feedback enabled by IOT during operation.

3. What is your contribution to the construction industry?
Our development work can be divided into two main areas. On the one hand, we implement (Building Information Modelling and Management) methodology and technology to maximise the information flow between the various operators during the life cycle of the works and to support the processes of multidisciplinary cooperative elaboration. On the other hand, we are involved in the development and implementation of methods, techniques and tools for multifunctional monitoring, with special attention to cyber-physical systems and the use of remotely controlled IOT-based technology.

4. What will building-sites be like in a few years’ time?
We will be in the era of the Cognitive Building Site, which, in some ways will reflect the logic of the fourth industrial revolution. Building Information Modelling & Management and the interconnection between processes will make it possible to successfully activate methods of Lean Construction, maximising value production in real time and significantly reducing production costs. That will apply as much to the infra-structural sites as the building sites, and equally to a large project or a series of real estate requalification interventions. In construction, however, the spread of Lean Management will also trigger a flywheel effect for the Design for Manufacturing and Assembly at the base of Off Site construction.
The diffusion of digitalisation and consequently of the collaborative capacity will also trigger innovations in contractual forms that more and more will see reciprocal involvement in a win-win logic of client and company. The affirmation of non-transactional but relational contracts such as Integrated Project Delivery will thus make it possible to increase the efficiency of the whole process by collaboratively exploiting all the stakeholders in order to optimise the results of the projects.

5. Why are you at REbuild?
REbuild is the most important Italian showcase for those companies who want to invest in the transformation of the construction market in a 4.0 setting. It is the ideal meeting place for all those involved in this sector – a place where you can talk about innovation but also about real investments. This is precisely the philosophy of the Filippetti Group: invest in the future keeping the present concrete.

6. Why did you join Energiesprong?
Energiesprong is a great opportunity to relaunch the entire Italian economy. It is the perfect blend between private investors and public administration. It is the chance to not only re-qualify the suburbs of large cities, but also smaller communities and their wonderful old centres, areas that have sadly been hit by earthquakes and industrial zones that have been abandoned thanks to the economic crisis. In short, not only construction but also real economy dropped directly on the territory and a practical example of a Smart economy.

7. Where are you heading? Future projects?
Our Group is increasingly taking on new skills to create solutions specifically designed to meet the needs of the construction sector. To this end, we are acquiring companies in the engineering, construction, materials and facility sectors, with the aim of creating innovation by combining the capabilities of a technological company with the knowledge of the various components of the supply chain, to develop increasingly effective solutions.

This route also passes through the experimentation of new business models that will characterise the new construction market, moving from the concept of assets to the concept of service.