Future designers: Passing the baton to the 'Millennials'

One of the biggest challenges our world is facing is the rapid urbanisation that is taking place across the world. Within the next 35 years, the world population is expected to surpass the 9-billion mark. The existing infrastructure cannot cope with the fast-paced growth in our cities, nor is it able to address the needs of building sustainable and resilient infrastructure. New infrastructure ideally should be built with a long-term lifecycle vision to answer this challenge and one that connects urbanisation, existing infrastructure and new infrastructure in a synergistic manner. It is this synchronised connection that will help us create sustainable cities. But who will do it and how?

The answer is the "Millennials" - the generation that has been raised on 3D and virtual environments, and that find the arcane methodology of two-dimensional drawings redundant and unintelligible. This cloud and mobile-app generation is clearly the most connected we've ever seen, tolerating nothing less than instant answers.

To understand how this new generation will change design as we know it in order to address a 9 billion people, we need to first think about how they will leverage their cloud and social-media based approach to life and use that to create designs and do engineering projects.

The Millennials are socially different people. They assimilate everything simultaneously and organise life differently by looking at it from a group perspective versus that of the individual. Being the first true globally connected generation, they have friends and colleagues all over the world and discuss, vet and collaborate on things virtually in real time.

Tomorrow's infrastructure projects are challenging, complex and will be pushing the boundaries of design and construction. In reality though, it is a perfect match for these next-generation designers. The Millennials believe that non-linear design is normal, design complexity is expected and wanted as they love challenges. They believe everything should be modelled in intelligent 3D, and one that allows it to be analysed in 4D and 5D for time and cost, and finally validated in 6D for its sustainability impact. For this generation, design and construction should be nothing less than a cloud-based team sport with mobile and social capability to interact as needed with whoever, whenever and wherever they need it. For them, Building Information Modeling (BIM) is the only way to design our future infrastructure as it can be understood by everybody involved, resulting in better decisions and better outcomes.

During their lifetime, they will design and live in a carbon neutral homes and city, replace their cars with electric/hybrids or have none at all, have a single communication number, live anywhere they want and work somewhere else … virtually.

This next generation of designers will use these new attitudes, perspectives and tools to transform the infrastructure, planning, design and construction processes, and lay the groundwork for change that empowers them to address the challenges we all face today that are ultimately theirs to own and live through. Their vision for the future is that sustainable infrastructure and smart cities are one in the same. The question for them is not what, but what if?

Terry D Bennett is senior industry manager for Civil Engineering and Construction at Autodesk.

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Article source: http://www.thethailandlinks.com/2013/05/14/future-designers-passing-the-baton-to-the-millennials/