initiative

memorandum of understanding

https://www.opensource.construction

The purpose of this document is to outline the background, objectives and activities of the opensource.construction initiative. It is intended to create a common understanding for everyone supporting the initiative as active member and/or partner.

1. Background and Objectives

1.1 Open Source and the construction industry

What we see in Tech

The open source model accelerates innovation by promoting collaboration and knowledge sharing. The core idea is: Technological infrastructure that is necessary for a company’s value proposition, but is not a key differentiator, should not be developed from scratch over and over again. It makes more sense to build this infrastructure (some examples from the software world are programming languages, database structures, CMS systems, encryption technologies and much more) on open solutions and improve them rather than developing new ones. After all, not only a few users from one company use a specific solution, but many users from many companies. They all have an interest in the open solution evolving and moving with the times - an unbeatable driver of innovation.

“Open source isn’t about saving money, it’s about doing more stuff and getting continuous innovation with the finite budget you have.” Jim Whitehurst, former President of IBM and CEO of Red Hat

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As a result, open source software has become an important driver of innovation and enables enormous leaps forward in the technology industry, changing and enriching our lives in many ways. Even the largest and most financially powerful technology companies in the world are taking advantage of open source software and freely accessible data sources. Driven by this success, open source has become a movement and a way of working that goes beyond software production. The “open” movement uses the values and decentralised production model of open source software to find new ways to solve problems in different communities and industries.

What we see in AECO

The construction industry is characterised by numerous small and medium-sized companies that operate locally with standard systems but individual processes. 90% of architecture and engineering offices have less than 10 employees, 62% of construction companies have less than 50 employees. Most companies have little to no budget for research and development - certainly not for the development of digital solutions. Broadly speaking, the industry has…

Challenges faced by individual organisations

Looking closer, all things related to digital solutions or data strategies do not have an easy standing in the industry:

At the same time, all organisations are under pressure to a) participate in digital workflows with external partners, b) optimise their processes to stay competitive and c) commit to the grown expectations regarding transparency and sustainability from their clients.

Challenges faced by open source projects

Although the idea of decentralisation and especially continuous innovation would match perfectly with the structure of the industry, there are only a few domain specific open source or open data projects. At the same time, there is momentum building up. It is fueled by projects like IfcOpenShell, BlenderBIM, speckle and ThatOpenCompany, to name just a few. This momentum is also supported by increasing efforts in the public sector to prefer open source solutions, aptly summarised with the hashtag #publicmoneypubliccode.

Nonetheless, challenges for open source projects include the following:

1.2 Objectives

“Our mission is to accelerate the change towards a more open and innovative construction industry.”

In general, the initiative aims to promote open ecosystems, open standards, open software and generally more code-driven projects in the real estate and construction industry.

Specifically, the initiative aims at the following objectives:

In detail: Access to technology is simplified for AECO professionals Typically, people in AECO do not have a software engineering background. Without a more profound understanding of what is possible and what is best practice in developing digital processes and tools, a lot of energy is wasted in current transformation projects. The objective is to create low-threshold connections between AECO and tech professionals and to enable smooth know-how transfer. This way, IT-related topics can be discussed in a friendly environment with open-minded people, where there are no wrong questions and people can learn from each other, even as non-coders.

In detail: “Digital sustainability” becomes a driver for digitalisation efforts The real estate and construction industries are fragmented, companies operate on low margins and a typical project involves 80 companies. While some big players are moving forward and developing cutting-edge frameworks, they rely on collaboration with the rest of the companies involved: no digital workflows without partners. According to the principle of “digital sustainability”, digital knowledge goods (data, content, software) must be created and made accessible so that they create the greatest possible benefit for everyone involved in typical construction projects. Only then, the industry can move forward on ambitious goals regarding sustainability and costs.

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In detail: Organisations are empowered to move from passive to active players in the digital transformation Today, many organisations are passive and wait until e.g. a standard is released to move on. Tomorrow, they become more proactive and start to build small solutions that they can immediately use. Ideally, they do this not in their silo but in the open and do things different than today: open source = collaboration with a business case. The objective is that open source business models become more common and more companies start to develop infrastructure together with a clear understanding of specifications, delimitations and investments.

1.3 Target groups

The initiative addresses three target groups:

  1. “Non-digital” decision makers from architecture and engineering offices, construction companies, operators, developers as well as public and private clients.
  2. Existing and aspiring coders from the industry and academia.
  3. Open source projects from the industry and academia.

The intended added value is in general to enhance scalability and impact of open source solutions in the real estate and construction industry.

For the individual target groups, added value can be described as follows:

“Non-digital” decision makers can …

A growing number of open source projects can …

A growing number of coders can …

2. Activities

2.1 Key activities in 2023/204

To get started, activities are focused on three core themes:

In detail: Communication

The website and social media channels provide easy access for anyone to learn about open source and its potential for the construction industry. Key features:

In detail: Events

In 2024, events will be our key driver to improve the visibility of open source solutions in the construction industry. opensource.construction organises its own events to facilitate the exchange between AECO and tech professionals.

In detail: Project Facilitation

A planning office wants “to grow out of Excel”. An organisation wants to better understand the potential of open source for specific digital challenges. But where to start? We connect AECO organisations with existing solutions and software engineers that help solve your problems the open way. Access to funding opportunities is also highlighted. Expert-Pools: CH-Open, Data Innovation Alliance + solution providers

Examples: Bauteilkatalog OpenMaterialData OpenCDE Gemeinwerk Drilling Data to Geometry

2.2 Roadmap

In the first phase, it’s all about creating awareness for the innovation potential of open source for non-digital stakeholders in the construction industry. Through the planned activities, we reach out to the public and build a community.

If successful, further consolidation can be achieved. One idea is to create something like a public “OSPO” LINK for the construction industry. Further ideas are to setup a working group at the Eclipse Foundation or an Innovation Booster at Innosuisse to facilitate the development of innovation projects in the realm of open source.

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2.3 Goals 2023

3. Organisation

3.1 The start of the “opensource.construction” initiative

My constant worry is about duplication of efforts that slows collective impact. We should all be working on things that are additive and build on foundational solutions when they exist to make much needed innovation happen in the construction industry. As an architect and computational designer I was used to create things from scratch and I loved it. But I had to pivot in the past, when I learned the hard way that all innovation that I brought into a company was halted when I left – no one picked up on my badly documented code. When we started with our software company, I learned about how many open source libraries and components we used to build the infrastructure of our product. Unfortunately, almost all domain specific topics had to be build from scratch – what an unnecessary burden for innovators! Maximilian Vomhof, Initiator of opensource.construction

This is the motivation that led to the foundation of opensource.construction. It all started with a small event in Zurich and the setup of a website in November 2022. In 2023, we organized further events with in total more than 200 visitors and brought together an online community of more than 750 people.

All this was made possible by the generous sponsorship of Swiss Property and it’s CEO Johannes May as well it’s CTO Markus Steinbrecher.

3.2 Working group @ CH-Open

To scale impact from the beginning, we started to look out for existing initiatives. Guided by the idea to actively bridge the gap between AECO and tech people, the focus was to add a tech driven puzzle piece to existing organisations in the construction industry (like BuildingSmart etc.). Therefore we decided to look out for organisations in the ICT sector. With CH Open, we found a great place to start.

Consequently, opensource.construction is organised as a working group of CH Open to keep the overhead small. With over 350 member companies, CH Open has been promoting open source software and open standards in Switzerland for 40 years – it is the perfect partner organisation to assist us on our journey to a more open construction industry.

CH-Open also provides the necessary infrastructure to run all financials and further organisational topics.

Swiss Property’s subsidiary company vyzn is a premium member of CH-Open, which enables access to the infrastructure of the organisation.

3.3 Modus operandi

In the first phase, opensource.construction is run by motivated individuals (= core team).

The team meets in monthly meetings, which are open to the public. The agenda for these meetings is as follows:

  1. introduction of new members / guests if applicable
  2. Communication
    • Tech radar (at least one new entry every month, one tech story every month)
    • Project stories (one story every month)
    • General updates to website (maintenance like SEO optimisation and content management)
  3. Events
    • Update to planned events
    • Outlook to upcoming opportunities
  4. Project Facilitation
    • new project requests, Updates on “Blackboard”
  5. Budget
    • Update to budget and potential new partnerships

Core members are encouraged to participate in the monthly meetings.

Every core member takes over responsibility for at least one topic on the agenda.

3.4 Budget

The main costs in 2024 are the events. The goal is for every event to be self-supporting through individual event partners. Further costs like website hosting, maintenance and costs for individual aperos are covered through additional sponsorships.

4. Commitment as an active member and/or partner organisation

Core members have the following benefits:

At present, the core team is made up of the following people:

Core members are supporting the initiative with their time. Their organisations are encouraged to either partner in one of the events or become a member of CH Open to support the activities of the iniative financially.

Partner organisation can choose to support the initiative in three ways:

  1. as an active partner. Full package, full visibility on the website and in social media content + one (or more) seat in the core team.
  2. as an event partner. Primary supporting individual events with tailored packages depending on the occasion.
  3. as a passive partner. Visible on the website with logo, portrait and further social media content.
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