I have been involved with the UK-based construction technology membership organisation COMIT (Construction Opportunities for Mobile IT) for some years, and as mobile hardware and software become ever more important in the planning, design, construction, commissioning, handover and future operation and maintenance of built assets, so it has seen growing interest from its two main audiences: mobile technology providers and mobile technology consumers.
In recent years, COMIT’s autumn conferences have been organised in partnership with US-based technology organisation Fiatech (2014, 2015 posts), but this year it is flying solo. It has also brought its event forward a little to avoid clashing with other technology-oriented events in a busy October and November such as the annual ICE BIM conference, Digital Construction Week, Bentley Year in Infrastructure, and Autodesk University. The two-day 2016 COMIT conference is being held at CH2M’s Hammersmith offices in London on 28-29 September, and online booking is now open.
The title – Digitally Building Britain – is a deliberate reference to the Digital Built Britain strategy which was published in February 2015 and which remains a strong guide on the future direction not just of Britain’s building information modelling drive but of wider industry digitalisation (“For Level 3 BIM, read Digital Built Britain“). The theme is about delivering value through innovation, and, within that, the two days of the conference have also been themed: day one will be broadly about CAPEX, while the second day will have an OPEX theme. Attendees only able to attend one day can therefore chose the day most appropriate to their interests (but, of course, attending both days will give you the TOTEX experience!).
Speakers on the first day include Alex Lubbock of the Cabinet Office giving a keynote about Digitally Building Britain, while there will be new perspectives on innovation by speakers from Volkswagen and BT, plus a teaser of Fran Rabuck’s always insightful “Toys for Techies” talk. Day two features talks on drones, virtual reality, collaboration, ecological analysis and visualisation using GIS, and more “Toys for Techies”. Should be good!
Update (19 August 2016) – For those in the southwest of England who can’t get to London for the COMIT event, there is another BIM event on 28 September at the University of Bristol. The one-day conference and workshop on collaboration and construction is being co-organised by Behaviours for Collaboration (December 2014 post) and the Southwest BIM Hub. More details and registration. [Disclosure: I am an active supporter of the Behaviours for Collaboration initiative.]
