It’s often premised that Tech companies are going to change the world, and this includes disrupting how we will build, maintain, replace and dispose of infrastructure.

This article is about why tech companies are probably not going to disrupt infrastructure management directly. And how tech is going to indirectly impact the infrastructure management industry.

TL;DR -

Don’t expect google (et al) to be putting any asset management and engineering consultancies out of business any time soon.
Do expect the role of asset management and engineering consultancies to change.

Firstly, let’s define what a tech company actually is

A ‘tech company’ (to me at least) is a company that uses technology to disrupt an existing market, with products that, once built, have a very low additional cost for each additional paying customer. This is often called a “zero marginal cost” model.

Tech companies are often funded by venture capitalists, betting that their upfront investment will deliver zero margin, and therefor practically unlimited, returns.

Herein lies the first massive difference between the tech world and the infrastructure world:

In infrastructure, initial investment is defined by the construction (once a bridge is built it is built). Returns are limited by the physical infrastructure (a train can only fit so many passengers).

In tech, initial investment is undefined. Lean software development has led to a world where it’s basically impossible to say a product is “finished”. But, importantly, returns are unlimited.

To take google search as an example, the costs associated with an additional user searching on google are thousandths of a cent (we can consider close to zero) - whereas the commission revenue from each user searching is measured in dollars per day. Given the capture of search by google, returns are limited only by how many billion people are using the internet, and how much of the rest of the economy is online. However you cut it, the initial investors in google have made monumental returns.

So, tech favours agile rapid development to quickly iterate between solutions, with massive rewards for finding zero-margin products and services.

In tech there are few prizes for perfecting a product before you’ve proven it has a market. Competition is fierce so it’s all about racing through iterations until you find those zero-margin returns.

As Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg put it:

“Move fast and break things”

Which, is about as far as you can get from infrastructure management, where the equivalent expression would probably be:

“Move at a reasonable pace and absolutely do not break anything, ever”

If a web search calculation is wrong, you might have an inconvenient couple of hours of inefficient searching. “Why can’t I find the website I’m looking for?”

If a train signalling calculation is wrong you might end up with a massive train crash, with loss of life, massive costs, and potentially jail time for company directors.

So, the typical use of technology in infrastructure management has high consequences and constrained returns. Or in other words, exactly the wrong model to interest tech companies (or tech investors).

So, how might tech influence infrastructure management?

To answer this, let’s look at the fundamental paradigm shifts in technology over the last 50 years:

Big shift 1) moving from mainframes to personal computers.

Big shift 2) moving from desktop applications (on personal computers) to the internet, with virtual servers running almost unlimited computational power on demand.

Big shift 3) moving from the internet accessed on desktop computers to laptops, then to PDAs then to mobile phones (and fridges and home sound systems). Ubiquitous internet!

And if we overlay how this has impacted infrastructure management:

Big shift 1) moving from huge teams of engineers and technicians transforming calculations or records to feed into mainframes, to small teams or individuals using personal computers in an office.

Big shift 2) moving from desktop applications with engineers feeding data into personal computers and worrying about storing and using data locally, to feeding internet connected systems with virtual servers making information shareable and retrievable around the world.

Also within shift 2 - the scope and scale of Calculations has become virtually unlimited accessing almost unlimited computational power on demand.

Big shift 3) moving from manual data entry based on desktop computers to the “Internet of Things” and/or “Smart Infrastructure” where humans provide assurance that the assets are monitoring themselves correctly.

We, in the infrastructure management community, are currently living in shift 3, while the tech companies are busy working on the next shift. (how about ubiquitous internet implanted directly into your brain?)

So if tech companies aren’t going to directly enter the infrastructure advisory business...

...then where next for tech in infrastructure management?

Well, as a general observation big shifts don’t happen suddenly, we just suddenly realise the shift has happened. While tech PR would have you believe that their next product is going to change everything, actually it is adoption that changes things.

I’m reminded of a joke I first heard at a seminar by Dr Hillson:

3 frogs are sat on a log.
1 of the Frogs decides to jump off the log.
How many frogs are on the log?
3 frogs are sat on the log.
Saying something is not the same as doing something.

Point being, In these predictions I’ve tried to ignore product hype and focus instead on what’s being adopted in the real world.

Prediction 1

And so, my first prediction would be that we remain on a steady trajectory- that is, there won’t be a revolutionary change but a continuing evolution.

Ubiquitous internet, and the expected deployment of 5G, will lead to more “smart infrastructure” and remote monitoring of assets.

The cost of remote monitoring is likely to continue to drop, widening the portfolio of assets for which there is a business case for connecting to the internet.

The increased bandwidth offered by 5G will allow for more data to be collected and transmitted.

Highly criticality assets will be able to provide real time condition monitoring and real time capacity utilisation monitoring.

If you want to label it, we could call this the digitisation of reliability centred maintenance.

Prediction 2

Automation and Machine Learning will continue to increase the general efficiency of people who work in infrastructure management.

The define what I mean by automation and machine learning- it’s simply training a computer how to recognise certain inputs and provide a prescribed output.

In basic systems engineering we often breaks things down into an INPUT, PROCESS, OUTPUT model.

Well automation and machine learning is just where we’ve massively increased the input data, and used some more complex maths in the process, so that we get better and more reliable outputs.

Take for example a thermostat. Traditional thermostat took inputs of target temperature and current temperature. If it’s too hot, the output is to turn off the heating. If it’s too cold, the output is to turn on the heating.

Well, a “smart” thermostat (like nest, although other products are available) might use much more input data, like what temperature do you want the room when occupied, or when empty. Add some sensors so it knows when the room is occupied and it will vary the temperature accordingly. Add a time series and it can start to predict what temperature the room should be based on when it thinks the room is likely to be occupied and when the room is likely to become empty.

In this way a “smart” thermostat can reduce energy use as the heating is only switched on when it’s needed. And the possibilities go on- is it really hot? Probably a fire. Is it really cold? Probably a Window open. Is the room occupied at a weird time? Maybe let the owner know in case its someone who shouldn’t be in that room. And so on.

The point is- In the same way that we now have shared digital calendars as standard for pretty much every aspect of every job, we’ll start to see automation and machine learning tools permeate into the workplace as well.

Let’s call this a machine shift.

Prediction 3

So combining prediction 1 (digitisation of reliability centred maintenance) with prediction 2 (machine shift) we get to prediction 3: that effort in infrastructure management will change most dramatically in two main areas, assurance and innovation.

Staff who currently inspect infrastructure directly will, over time, instead be providing assurance that the “smart infrastructure” is functioning correctly. Inspection staff will also provide a ‘validation’ that the condition reported by system is the same as the condition in real life.

And similarly, staff who renew or build infrastructure (in both design and delivery) will over time be more preoccupied with working out how to deploy smarter infrastructure.

An impact of this will likely be fewer inspections (with an associated drop in workplace injuries). From looking at the impact of reliability centred maintenance generally, we would also expect to see improved performance and reduced uncertainty.

We will also likely see greater infrastructure complexity. This may in turn impact upfront cost as well as increase project risk – given that more complex projects have more opportunity for error.

What have I missed?

I’ve limited this article to 3 predictions, and I know I’ve missed a lot. Big things I’ve missed are:

Green Shift - the impact of the drive for environmental sustainability. Probably a continued reduction of energy and material use, as well as a switch from carbon to green forms of energy.

Working Practices - social trends for flexible working and reduced working hours. We once thought that when the robots did all the work, the humans could live in a form of utopia. Well the robots are owned by some of the people and those people don’t seem to be that keen on distributing the wealth those robots are generating…

What else have I missed?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on all of this. Please do leave a comment below, or message me directly.

P.S.

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If you look after physical assets, I would love to help your organisation get the best from tech. Please do get in touch!