I attended the annual constructing companies occasion, “Talotekniikka NEXT,” in Helsinki final Thursday. It was a day crammed with well timed insights on subjects starting from getting ready for nationwide emergencies in design to the moral tips of AI utilization and the way forward for knowledge middle building.
All the things we realized on the occasion highlights a key difficulty: knowledge high quality. With out dependable knowledge, most of the nice alternatives that new applied sciences supply gained’t come to fruition.
The necessity for environmental knowledge
One presenter, Granlund’s enterprise improvement director Tytti Bruce-Hyrkäs (pictured), mentioned the upcoming local weather reporting necessities in Finland, which can turn out to be obligatory in 2026. New building tasks should submit a local weather report and a constructing product stock when making use of for a constructing allow, together with a BIM mannequin (IFC) of the undertaking.
The allow applicant should checklist the constructing merchandise used within the constructing and on the location identified on the time of the allow utility. Later, the stock have to be up to date to incorporate merchandise whose choice was finalized throughout building.
The greenhouse gasoline emission knowledge have to be suitable with or drawn from the nationwide emissions database, EPDs (Environmental Product Declarations), or different dependable sources. The constructing product stock and sure allow utility supplies have to be machine-readable and observe nationwide or in any other case regulated knowledge fashions/knowledge buildings.
The state of information high quality
Environmental reporting is a major instance of the necessity for reliable knowledge within the building business. One other is waste administration and attaining circularity.
A January 2025 report by Qualis Move (Qflow) titled “The State of Knowledge High quality in Development” illustrates the challenges that the business faces in making certain knowledge high quality. The corporate analyzed six years’ price of information from 445 building tasks, principally from the UK, with some from the US and Australia. They integrated 831,206 merchandise and 195,178 waste removals.
Qflow studied varied points of information high quality, akin to accuracy, completeness, and consistency, focusing particularly on waste elimination paperwork.
Solely 5% of the info was inaccurate; nonetheless, 95% was incomplete, with fields containing empty or incomplete info. 5% of the info had been discovered to be duplicates, and 32% had invalid Commonplace Industrial Classification (SIC) codes. 66% of merchandise lacked embodied carbon info.
One of many alarming shortcomings is expounded to standardization. 85% of the info wanted standardization to create knowledge consistency.
Consideration to knowledge high quality pays off
The concept we gained’t require constant and standardized knowledge as a result of AI can already learn and perceive messy paperwork is flawed. We should always all the time try to make knowledge as structured and standardized as attainable to save lots of money and time and to keep away from expensive errors.
An often-quoted “1-10-100” rule-of-thumb states that it prices one unit to confirm or construction knowledge earlier than its use, fixing errors detected later prices 10 models, and discovering errors after selections are made is ten instances or dearer.
For those who’re early in a undertaking, exploring choices, or doing tough estimates, it is likely to be acceptable to work with much less structured knowledge, as a result of the price of structuring every little thing is likely to be greater than the price of imprecision in that second.
A change within the mindset is critical
We regularly hear that knowledge high quality is all people’s drawback, however no person desires to pay for it.
That mindset is holding the entire business again. Knowledge isn’t a free by-product; it’s a part of the deliverable, identical to concrete on website.
Fixing this requires systemic motion: purchasers should specify and reward structured knowledge in contracts, regulators should implement requirements, business our bodies should present clear frameworks, and undertaking groups should embed knowledge high quality into their every day workflows.
Solely then can we cease treating good knowledge as “additional work” and begin seeing it as the inspiration of safer, extra environment friendly, and extra sustainable building.
PS. Bruce-Hyrkäs shared an attention-grabbing knowledge level. As a result of buildings right here in Finland are very energy-efficient, solely 15% of the life cycle emissions of a contemporary college constructing come from power use. 56% stem from materials manufacturing, 17% from change of elements, and eight% from transport and building.
