The 'how' of benefits management for digital technology: From engineering to asset management

With advances being made in digital technologies, asset owners are requiring at hand-over a digital twin of their constructed facility that can be used in real-time to support operations and maintenance processes. While there has been considerable focus on 'why' organizations operating in the construction industry need to adopt digital technologies to enable Building Information Modelling, Internet of Things and Industry 4.0 and thus deliver assets more effectively and efficiently, there has been limited attention given to 'how' they can realize their expected benefits and simultaneously generate value. In light of the drive for organizations to engage with digital technology we bring to the fore in this paper the need for them to legitimize a process of benefits management prior to making a financial investment to understand 'how' digital technologies can coalesce to generate business value and improve their competitiveness. As part of a benefits management strategy, a business dependency network (BDN) can enable investment objectives and their resulting benefits to be linked in a structured manner with an organization's capabilities and changes required to ensure they are realized. Relying on empirical findings derived from nine projects that examined the efficiency gains and advantages of using a digital systems information model from an engineering to asset management perspective, we construct a generic BDN to visualize the structure of multiple cause-effect relationships that are used to organise the capabilities, changes and benefits that need to be considered prior to adoption. The insights and experiences that have emerged from this research provide a frame of reference for construction organizations and asset owners to navigate the benefits realization and change management process, which can be used to ensure their investments in digital technology can effectively respond to business drivers and generate value.