Laing O’Rourke: showcasing end-to-end digital delivery

While Hinkley Point C is on-going, it’s fair to say that the new Everton Stadium was a halo digital project for Laing O’Rourke – an exemplar of the technologies and processes that can be implemented and what can be achieved.

CM asks Drayton what he thinks the contractor’s next halo digital project will be. He muses on the answer, adopting a wider lens: “The biggest pull I see is in healthcare with the New Hospital Programme and the digital hospital. I think there will be a massive step forward in digital, not just in the way that we deliver projects, but in the way that we operate hospitals.

“What you and I think of as a digital twin, and what a construction and a FM company or department think of as a digital twin, is about 10% of what the New Hospital Programme or the NHS think of as a digital hospital.

“If, as a sector, we manage to achieve the aspirations of the New Hospital Programme, I think that’s going to be the pathfinder, because it’s truly linking design with manufacture with operations. That’s end-to-end thinking – and that’s where I want to get to.”