Digital engineering: a case study in an Irish consultancy practice

The building services engineering (BSE) industry has wrestled with its productivity gap for many years and the time has come to embrace innovation. Its practitioners now have the key to unlock the future by the smart use of technology, which has the power to transform how we design. Embracing digital technology provides smarter, faster, better and safer solutions. Scholarship in BSE consultancy practice is limited, and although this inquiry is a means of advancing knowledge, it also serves as a disciplined and systematic procedure by shedding a new light on design effectiveness in practice, thus improving the design process through digital engineering. This paper outlines how digitalisation encapsulates people, processes and technology to improve the design process in Irish BSE practice, thus providing the basis for promoting a sustainable design process during and after design. (This paper includes content submitted by the author as part of his Professional Doctorate in the Built Environment at the University of Salford).