Ahead of The Curve:2025 Innovation Imperatives for EC&O

External pressures —from regulatory changes to the growing demand for greener construction — are pushing the Engineering, Construction, and Operations (EC&O) industry to rethink its strategies from the ground up. Companies are increasingly adopting new technologies to gain actionable insights, streamline collaboration and workflows, and fundamentally reshape project approaches. As the industry becomes more data-driven than ever, it’s also becoming more complex and collaborative. For example, construction firms are now better positioned to consider the long-term implications of design and construction decisions on infrastructure operations and sustainability. Digital twins can now give all stakeholders a shared view of intricate project details. As we move into the second half of this decade, the following transformations will shape the future of EC&O.

1. Synchronized digitalization

While the need for digital adoption is recognized across the industry, many organizations still use technology in isolated, fragmented ways. Individual projects within a large construction company have often leveraged divergent tech stacks. Construction companies recognize that they must move toward a less myopic architecture. By synchronizing software platforms for project management, planning, and execution across all projects, firms will find it much easier to maintain institutional memory, align around consistent processes, share best practices, learn from mistakes, lower costs, drive efficiencies, and achieve economies of scale. This level of coordination is particularly critical as regional firms go global and find themselves in unfamiliar regulatory environments.

Cloud-hosted and increasingly AI-equipped SaaS platforms provide new-age digital construction management suites. Still, there’s also a critical change management aspect to unifying platforms and processes across the firm. That’s as true for owner-operators as it is for construction firms themselves. Through our Global Capability Centers (GCCs), VSI has recently been supporting capital projects with a function that we call a Project Technology Support Office — not just a managed service that runs technology platforms on behalf of a project owner but a hub to ensure that the technology platforms leveraged during the construction phase build a data ecosystem that carries over seamlessly into the operational phase.

2. From BIM to digital twins

Building Information Modeling (BIM) is not new, but tomorrow’s BIM is not yesterday’s. In the past, individual firms tended to use BIM in isolation. Today, BIM is becoming the foundational methodology for providing digital twins that give all project stakeholders — architects, mechanical engineers, contractors, sub-contractors, and owner-operators across sectors — a shared experiential view of the project and their built environments. We think of BIM not as a technology but as a method — a way of working. Without the correct data, BIM capabilities create intricate but static three-dimensional toys. By thinking of BIM as a journey that leads toward living digital twin models, organizations will be better prepared to integrate AI in a way that optimizes project outcomes, predicts potential issues, and improves stakeholder collaboration. While many see BIM as a simple digital representation, it’s actually about enabling intelligent decision-making across the project lifecycle. One of the most critical elements of this collaborative “BIM roadmap” is data-language mapping — standardizing terminology and data fields so that they are seamlessly transportable across different technology platforms through the design, build, and operation phases and are helpful for all project and infrastructure owner stakeholders.

As transformational as BIM and digital twins are for the design and construction phase, they are even more critical during operations. Historically, data from the design and build phases often failed to carry over into operations, leaving building operators with little understanding of how the infrastructure was designed or constructed. Today, we have the maturity to develop well-defined BIM Execution Plans (BEP) and automate them through technology tools to ensure that operational teams have access to data that will help them manage assets efficiently over the next 20-30 years, right from the inception of the project (design stage).

3. Growing demand for green construction

Sustainability is no longer optional. Changing government regulations and owner-operator demands are pushing the EC&O industry to adopt greener practices, focusing on reducing carbon emissions, conserving resources, and improving supply chain efficiency. (These same concerns have directly impacted how we approach our built environment at VSI, incorporating features like natural sunlight optimization, water recycling systems, and energy-efficient materials). Many of our clients now face pressure not only around intelligent supply chain and materials selection but also around tracking their carbon footprints on a granular level and making greener choices at every project stage. For example, owner-operators are asking construction firms to disclose the greenhouse gas emissions tied to their supply chain — whether materials were sourced locally or transported overseas.

This push for sustainability begins in the design phase, where companies increasingly use AI and other digital tools to perform “what-if” analyses. AI-driven platforms, often supported by cloud infrastructure, can evaluate multiple real-world sustainability scenarios, helping construction project managers select the most eco-friendly materials and processes. These demands are now trickling down to materials suppliers, who will increasingly need to present carbon emissions data alongside price.

4. Occupier-centric buildings

The role of facilities management has expanded beyond just managing assets like HVAC systems and lighting. Today, facilities management is becoming occupier-centric, focusing on the people who live and work in the building rather than just the physical infrastructure. Our clients increasingly transform their facilities into ecosystems designed to maximize their occupants’ productivity, comfort, and safety. And by occupiers, we mean more than residents and employees — the experience of service technicians, for example, is also an important consideration. This goes beyond traditional building management, including real-time services like food delivery, transportation, and wellness solutions.

In many ways, deep occupier-centricity will be the “long tail” of early investments in digital infrastructure. This is where BIM, digital twins, Industry 4.0, cloud solutions, and AI combine to enable and monitor various asset-specific services that drive value across multiple decades. For instance, when a building’s intelligent systems can autonomously adjust heating, lighting, and ventilation based on usage, the result is both energy efficiency and increased occupant comfort over the structure’s entire lifecycle.

As the EC&O sector evolves, companies must adopt new technologies to stay competitive, efficient, and sustainable. The trends we’re seeing — digital adoption, data-driven models, green construction, and occupier-centric facilities — are more than fads. They represent the future of the industry. We work closely with our clients to help them navigate these shifts, from providing digital solutions that unify project phases to ensuring that facilities are transformed to meet modern needs. As the industry moves into the future, we are committed to helping our clients implement the strategies and technologies that maximize value and sustainability, ensuring they are prepared for the challenges and opportunities of 2025 and beyond.

About the Authors

Manish Kumar
Head of Consulting, EC&O and Airports

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