Months ago, I blogged on "what does it take to be an international leader in Virtual Design and Construction (VDC)". I had some friendly comments to my blog and I had some not so friendly replies to my blog. Because at the end of the day I really chickened out and didn't declare one region of the world the leader over any other. So today I'm prepared to drive that stake in the ground.

In that blog I pointed to the top five factors (whether it's the U.S., Japan, the European Continent or the Nordic Countries etc.) that would influence how fast VDC was taking root and accelerating there. And in no particular order those things were...

1. The degree to which the competition was really open vs. the winners of the competition being predetermined somehow or heavily favored for any number of reasons. Open completion kind of fostered innovations...

2. The degree to which the construction industry and higher education institutions were partnered. I would cite, for example in the U.S. the CIFE partnership between Stanford and the Construction industry partners.

3. I think you all know this one instinctively... the degree to which that society (whether it's the U.S., U.K or France) is litigious. I think the degree to which a construction project can be optimized out of court instead of everybody worrying about how they're going to look in court has a big impact on how willing people are to innovate and try new processes.

4. I think there's a cultural difference in problem solving that we've observed in how the planners vs. experimenters tend to approach something as new as BIM in construction differently.

5. I focused on government spending vs. private spending in building construction because in most countries the government is the largest building owner. I'll point to Singapore as an example... The government is the largest building owner. It's a heavily regulated industry on Singapore and they can mandate change overnight and have done so.  And if there is a very large private sector that pretty much defines the economy (as in, for example, U.S., U.K. and Western Europe) it's harder for everyone to get on one page. The GSA has done a great job trying to drive initiatives in the U.S. and they are as far as I know still the biggest building owner in the country. But they can't mandate change overnight and they know it so I think they've done a very rational thing.

So those five things kind of laid it out for me and when I wrote that blog I really did have a leader in mind. And today it's still true. If you look at Finnish construction companies and how the industry operates in this country it really is where VDC really leads in the world. They have all of these factors going for them from research and sponsorships by the government to the educational institutions. It's not a litigious society at all. When something goes awry in the project everybody gets together immediately, puts their thinking caps on and fixes it. And the last thing they worry about is pointing fingers and blame. It's not a panacea but these guys really are cooking. And they're going really, really deep. You can talk to people in any of the construction companies here and they really understand the subject. They've tried every piece of software, every new process, and I think they really are leading the world in virtual construction today. And it's probably no accident I think they're very focused on doing just that.

So for whomever I've offended in the audience (laughs) at least I've finally declared what I really think in terms of who's doing what. And we'll see how that evolves over time.

What is your opinion?  Should we be examining other factors?  Should we be placing more or less weight on these contributing factors?