Digital Construction Awards 2024: iDEA and King’s College London win Best Use of Data on a Project

iDEA, a multi-disciplinary design consultancy, has been collaborating with King’s College London (KCL) for the past four years, exploring new digital technologies that could support the delivery of a long-term campus masterplan to improve and optimise a complex estate in central London.  

The KCL estate is a complex cluster of 250 buildings of various periods. KCL wanted base data that would allow it to engage with academics and the senior leadership team and develop a 2029 property vision to: optimise use of historic assets and office space; enhance student experience; reduce energy consumption; support hybrid work practices; and deliver cutting-edge teaching space. KCL held good property data but this was confined to Planon data that relied on multiple input sources. 

iDEA and KCL felt that existing tech solutions fell short of addressing their demands effectively, so they decided to build a custom software tool from the ground up.  

One of the primary digital technologies that iDEA and KCL have been working with is Vantage, an estates visualisation platform that aggregates core campus data. Vantage is a multi-layered and 360-degree ‘command centre’ from which millions of combinations of data analysis can be achieved, in one place, at one time. Using Vantage, iDEA developed a digital campus platform, built in the Unity game engine. 

This provides an interactive means of storytelling and data analysis, incorporating information including the relative locations of campuses and buildings; building condition; functional suitability; construction date; tenure type; and 3D representations of buildings.  

iDEA has also developed a bespoke open-source API that allows data from associated tools such as Register (a timetable analysis tool) and Forecast (a spatial scenario planning tool) to connect with the Planon data, creating a single source digital twin of the whole campus. 

With a complete 3D build of KCL campuses, iDEA has provided access to all the relevant occupier, work settings and occupancy data for the entire university. The model is used by the KCL estates team as an engagement and communication tool and to analyse the estate and scenario plan. Longer term, there is the possibility that KCL’s architecture and construction students could use iDEA’s tools to understand how carbon emissions from the built environment can be reduced. 

Chris Ager, MD of iDEA, said: “This award represents the best part of about seven years’ worth of work. If it hadn’t been for our clients at King’s College seeing the value in the project, supporting it, and giving us a platform to actually develop it, then we would not be here collecting this award. We’re proud to be supporting the university to improve education around real estate.”

Read about the rest of the winners.

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