Riccardo is the Secretary General of the CECE, which represents construction industry manufacturers as a lobbying voice within the Brussels bubble. Its role is to create awareness of the construction industry’s needs with key policy makers at the EU.

CECE has 1200-members, employs 300,000 people, with roughly that number of indirect employment and generates an incredible €40bn in turnover per year. “Downtime is another description for the negative productivity issue our industry has. Productivity growth is a problem and the Eliminate Downtime Model depicts the complexity of the issue.” Stated Riccardo Viaggi.

The industry’s value chain is diverse and very long, with contractors and many subcontractors. The layers add to the complexity however, to the CECE, this highlights a clear solution pathway – the need for industry-wide cooperation.

Eliminate Downtime is an exciting initiative because it starts a dialogue and a move towards cooperation. No one person or organization has a ‘silver bullet’ to this problem. Equipment Companies don’t have it, construction companies don’t, architects don’t, and public authorities don’t.

Construction has an Eliminate Downtime voice in the Brussels Bubble.

Riccardo Viaggi

The CECE and its members believe that the ‘Power of Data’ will change the whole value chain of the construction industry. It is supporting initiatives underway in Brussels including the CECE Digitalization Project, CECE Report in 2018, which involved machine OEMs, rental companies, associations and European contractor associations. This report generated the momentum for the development of a Construction Industry Framework, which led to:

• CECE ‘Digitalisation Taskforce’ which involves major construction OEMs, contractors and technology providers.
  A key issue is data sharing and to get a clearer perspective the CECE looked at other sectors including the Farming Industry where the EU has developed a ‘Code of Conduct’ for data sharing. The findings are useful to pursue in Brussels targeting the minimum necessary legislation and maximum collaboration.
• On 1/09/2019 CECE kicked-off DigiPLACE, an 18-month project that will develop an architectural reference framework for a single digital platform for the construction industry.

CECE is dedicated to contributing to moving the construction industry forward and part of the proposal is to overcome misconceptions and barriers within the industry to sharing data. There are individual and groups of organizations that are resistant to sharing data for a variety of reasons. There are hard discussions to come in order to agree and create the environment that supports digitalization and productivity. The Eliminate Downtime initiative is welcome as it generates awareness and heat in the industry, as it gains support.