By: Damien Cutcliffe, DTP Leadership Team and Director of Business Development and Growth, Digital at WSP
Once again, the DTP were blown away by the level of engagement and energy in the room at its Launch event the week before last in Melbourne. Held at the fabulous Micro-Labs creative space, we were joined by an enthusiastic group of 50 collaborators across industry.
After some networking and breakfast upon arrival, our host Sam Shaheen from the City of Melbourne (Chief Data Officer) kicked things off with the welcome and acknowledgement to country. Gavin Cotterill then provided an overview of the vision for the DTP and some reflection on the outcomes from our inaugural event in Brisbane the month before.
Tegan Kop from the City of Melbourne was next up as our keynote speaker, Tegan delivered a fantastic presentation that featured many human-centred insights with an emphasis on how the work the Team are doing will have a positive impact on the liveability of Melbourne.
There was a big focus on the people side of any transformation project, be it big or small. Tegan reflected on the many lessons learned across past projects, and how these have informed ongoing exploration into how digital twin capabilities can deliver lasting benefits, and to quote Tegan -
“All in the pursuit of enabling a resilient and inclusive future where Melbourne continues to be a city of possibility!”
It should also not be forgotten that Tegan demonstrated a flair for emojis in her presentation, they say a picture tells a thousand words, and the emojis on display almost stole the show!
Tegan was then joined by Bronwen Clark from the National Growth Areas Alliance, and Damien Cutcliffe on a panel hosted by Kate Williams. Bronwen reflected on the challenges associated with planning in the outer suburbs, and how digital twins can support long term optimisation of outcomes.
The panel went on to discuss the need to drive impact by realising and demonstrating value early, across a wide range of stakeholders. There was also a focus on the importance of collaboration and partnering, with digital twin capabilities having the ability to cross discipline boundaries and bring together diverse groups.
The panel were joined by the attendees in a highly engaging Q&A which was more roundtable in style, it was great to witness the group feed off each other’s experiences and insights.
Nathan Quadros then led a short survey to capture some sentiment from the attendees gathered, this feedback is valued and is an important input which will guide the DTP in our next steps.
Our main take aways from the event:
The focus on cities showed that no matter the nature of the transformation or digital twin use cases considered that there were similar topics where we could share practices across industries
The energy in the room, level of engagement and collaboration on display has reinforced our view that industry is craving this type of event focussed on digital twins
On the back of Brisbane and Melbourne there is growing interest from attendees to get involved in the DTP and get behind initiatives that progress the digital twin agenda across Australia.
We are now compiling the results and feedback from participants during the engagement session. These survey addressed a range of topics including:
What could DTP do for you to accelerate your Digital Twin initiatives?
What are the current gaps hindering your or your clients take up of Digital Twins?
How can "we" as industry better support government in their Digital Twin implementations?
The responses are helping to shape the DTP, and we will have more to announce soon on this.
We now look forward to our launch event and half day forum in Sydney on the 16th Feb 2023 where we will look at Building Big: Smart Infrastructure for a Digital Future - Register here.
Cant wait to see you in Sydney in the new year!