Will Myles is the Asia Pacific regional managing director of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS). He has a broad background in the construction and property sectors gained in advisory, consulting and contracting services across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Asia-Pacific region.
Myles was previously managing director for Bahrain and Kuwait for WS Atkins plc. Prior to that, he established a management consulting arm for Atkins in the Middle East and has held business development and project management roles in East Asia and Oceania.
He holds an MBA from IMD International in Switzerland and an LLB from the University of London. He originally qualified as a chartered engineer in Hong Kong and is a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers and the Chartered Institute of Building. Myles is passionate about the internationalisation of standards in the built environment and the benefits that this will bring to an increasingly globally connected world.
RICS just held its annual World Built Environment Forum in Shanghai. What is the role of RICS in the real estate, construction and infrastructure sectors?
Global expansion, changing demographics and technological advances are the key trends driving and reshaping the world in which we live and work. Digital advances, a mobile workforce and unprecedented urbanisation will bring challenges and opportunities that have never been encountered before. New markets, products and services bring a need for housing, infrastructure and education as the world grapples with changes to real estate and society, as a whole.
As the global professional body for the built environment sector, RICS champions international standards for an increasingly urbanised and connected world across the built environment life cycle—land, construction, infrastructure and property. Our expertise covers property valuation and management, the costing and leadership of construction projects, the development of infrastructure and the management of natural resources—all underpinned by professionalism and ethics.
RICS can influence policy and embed standards at a national and global level, working at a cross-governmental level and delivering international standards that will support a safe and vibrant marketplace in the built environment for the benefit of all. We promote collaboration among key partners in the delivery of international standards, namely the International Property Measurement Standards, International Ethics Standards and International Construction Measurement Standards.
We also seek to play a pivotal role in supporting sustainable investment and growth, as well as finding practical solutions to urban challenges. To do this, RICS carries out intensive research through horizon scanning, scenario planning and simulation to create and consider alternate futures. We engage with a range of industry leaders, practitioners, students and firms through workshops, conferences and other global events, in-depth interviews and research to identify where the most significant changes are occurring and which drivers and trends have the greatest implications for the surveying profession and the wider built environment sector.
What challenges will surveyors potentially face in the future? How will RICS help your members face these challenges?
Surveying may have a long history, but roles are continuously adapting to our evolving world. Technological advances will mean major changes for many professionals as technology replaces certain tasks and transforms building processes to improve efficiency and productivity. Big data, complex projects and the need for collaboration will drive new skillset needs. On top of this, the cyclical nature of our sector (especially construction, sale of properties, resource booms and greater global mobility) will raise challenges for employers trying to meet skills needs.
Going forward, we believe the key areas of focus for our sector are:
• War for talent: How do we attract the next generation of professionals, retain that talent, promote diversity and ensure that the right education is available to meet our sector’s needs?
• Future cities: How does our sector contribute to reforming landuse planning, integrating smart technology, building resilience, helping to define the economic and social purpose of placemaking, and delivering affordable community infrastructure?
• Embracing technology and big data: Our goal must be to create new value through the integration of datasets, the building of analytical capabilities and the embedding of new technologies by changing systems and processes. Our profession needs to place itself at the forefront of change and help change mindsets.
• Leadership: Leadership is needed across the land, real estate and construction sectors, including representation at board level, a stronger voice in government and collaboration across professional bodies.
• Ethics: The issue is becoming a critical part of professional behaviour and is an area where more work is needed. RICS has recently launched, with a coalition of partners, the International Ethics Standards, which aim to create a set of global principles for the profession.
How did the geopolitical shifts over the past two years affect the market in China and Hong Kong?
A landmark development that will impact markets in the region is the One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative, which is intended to transform China’s geographic neighbours from dependents into viable economic partners and export markets. It will create a new geography for a globalised world order in which eastern and southern Asia are the economic centres of gravity. It will establish an unprecedentedly wide platform for economic cooperation, including policy coordination, trade and financing collaboration, and social and cultural interchange.
As an established financial and maritime hub, Hong Kong is positioning itself to take advantage of the OBOR initiative. With the acceleration of the opening up of mainland China, Hong Kong has seized the BIM involves a different way of thinking and a radical shift away from traditional workflows opportunity to develop into the largest centre for offshore renminbi (RMB) business.
Hong Kong is also the springboard for many Chinese companies expanding overseas, and similarly, an attractive destination for overseas corporations wanting to gain a foothold in the mainland market. For these reasons, Hong Kong is uniquely positioned to facilitate infrastructure investments and their financing, especially in the context of the OBOR blueprint for global economic development in a new world order.
There is a genuine openness among Chinese corporations to embrace international standards and to encourage their talent to embrace international competencies for learning and development.
As an experienced professional in the industry, what do you think are the key drivers that affect the construction sector in the long run?
Based on the Construction Intelligence Center’s Global 50, a grouping of the 50 largest and most influential markets in the world, the global construction industry is projected to reach an estimated value of USD10.1 trillion by 2021. The major drivers of the construction industry are increasing population, increasing per capita income and GDP growth. Increasing urbanisation, easy credit availability and rising consumer spending will possibly boost the construction industry. Strong economic growth in developing nations, such as China, India and the Middle East countries, is expected to further drive this industry.
Government spending is particularly important in infrastructure development, though increasingly supported by private sector finance. Forward-looking governments recognise the need to provide appropriate infrastructure to support development of the economy and as a public service to their citizens.
The Asia-Pacific will continue to account for the largest share of the global construction industry, given that it includes the large markets of China, Japan and India. However, the pace of growth will be slow, given the relative sluggishness in China’s construction industry, the expansion of which will be undermined by the glut of new residential property. The emerging markets of Southeast Asia, notably the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia, will invest heavily in new infrastructure projects, supported by private investments.
How will Building Information Modelling (BIM) shape the future of the construction industry?
BIM is both a new technology and a new way of working. The concept has been around for a while in the manufacturing and engineering industries, and is now beginning to make an impact in the property and construction sectors. At a strategic level, BIM offers the capacity to address many of these industries’ problems, including waste reduction, value creation and productivity improvement.
The BIM process moves away from conventional word processing and computer-aided design (CAD), and into the increased use of common standards and product-orientated representations. BIM changes the emphasis by making the model the primary tool for documentation, from which an increasing number of reports—such as plans, schedules and bills of quantities—may be derived.
It involves not just new software, but a different way of thinking and a radical shift away from traditional workflows. BIM has the potential to affect every aspect of the surveying profession, and it should be seen as an opportunity to deliver new service streams and extend our professional reach into new areas spanning the complete asset life cycle.
In that regard, BIM will enable better interaction between the design and construction phases of a project, as well as the operation and maintenance phases. Lack of interaction with end-users at the start of a project is a common shortcoming, and BIM provides a platform for life-cycle thinking, though it is currently in its infancy. It is common for a single project to have many BIM models—an ironic inefficiency with an enabling technology.
BIM will ultimately reduce rework—carrying out the same work twice, either through error, poor workmanship or subsequent change—at both the design and construction phases of a project.
One of the key issues to overcome is the conservative reflex of the construction—in part for good reasons such as health and safety, in part as industry economics create a low-risk, low-margin environment—in which incumbent players have little incentive or capacity to try something new. Industry and government buyers have an important role to play in improving the uptake of technology in construction in all its guises.
