The feature topic of this issue of Civil & Structural Engineer is both timely and important. Most engineering firms in business today are notoriously slow to adopt digital technology and, in fact, most industries have difficulty adapting to technological transformations. Few leaders would disagree with the fact that business today is driven by data and smart algorithms. The problem is the difficulty in which those leaders can predict the impact of such technologies in order to plan for organizational change. It is easier to pursue digital evolution or incrementalism than it is to lead true digital transformation. The focus, in large part, has been on using technology to cut costs, or worse, cut jobs. In fact, the past few recessions have seen a significant increase in labor replacing automation across industries. The challenge therefore is, how do you reimagine what you do for the new era of AI-powered competition? Many firms have begun to shift their culture towards something that should be very intuitive for them. It is a set of principles that has been collectively known as design thinking and reimagining the client experience. Most firms are also beginning to recognize that aggressive integration of digital technologies is critical to remain competitive. Research conducted by Accenture Research shows that the top 10 percent of early adopters of digital technologies have grown at twice the rate of the bottom 25 percent, and that they are using cloud systems over legacy systems to enable adoption. This means there is a lot of opportunity for firms in our industry to differentiate themselves through aggressive investment in advancing their competitive advantage through technology. So, what is your firm doing to access, power, and train the next generation to implement natural language processing tools, quantum computing solutions, and the other advancements? One of the emerging technologies that will arguably have the biggest impact to the industry within the next 10 years, and is simultaneously not being discussed widely, is quantum computing. I’ll put aside my traumatic flashbacks from when I took quantum physics for my undergraduate physics degree, because, well, this is important. Quantum physics has already changed our lives by way of advancements such as the laser and transistor. The recent progress has put us on the brink of a second quantum revolution. This one in particular is within quantum computing and communication. Current estimates predict the quantum computing market will surpass the $65 billion mark by 2030. At the risk of oversimplifying it, quantum computers rely on a fundamental property of quantum particles which can be a powerful resource – uncertainty. While it sounds unnerving at first, it allows for some pretty incredible outcomes. At the level of individual quantum particles, think electrons or photons, it is impossible to determine every property (position and momentum) of the particle at any given moment in time. For Breaking Bad fans, this is the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principal – a different Heisenberg though. Therefore, in the quantum world we use the language of probability, rather than certainty. Classical computers rely on binary digits (bits) of 0s and 1s, quantum bits (qubits), however, have some likelihood of being a 1 or some likelihood of being a 0 at the same time. The revolutionary idea behind quantum information processing lies precisely in the fuzzy in-between “superposition” of 0 and 1. It provides new, and far more powerful, ways to communicate and process data. To provide some perspective, quantum computers would be able to solve problems that are currently impossible with traditional computers
Quantum Revolution: Adopting Software and Technology and Planning for Future Phil Keil
5
october 2020
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