Q&A with…Oliver Bürkler, FARO
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Q&A with…Oliver Bürkler, FARO

To gain real insight into today’s geospatial business landscape, 'GIM International' decided to ask some of the sector’s most influential companies for their opinions. This series of Q&As captures the current state of the industry from various perspectives, such as which technological and societal developments will have the most impact on the geomatics market, which market segments are the most promising and which areas offer the most substantial growth. The questions also explore the trend towards open data and open-source software. This time, Oliver Bürkler, senior product manager for 3D documentation software & innovation with FARO Europe, shares his views.

Which technological developments will affect your product/service portfolio the most in the coming years?

Looking at our customers and the technology they are applying, increasing digitalisation and automation of the construction industry is affecting our portfolio the most. The more design and construction processes will be digitised, the more our customers will benefit from our products which are aiming at connecting the realms of physical construction and digital construction.

Looking at FARO’s product portfolio for the construction and BIM industry, the progress of digital technologies like cloud computing, 5G or virtual reality (VR) will lead to better customer experience, better and more valuable answers in less time. Ultimately, our customers will be able to make better decisions, avoid waste and rework costs throughout the whole building life cycle.

Which societal developments will influence your share of the geomatics market the most in the coming years? How and why?

With FARO’s Construction, BIM-CIM business line supporting the AEC industry, any development which grows the construction market will influence our market. Trends like urbanisation, scarcity of training staff and internet of things, to name but a few, are all areas where we can help our customers to transform and grow their business.

Which market segments are the most promising for your products/services? 

Our main focus, our field of expertise where we strive to deliver the best value to our customers, is the AEC or construction industry.

In which parts of the world do you envisage substantial growth in users of your products/services?

The construction industry and related businesses are growing on a global scale. Therefore we see potential to gain new users for our solutions in all parts of the world.

Open data is becoming increasingly available all over the world. How will this trend affect your business?

Our solutions are supporting the easy and intuitive sharing of as-built information to allow our customers to collaborate with all involved parties throughout the building life cycle. In that respect, the idea of open data is supporting our vision. Meanwhile, data security, protection of data privacy and intellectual property are very important to our clients. Our cloud-based data sharing solutions take care of this by offering the best possible security and encryption levels as well as by giving the customer full control to manage the access to their information.

Will the tendency of increasing use of open-source software be a threat or an opportunity for your business?

Having more and better software which is accessible to users at very low or even no cost will broaden the application of digital technologies in the AEC industry. We see this as an opportunity for our customers to make their businesses more profitable. Accordingly, FARO is supporting the access for software developers by providing programming interfaces to the digital as-built data created by our solutions.

Oliver Bürkler

Oliver Bürkler is senior product manager for 3D documentation software & innovation with FARO Europe. He earned his master’s in precision engineering and business administration & engineering at the University of Applied Science in Munich, Germany. As part of the FARO 3D laser scanner product manager team, Bürkler is focusing on the development of FARO’s 3D documentation software and new innovations, as well as managing the relationships with the company’s third-party development partners.

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