The government will invest 23.6 billion won to establish a foundation for high value-added engineering by building digital and big data infrastructure for the engineering industry.

The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (Minister Moon Seung-wook) is actively promoting the "Cloud-based Digital Engineering Integrated Big Data Construction Project" to promote digital transformation in the engineering industry.

The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, through the "Engineering Industry Innovation Strategy" announced in May 2020, set the digitalization of engineering as a key goal to strengthen the future competitiveness of the engineering industry. To achieve this goal, the Ministry will invest a total budget of KRW 23.6 billion from this year to 2023 to promote the "Engineering Big Data Construction Project" as an R&D project.

The project aims to establish a foundation for high added value in the engineering industry by integrating Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies such as big data and AI with existing accumulated excellent engineering knowledge.

To this end, the plan is to build a platform to collect and refine high-quality engineering lifecycle data scattered across businesses and the public sector in analog form, convert it into digital form to provide big data analysis services, and support the use of engineering software (SW) in a cloud environment, thereby promoting the intelligence and digitalization of the entire engineering process.

The main tasks of the engineering big data construction project are: △Establishing an integrated platform and establishing a data utilization foundation suitable for the data characteristics of the engineering industry; △Establishing a full engineering cycle scattered across companies and the public sector. This includes collecting data and supporting AI-based transformation and analysis services, building a cloud-based engineering SW operation infrastructure to support the distribution and use of SW, and collecting engineering data derived from the process of utilizing the SW.

As the first step toward building engineering big data, the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology (KITECH) announced a related project on August 2nd, commissioning a virtual engineering project (totaling 1.5 billion won) and recruiting 10 companies to provide data on the results of the project.

Since there are restrictions on the provision of engineering data, such as approval from the ordering party, the source orders a virtual project that can actually be constructed, and the engineering company must submit results for the entire project cycle.

To collect high-value, high-availability engineering data, Saenggiwon selects and commissions projects with high potential for use across industries, converts corporate results into big data, and provides them as intelligent information.

Therefore, a win-win effect is expected, with companies preparing for promising projects with potential orders through this project, and the government securing high-quality data.

This virtual ordering is targeted at construction projects, which account for a large portion of engineering orders, and is planned to be expanded to manufacturing and plant sectors in the future.

In addition, in parallel with the data collection through this virtual ordering method, we are also reviewing the following: △support for companies that wish to convert their analog data to digital; △establishment of cloud-based engineering SW utilization services and data collection methods through the output of such SW utilization. The detailed business plan will be announced separately at a later date.

Kim Sang-mo, Director General of Industrial Technology Convergence Policy at the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, said, “In order to enhance the competitiveness of small and medium-sized engineering companies, the convergence of on-site knowledge of the engineering industry and digital technology is important.”“We will take the lead in promoting data construction projects to further promote the digitalization of the engineering industry,” he said.