Founder & CEO _ Dr Bola Abisogun OBE

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A budding graduate PQS who had just qualified and completed his APC with RICS, and upon returning from his first business trip to the USA in August 2000, Bola was inspired to set up his first ‘traditional’ construction business [Urbanis Limited] following a face-to-face meeting with his idol _ Herman J Russell, in Atlanta, Georgia. Incorporated in January 2003, just as HJ Russell had done and continue to do, Urbanis set about securing public sector contracts in the ‘repairs and maintenance’ sector, across London, specifically undertaking void refurbishments and kitchen & bathroom upgrade programmes. Due to the size of the business, and in the absence of much needed ‘inclusive’ public-procurement tools [on the Client side] effective and accountable contract management and supply chain visibility, with a granular focus on ‘performance and conduct’, Bola rather reluctantly, became a sub-contractor delivering work, on pan-London basis for a handful of ‘Prime / Main Contractors’. Back in 2003, the business philosophy and core values of the Executive Team at Urbanis, predicated on ‘Service to Others’, was to utilise the public sector contract opportunity to reach out to the young people active [or not] within ‘urban inner city’ areas across London. By going into schools, colleges, universities [and prisons] and sharing his own journey into the construction sector he was able to engage, educate and empower young people [and other family members] to consider a career in the UK’s ‘traditional construction industry. 

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The ‘Urbanis-YP Model’ worked and there were many successes, but some huge failures too – the latter, instigated by a couple of clients and the same main contractors, that he had serviced for some 15 years – all of which led to the ‘technical’ demise of his own business in 2017/18. Although gravely disappointed at the prospect of losing everything that he worked for, up to that point, the irony was that, just as he had been ‘broken’ by the public procurement process and payment system and culture of the industry, as delivered by UK construction, it was destined that he did not leave the sector empty handed. Based in Nile Street, Hackney, and on the same day that he locked the rear door of his office for the last time in his fifteen year residence [it being secured by Bailiffs, just a month prior], Bola received a call – on 10th December 2018 – from the Cabinet Office, advising that he was to be awarded an OBE [by the late HMQEII in the New Years Honours 2019]. The honour bestowed onto him was for Services to Diversity and to Young People in the Construction Industry. This acknowledgement, was the sign, at least for him, that there was clearly a more compelling reason to continue to Serve others.

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However, it was the tragedy of Grenfell Tower on 14th June 2017 that delivered the final straw that broke the camels back. Bola decided to leave the construction sector, for good, and try to fix it using his own business failures and that of the tragedy of Grenfell as a ‘use-case’ for Digital Twins. His body of work [which began in 1994] was embraced by the Executive Team, led by Alexandra Bolton, and crystallised at the Centre for Digital Built Britain ‘CDBB’ – a joint venture between the University of Cambridge and the former, UK Govt Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy [BEIS], now the Department of Business and Trade [DBAT]. Aligned to the overarching, passage of development of the Building Safety Act [which received Royal Assent on 28 April 2022] and with a focus on skills for the entire UK construction sector, Bola founded the Digital Twin Skills Academy CIC [‘DTSA’] as a ‘not-for-profit’ community interest company, which commenced trading in April 2023, on the same date as operational window of the Building Safety Act.

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As the Digital Champion for RICS, a Chartered Quantity Surveyor by profession, and the Founder and President of the Digital Twin Skills Academy CIC, he maintains an over-arching intention, via his global industry initiative #PQS2030, to deploy digital twins into ‘regulated professional services’ with an unapologetic focus on cultural change. Appointed to sit on the Gemini Council at the Centre for Digital Built Britain he remains a co-author of the infamous Gemini Papers and the Digital Twin toolkit. He is a well-documented industry disruptor, a longstanding Member of the Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB) and an eminent Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS). He is also the Founder & Chairman of DiverseCity Surveyors (DCS) – who are an Honorary Associate Member of the Construction Industry Council, promoting excellence and thought-leadership across the global, non-traditional talent pool. Bola  was appointed Chairman of the DEI Committee by the Construction Industry Council in November 2022, and through his well-documented commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, he has successfully fused the intrinsic relationship between DEI and disruptive technology. Bola is Digital Director at BIM Academy and is working with their global sister organisation, Ryder Architecture to grow their international business, with a strategic focus on ‘outcome-based’ social value. 

 

Amongst his wider commitments to ESG, young people and diversity, he supports and promotes, across the industry, an unapologetic focus on ‘digital construction’. In April 2022, he was appointed along with a number of high profile industry leaders, to serve on the City of London Corporations’ Taskforce set to shape and promote [by 2025] the ‘green skills’ required to decarbonise all commercial office buildings in the Square Mile and across the City of London / Central London Forward. He works tirelessly and extensively with the Mayor of London and the GLA and from inception in 2013 was the Chairman of the ‘Moving on Up’ (MoU) initiative, London Advisory Board (funded by Trust for London, the City Bridge Trust and supported by the Mayor of London).

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