FOREWORDINFRASTRUCTURE &CITIES: PIVOTAL SKILLSFOR NEW CHALLENGES
SOCIAL LISTENING TOREVEAL CONVERSATIONSABOUT INFRASTRUCTURE& CITIES SKILLSLESSONS LEARNED FROMSOCIAL LISTENING

CONCLUSIONYOUR SKILLS, OUR FUTURE

KEY SKILLS FORINFRASTRUCTURE & CITIESTRANSFORMATION
1FOREWORDINFRASTRUCTURE &CITIES: PIVOTAL SKILLSFOR NEW CHALLENGES
SOCIAL LISTENING TOREVEAL CONVERSATIONSABOUT INFRASTRUCTURE& CITIES SKILLSLESSONS LEARNED FROMSOCIAL LISTENING

CONCLUSION

We’re experiencing a global Industry Renaissance today,bringing new ways – real and virtual – of seeing the world,
inventing, learning, producing and trading. Tomorrow’s
game-changers will not be those with the most automatedproduction systems, but those who build a culture ofknowledge and know-how to reveal and train the Workforceof the Future, able to solve the challenges of a planet lacking
sustainable solutions.
BERNARD CHARLÈS
Chairman of the Board
and Chief Executive Officer

2

FOREWORDINFRASTRUCTURE &CITIES: PIVOTAL SKILLSFOR NEW CHALLENGES
SOCIAL LISTENING TOREVEAL CONVERSATIONSABOUT INFRASTRUCTURE& CITIES SKILLSLESSONS LEARNED FROMSOCIAL LISTENING

CONCLUSIONFOREWORD

3

FOREWORDINFRASTRUCTURE &CITIES: PIVOTAL SKILLSFOR NEW CHALLENGES

By 2050, 68% of the world’s population will
be living in cities. Making cities inclusive,
safe, resilient and sustainable is oneof our biggest challenges ahead. The
Infrastructure & Cities sector has to accelerate
its transformation drastically engaging
altogether public authorities, industry
leaders and citizen.
“The only progress is human”
At Dassault Systèmes, we are convincedthat progress stems from people overtechnology. When innovations are made bypeople, for people, they can induce positivechange, and trigger real progress. And this is
how we’ll tackle current, and future stakes.

To drive progress, people need to be
empowered with the right skills, knowledge
and know-how: the ones they need toinvent new usages, create disruptive
experiences, build more efficiently andsustainably. Learning and skills development
are at the heart of the change.

SOCIAL LISTENING TOREVEAL CONVERSATIONSABOUT INFRASTRUCTURE& CITIES SKILLSLESSONS LEARNED FROMSOCIAL LISTENING

CONCLUSIONAs the strategic transformation partner
for global Industrial and Academic leaders,Dassault Systèmes plays a unique role inthis transformation. This is why we arevery pleased to share this new publicationfrom 3DEXPERIENCE® Edu, whose missions
include fostering collective intelligence on
key emerging roles and skills.

4

FOREWORDINFRASTRUCTURE &CITIES: PIVOTAL SKILLSFOR NEW CHALLENGES

This e-book is part of a series of publications
called “Skills wanted for sustainable
innovations,” which share the view of
3DEXPERIENCE Edu and its ecosystem ofpartners and customers, on the evolutionof the key jobs, disciplines and skills fordelivering sustainable innovations.
This publication focuses on revealing thepivotal skills to empower Infrastructure &Cities sector’s players and accelerate its
transformation. Thanks to a social listening
study, in partnership with Bloom, thepublication also highlights how those skills
are discussed on social media today.

SOCIAL LISTENING TOREVEAL CONVERSATIONSABOUT INFRASTRUCTURE& CITIES SKILLS

Sector’s challenges

39%

CO2 emitted

40%

LESSONS LEARNED FROMSOCIAL LISTENING

CONCLUSION

waste generated

33%

energy consumed

5

FOREWORDINFRASTRUCTURE &CITIES: PIVOTAL SKILLSFOR NEW CHALLENGES
SOCIAL LISTENING TOREVEAL CONVERSATIONSABOUT INFRASTRUCTURE& CITIES SKILLSLESSONS LEARNED FROMSOCIAL LISTENING

CONCLUSIONINFRASTRUCTURE & CITIES:PIVOTAL SKILLSFOR NEW CHALLENGES

6

FOREWORDINFRASTRUCTURE &CITIES: PIVOTAL SKILLSFOR NEW CHALLENGES

Citizen participation, climate-proof design,
decarbonization of the whole value chain,circular economy encapsulation, energypositive building and operations: theInfrastructure & Cities sector has a clear
agenda to accelerate its transformation. It isa huge opportunity for innovation, but also
are the stakes.
This new paradigm requires massive
reskilling and upskilling for all Infrastructure& Cities sector’s players, to empower them
all along the value creation and decisionmaking processes.
Frédéric Gal, Program Director at Bouygues
Construction, says: “There is a critical skills
shortage on the Construction Industry. We
face problems finding a skilled workforce
for our projects. Construction industry is
one of the less digitalized; we do not seek todigitalize our current processes but rather toaddress what could be the transformationof the sector”.
Key skills and disciplines forbuilding tomorrow
From conversations with our customers andthe industry ecosystem, we have identified
key skills that are necessary to acceleratingtransformation and delivering moresustainable experiences for infrastructure
and cities: Civil Engineering, Data Science,
Generative or Computational Design,
Systems Engineering, Carbon footprint
management, and Mobility Planning.
Underpinning all those disciplines andskills and fostering multi-disciplinarity, the
3DEXPERIENCE platform provides a single
environment for the next generation of
innovators to collaborate in the virtual world,and create the conditions to improve thereal world.

SOCIAL LISTENING TOREVEAL CONVERSATIONSABOUT INFRASTRUCTURE& CITIES SKILLSLESSONS LEARNED FROMSOCIAL LISTENING

CONCLUSION

7FOREWORDINFRASTRUCTURE &CITIES: PIVOTAL SKILLSFOR NEW CHALLENGES“Digital technologies are facilitating the
rapid development of intelligent buildings,
smart cities, and sustainable infrastructure.
It is imperative that our students masterthese technologies to become the senior
managers needed to build the world of the
future,” said Joël Cuny, Chief Executive,
ESTP Engineering School Paris.
In the graph on the next page are thedisciplines, powered by the 3DEXPERIENCE
platform, and their identification as“foundational” or “pivotal”. Those disciplines
are composed of skill sets that are not all
mentioned in this document. They are andwill be detailed in dedicated publications: Civil
Engineer, Systems Engineer, Mechatronics
Engineer, Industrial Engineer, or Additive
Manufacturing Designer at Skills website.

“Virtual twin experiences”, enabled by
the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, offer one
single and shared virtual model of thecity, where all stakeholders can rapidly
and collaboratively explore every potential
scenario by modelling, simulating, andvisualizing change in real-time, with entire
cities, predicting future behaviors to create
efficient solutions at every stage from design,
construction and operation, to demolition
or recycling of materials.

SOCIAL LISTENING TOREVEAL CONVERSATIONSABOUT INFRASTRUCTURE& CITIES SKILLSLESSONS LEARNED FROMSOCIAL LISTENING

CONCLUSION

The architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC)
disciplines are experiencing a paradigm shift in how we should think
about data, integration, sustainability and technologies to better
deliver more efficient and sustainable cities and infrastructure.
Through our use of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform we are educating ourstudents to be the change makers and future innovators.
– David Gerber, Professor and Program Director
Viterbi School of Engineering
8

PIVOTAL SKILLS TO ACCELERATE INFRASTRUCTURE & CITIES TRANSFORMATIONFOREWORD

PIVOTAL SKILLS TO ACCELERATE INFRASTRUCTURE & CITIES TRANSFORMATIONINFRASTRUCTURE &CITIES: PIVOTAL SKILLSFOR NEW CHALLENGES

Digital Collaboration& Project Management
Field Execution
Management

SOCIAL LISTENING TOREVEAL CONVERSATIONSABOUT INFRASTRUCTURE& CITIES SKILLSBIM Coordination

LESSONS LEARNED FROMSOCIAL LISTENING

Configuration
Management

Urban DataManagement

Supply Chain
Planning

CONCLUSION

Mobility
Planning

Eco-Design
Sustainable
Engineering

Data Science

Building
DesignSystems
Engineering

Generative andComputational Design

CarbonFootprint
Management

Virtual Twin
Creation

Data
Analysis

StructuralEngineering

Virtual Twin
Operation
Data
Engineering

Civil
Engineering
Factory Operation

Logistics
Lean Management
Electromagnetics
Simulation

Fluids Simulation
Multibody Dynamics
Simulation
PivotalFoundational

Structures
Simulation
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FOREWORDINFRASTRUCTURE &CITIES: PIVOTAL SKILLSFOR NEW CHALLENGES
SOCIAL LISTENING TOREVEAL CONVERSATIONSABOUT INFRASTRUCTURE& CITIES SKILLSLESSONS LEARNED FROMSOCIAL LISTENING

CONCLUSIONSOCIAL LISTENING
TO REVEAL CONVERSATIONSABOUT INFRASTRUCTURE& CITIES SKILLS

10FOREWORDINFRASTRUCTURE &CITIES: PIVOTAL SKILLSFOR NEW CHALLENGES

Anticipating changes also means getting
more and more engaged to further developthese new skills. This starts with raisingawareness and fostering conversations
around them.
To do so, we worked with our partner Bloom,
an artificial intelligence (AI) platform
dedicated to qualitative, predictive andstrategic analysis of social networks, toperform an analysis of the different
mentions of these identified skills in theConstruction sector, more precisely for
Infrastructure & Cities.

About bloom methodology
Social networks contain an enormous
amount of information that can bemined for powerful insights. Bloom’s
unique approach uses semantic and social
inference techniques to achieve unparalleleddepth and accuracy in the analysis ofdigital communities. It exploits the uniquecharacteristics of networks to study the
propagation of information, to identify theopinions of actors and to measure theirinfluence (“social inference”). Learn more athttps://bloomsocialanalytics.com/en/

SOCIAL LISTENING TOREVEAL CONVERSATIONSABOUT INFRASTRUCTURE& CITIES SKILLSLESSONS LEARNED FROMSOCIAL LISTENING

CONCLUSION

We ran a social listening study on fivesocial media networks (Facebook, Twitter,
Instagram, YouTube & TikTok) and theirassociated websites and blogs, in two
languages (English and French) over a
one-year period (July 2021 to 2022) todiscover how those disciplines and skills are
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FOREWORDINFRASTRUCTURE &CITIES: PIVOTAL SKILLSFOR NEW CHALLENGES

discussed and by whom. The content
includes a mix of text, pictures and video
content, to see which topics are raised,
those arising, and those which gather thestrongest levels of engagement. Then we
could improve their noise, and eventuallybroaden their reach across our ecosystem.
The data set gathered 20 skills anddisciplines that we identified through our
research. Over this 12-month period, wecollected more than 100,000 documents(posts + comments) that garnered morethan 8.5 million engagements (likes, sharesand comments) from almost 3 million
unique actors.
The English language represented 94% of
all documents, and almost 100% of theactivity (documents and engagements),
even on French platforms.

100,000
more than

SOCIAL LISTENING TOREVEAL CONVERSATIONSABOUT INFRASTRUCTURE& CITIES SKILLSLESSONS LEARNED FROMSOCIAL LISTENING

CONCLUSION

documents (posts and comments)
collected

20

skills and disciplines
identified

8.5
3

million engagements
garnered from almost

million unique actors

12

FOREWORDINFRASTRUCTURE &CITIES: PIVOTAL SKILLSFOR NEW CHALLENGES
SOCIAL LISTENING TOREVEAL CONVERSATIONSABOUT INFRASTRUCTURE& CITIES SKILLSLESSONS LEARNED FROMSOCIAL LISTENING

CONCLUSIONLESSONS LEARNEDFROM SOCIAL LISTENING

13

FOREWORDINFRASTRUCTURE &CITIES: PIVOTAL SKILLSFOR NEW CHALLENGES

So, what did we learn? Let’s see first who istalking about Infrastructure & Cities skills,
and on which platform.

computer-designed monuments withstructures in wood, steel, aluminum, glass,limestone, etc.

• Twitter by far hosted the mostconversations on the skills topics,
accounting for 75% of the posts andcomments. However, it shows a very low
activity (documents plus engagements),
accounting for only 2%. This network
gathers many publications from all kindsof actors: journalists sharing their views,
companies highlighting their know-how,academics, experts or architects sharing
learning and opinions on future cities, witha shared focus on mobility and innovativemeans of transportation.

• TikTok is second, generating about 16%of the activity, primarily featuring tutorials
or videos published by civil engineering
influencers showcasing specific disciplines
and why they are critical in today’s cities, aswell as engineers who share their personal
expertise and daily work.

• Instagram generated the largest activity
among the platforms with 69% of the total
activity. Mostly architecture and design
enthusiasts are sharing inspiring and visual

SOCIAL LISTENING TOREVEAL CONVERSATIONSABOUT INFRASTRUCTURE& CITIES SKILLSLESSONS LEARNED FROMSOCIAL LISTENING

CONCLUSION• YouTube accounted for 12% of all activity, ahigh percentage of which being academics,
engineering experts or companies providing
information in the field of civil engineering
through teaching, tutorials, advices or
education courses.
• Facebook accounted for less than 1% of
both activities and documents. It does notseem to be the right place to engage peopleon such topics.
14

FOREWORDINFRASTRUCTURE &CITIES: PIVOTAL SKILLSFOR NEW CHALLENGES

More generally, the study confirms that
individuals, whether they are engineeringexperts or architecture enthusiasts, are now
the primary path for passing on information
within the targeted communities. With
the same amount of content posted, theygenerate more engagement than academics
or companies.
Video formats especially work best when it
comes to illustrating complex and technicalskills. An engineer is making the buzz on
TikTok for example (@everydayengineering),
garnering almost 163,000 followers withtutorial videos like one describing the “day inthe life of a civil engineer”.

SOCIAL LISTENING TOREVEAL CONVERSATIONSABOUT INFRASTRUCTURE& CITIES SKILLSDOCUMENTS BY PLATFORM

LESSONS LEARNED FROMSOCIAL LISTENING

YOUTUBE

CONCLUSIONINSTAGRAMTWITTERACTIVITY BY PLATFORM

TIKTOK
INSTAGRAMYOUTUBETWITTER
15

FOREWORDINFRASTRUCTURE &CITIES: PIVOTAL SKILLSFOR NEW CHALLENGES

KEY TAKEAWAYS: THE STATE OF CONVERSATIONS ABOUT SKILLSSOCIAL LISTENING TOREVEAL CONVERSATIONSABOUT INFRASTRUCTURE& CITIES SKILLSLESSONS LEARNED FROMSOCIAL LISTENING

We can observe from the social media
analysis that foundational and technicalskills of the Infrastructure & Cities sector
are being discussed and can trigger strong
engagement, when addressed in an engaging
way. But there is still a massive opportunity
for emerging pivotal disciplines to be profiled
as well, helping to explain how critical they
are and which jobs require them, now andin the future.
Let’s make a deep dive into these key skills,
either foundational or pivotal:
Civil engineering
As a foundational and very established skill,
Civil Engineering is the most discussed
today, and also shows a strong potential

in the future. It triggers high interest andnumerous reactions, both in English andFrench languages. For now, it is particularly
visible in India (47% of documents in English)on TikTok (42%) and YouTube (32%). The
conversations are mostly coming fromengineers and academics sharing about
their daily work and expertise, providing
explanatory videos or training courses.

CONCLUSION

Generative and computational design
With almost 5 million engagements for only
11,000 documents, this skill generates a lotof reactions on social media, and triggers
highly positive emotions due to the esthetics
of such discipline. It is mostly addressed
through the hashtag #computationaldesign
on Instagram, by design enthusiasts who
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FOREWORDINFRASTRUCTURE &CITIES: PIVOTAL SKILLSFOR NEW CHALLENGES

share inspiring computer-designed work ofart. It is mainly showing how computationaland generative design can help cities become
more attractive and unique.
Sustainable engineering
Overall, sustainable engineering shows
good presence in conversations, mostly
on Instagram (68%), with high emotional
intensity, and this ﬁeld is expected to become
increasingly important in the future. It is
however rarely discussed as a skill but more
a topic in general, namely by architecture
professionals and enthusiasts publishingbest-in-class examples of sustainablebuildings and ideas to meet net zero in theconstruction industry, or design experts
speaking about the importance of green
construction for future cities.

When it comes to related skills, carbon
footprint management is also rarely
discussed as a skill but rather when
discussing climate change challenges. It
shows high potential as a topic addressedin conversation for the future as well. It is
discussed mainly by institutions and NGOs,
and most conversations are on Twitter (90%,and even 95% in the French language),and related to greener mobility in cities.
In the French language, Carbon footprint
Management is even more powerful and themost common entry point for environmentrelated topics, much more than Eco-Design,
which shows less potential in the future.

SOCIAL LISTENING TOREVEAL CONVERSATIONSABOUT INFRASTRUCTURE& CITIES SKILLSLESSONS LEARNED FROMSOCIAL LISTENING

CONCLUSION

Urban data management
Data in the Infrastructure & Cities sector
gathers a quite reasonable number of
documents (14,4k documents for the
English language) but engagement remains
17

FOREWORDINFRASTRUCTURE &CITIES: PIVOTAL SKILLSFOR NEW CHALLENGES

low, with only 15,5k reactions. However,
the related skills seem to gain interest
mostly on Twitter. The platform gathers
many job offers and demands, namely for
Data Science PhD positions in the fields ofurban geography, urban resilience or urban
logistics.
Remaining
conversations
gatherprofessionals (engineers or data specialists)
who share their latest tips and news about
their job, or researchers, for whom Urban
Data Science is often associated with Spatial
Data Science, highlighted as a way to create
more inclusive cities and fight against
inequalities. They spread the news on
Twitter by sharing their opinion andknowledge
duringworkshops
and,sometimes, sharing their results on detailed
papers with open access.

Digital collaboration
With a low volume of conversations, digitalcollaboration needs to regain attention,
as it is pivotal to accelerate the sector’stransformation. Digital collaboration acrossdifferent disciplines and between the
different Infrastructure & cities’ actors is
key to enable science-based decisions
and policies. Good news is, thepotential on this topic is very high,namely because of the emotions
it can trigger, which are unanimously
positive. It’s now time to convince and handover the conversation to individuals, who
can generate more engagement aroundthis pivotal skill, for example bydemonstrating how citizen engagement
can contribute to better decision-making by
public authorities.

SOCIAL LISTENING TOREVEAL CONVERSATIONSABOUT INFRASTRUCTURE& CITIES SKILLSLESSONS LEARNED FROMSOCIAL LISTENING

CONCLUSION

18

FOREWORDINFRASTRUCTURE &CITIES: PIVOTAL SKILLSFOR NEW CHALLENGES
SOCIAL LISTENING TOREVEAL CONVERSATIONSABOUT INFRASTRUCTURE& CITIES SKILLSLESSONS LEARNED FROMSOCIAL LISTENING

CONCLUSIONCONCLUSION

19

FOREWORDINFRASTRUCTURE &CITIES: PIVOTAL SKILLSFOR NEW CHALLENGES

Knowledge and know-how are what will
help people to make a difference in theway we address current sustainability
challenges. And social conversations, asboth a mirror of and an engine forthese new skills, are crucial to ensuring
their identification, attention and theirdevelopment for the current workforce
and future graduates.

We will keep measuring engagement around those skills, andcontinue to work hard in this direction with all our partners, either
from business or academia. We will also continue to facilitate theseconversations and drive innovative ideas and approaches togenerate more engagement.

In this sense, and as the skills gap continues
to widen, finding new ways to communicate
about these skills to help them gain
momentum, and measuring engagement
around them, is critical. The result of thisstudy is irrevocable: effort has to be made tofoster conversations about these pivotal skills.

Visit our Skills website for more information.
#pivotalskills #foundationalskills #logistics#virtualtwinexperience #urbandatamanagement#ecodesign #buildingdesign #sustainableengineering#dataengineering #carbonfootprintmanagement#systemsengineering #structuralengineering#generativedesign #supplychainplanning#civilengineering #simulation #leanmanagement#dataanalysis #datascience #mobilityplanning#configurationmanagement #digitalcollaboration#projectmanagement

Social listening offers powerful means tounderstand the state of the conversations
around this essential topic for Infrastructure& Cities sector’s transformation.

SOCIAL LISTENING TOREVEAL CONVERSATIONSABOUT INFRASTRUCTURE& CITIES SKILLSLESSONS LEARNED FROMSOCIAL LISTENING

CONCLUSION

But we’ll need your help to accelerate: it’s time to join theconversation! We look forward to seeing your own social media
campaigns on skills. See you soon there!

20

For more information, visit our 3DEXPERIENCE
Edu Skills website

Our 3DEXPERIENCE® platform powers our brand applications, serving
11 industries, and provides a rich portfolio of industry solution experiences.
Dassault Systèmes, the 3DEXPERIENCE Company, is a catalyst for human progress. We provide business and people withcollaborative virtual environments to imagine sustainable innovations. By creating ‘virtual experience twins’ of the real world
with our 3DEXPERIENCE platform and applications, our customers push the boundaries of innovation, learning and production.
Dassault Systèmes’ 20,000 employees are bringing value to more than 300,000 customers of all sizes, in all industries, inmore than 140 countries. For more information, visit www.3ds.com.

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FOREWORDINFRASTRUCTURE &CITIES: PIVOTAL SKILLSFOR NEW CHALLENGES
SOCIAL LISTENING TOREVEAL CONVERSATIONSABOUT INFRASTRUCTURE& CITIES SKILLSLESSONS LEARNED FROMSOCIAL LISTENING

CONCLUSION

21