The reality you can face at a service station can be somewhat different. Their cars' weakest aspect has been the built-in SatNav. Called 'Touch and Go’ the last three have all been completely different, with no shared family resemblance - and they seem to be getting less user-friendly. The latest incarnation started freezing a few months ago, just before a service, but when we pointed out the problem, we were told we needed to give the garage more notice and they couldn't look at it. It felt as if they were ducking the problem.

The problem has since got markedly worse, so before this service we gave plenty of notice. At first the garage said no action was needed. Then they reset the unit at our insistence, and finally, reluctantly, accepted that there was a problem……… but they would need to do some research on the internet to find a solution. They want us to bring it back another time, with the 20-mile round trip that entails.

And their proposed solution is not to reload the software - it is to change the unit. However, to us the key problem now seems obvious: we are dealing with a garage that is full of mechanics. They have happily taken our money to do the mechanical servicing and evidently hope we will be happy that the engine and wheels are running smoothly as we have in the past.

But the customer has changed! We take the fact that the car 'runs' for granted - that is why I buy a Toyota! Increasingly the key differentiator for a car is the way it integrates with our digital lives and the SatNav is at the centre of that. A bunch of mechanics don't want to move out of their comfort zone and engage with IT software - and they don't seem to understand why their customer now sees this as a big, big problem! Their answer to a software problem is an expensive mechanical one - take out the problem component and replace it with a new one!

The same transformation is happening - where the digital asset the customer receives is becoming as important as the actual physical asset. And from some tweets from designers at the Bentley conference I'm not sure if the design community have yet understood what their customers are starting to demand. 

And increasingly our clients are expecting legacy data from us that is accurate and in the format they need to operate their infrastructure into the future. The virtual asset is becoming as important to them as the physical one we have designed, manufactured and constructed. It's no longer good enough to deliver a roll of dodgy 'as-built' drawings two years after handover. Infrastructure clients now need accurate models delivered in advance of opening to enable 'soft landings' for their operations and maintenance teams.

If Toyota don't step up to their digital responsibilities and sort out my SatNav they may be losing a repeat customer, and I'll be looking forward to Google or Apple entering the car market (as is often rumoured). Similarly, if teams in the construction industry don't realise that they now need to produce accurate digital assets in parallel to the physical ones they will find they lose clients to those that do. It doesn't matter how good the design looks on paper, or how well built the final project is. If the customer doesn't get the data they asked for they won't shop with you again.