It’s no doubt that digital advances may boost efficiency while also assisting the construction sector in navigating changes and reducing risk. Following the COVID-19 outbreak, many project managers have been obliged to increase their usage of technology in order to allow their teams to work and collaborate remotely.
However, the adoption of digital technologies has been limited beyond the current crisis. This is owing to a lack of digital guidelines and experience in the sector, at least in part. Furthermore, most stakeholders are likely to anticipate hefty initial costs and a long wait before seeing a return on their investment. Owners of multibillion-dollar enterprises are understandably cautious about trying out new digital tools. And, because project success is often dependent on cooperation, introducing new digital workflows—which may be unknown to some of the participants—can be intimidating.
However, the benefits may be greater—, and the hurdles may be lower—than many business actors anticipate. A fully digital construction project can decrease drawing revisions, duplicate dialogues, and version errors throughout the design process while also minimizing project risk and making clash detection easier. Going digital also helps with procurement across job packages and time, improving safety and enabling improved personnel planning and machinery use. Of course, getting these benefits necessitates parties’ willingness to try new approaches and radically change the way projects are run.
Basis of Digital Construction
The goal is to incorporate digital tools into the construction phase in order to influence the following factors:
- Collaboration. A digital control tower brings together owner representatives, the lead contractor, and subcontractors to draw up plans and monitor progress around a single source of truth, which includes a detailed integrated plan.
- Monitoring and forecasting. The regular 3D site scans linked to the BIM model using drones, stationary and hand-held scanners can automatically detect deviations, foresee future disputes in constructability or work-package execution, and ultimately input into the digital control tower’s reporting dashboards.
- Worker safety and material flow. Sensor-based safety equipment helps workers follow safety protocols more carefully and stay aware of their surroundings, resulting in a safer and more focused on-site work environment.
In digital construction, pushing technological boundaries is less crucial than a shared commitment to changing how things are done. Most architects and engineers already use BIM, but finding other key partners who have experience with it can be difficult or who are willing to try new things as part of a fully digital construction model.
The applications of digital tools attract the interest of the majority of contractors. Executing contractors, in particular, are concerned that implementing digital technologies may result in extra work, particularly at the start of the project. This reluctance is understandable—3D site scans, digital tracking tools, and worker sensor devices require budgeting, and some essential work, like drafting a more detailed schedule, has yet to be done.
Indeed, you must not only champion concrete, detailed data but also reset the common concept of cooperation before putting these digital technologies to action. The digital control tower is designed to help stakeholders move away from reporting on certain milestones and toward routine, near-real-time reporting that enables autonomous problem-solving.
More importantly, walking together toward rollout is critical for establishing trust in the tools. Digital technologies add value by serving as catalysts for a shared understanding, truths, and success, rather than reinforcing outdated systems where the project owner exerts control and contractors struggle to deliver.
Of course, while BIM will always be a priority, its importance will vary depending on where a construction company is in the value chain. For example, BIM will be viewed differently by promoters, contractors, equipment manufacturers, and facility management operators. Similarly, multiple BIM techniques will be employed by contractors, building, and infrastructure players. This will very certainly result in a shift in value capture throughout the supply chain. Better engineering and better-managed project lead times and decreased waste may benefit general contractors more, while building material suppliers may suffer some volume decline. To gain revenue, this may encourage greater unification and further concentration of building material suppliers.
Remember Top-Line Opportunities
When it comes to dealing with clients, digital is frequently thought to be only about operations. Construction firms are generally driven and dominated by their construction sites, so this way of thinking is easy to understand. But, the days of contractors who were solely focused on “site production” and had no marketing functions are long gone. They, like other firms, must now rethink the consumer experience and develop new products. Even if they are more advanced on the subject, other parties along the value chain will need to support this new way of thinking.
Clients are getting more involved in their own projects, for example, through increased visualization and even engagement in planning. Furthermore, easing their often-heavy administrative burdens and genuinely caring about their satisfaction at each point of their trip becomes a priority. The platformization of the promoter business is also a part of this shift, as it strives to lower costs and improve the client experience.
It’s now “less about the product and more about the service,” The sector’s stakeholders must become more adaptable, separating themselves from the old-fashioned and not always transparent “brick and mortar” style of doing business. Clients now seek a “product + services package,” performance tracking and guarantees on a variety of metrics, as well as many others pertaining to health, the environment, and security, for example), and financial and legal assistance. All possibilities are there for creative expression. Clients, on the whole, want their needs to be prioritized.
Clients, overall, want their needs to be emphasized. It’s no longer about rushing a project to market; instead, it’s about collaborating with the client and incorporating his continuously changing needs. In the future, “top-line” client needs must take their appropriate place as critical inputs for digital strategy. Considering that competition will now, more than ever, take place in this domain, this is a crucial paradigm shift.
If the work practices do not change, all of the above potentials will most likely remain theoretical. Digitalization encompasses not only technology but also structure, procedures, and people. Even yet, it’s not enough because ultimately, it’s the company’s culture that’s at stake. Digitalizing a firm entails changing its behaviors and creating a revitalized purpose and identity matched with these behaviors over time.
