Last year was the worst for the construction industry as it faced an immeasurable amount of disruptions and income loss. Fortunately, despite the restrictions, delays, and lockdowns, construction stakeholders remained tenacious by establishing new safety standards to combat the virus.
What the construction industry accomplished last year has set the tone for the technological innovations that will make more sense this year and beyond.
What the construction industry needs now are tools, gadgets, and systems that will maximize productivity, lessen overhead expenses, improve collaboration, and minimize occupational hazards and accidents.
AI-powered devices, smart orange cones, wearables, and drones are a few of these tools.
Technological advancements that can aid the industry achieve all of these will surely gather a massive following and support this year and in the years to come. Here are four fantastic tech innovations projected to match these needs and bring more business to construction firms.
1. Expanding use and adoption of Digital Twin
Digital twins are a kind of technology used by the people and system involved in the design and preconstruction processes to spot possible mistakes they need to avoid keeping the company from shelling out money for rework.
Despite being extremely useful, this technology has been underutilized in the past. It only held a 20% market share in 2016. Two years later, the said market share increased by 37%.
Because of the health risks brought by the pandemic, this technology became essential since it has remote capabilities. The same capabilities allowed remote teams to collaborate in coming up with preconstruction strategies.
Juniper Research revealed that Digital Twin would continue to grow its market share this year and beyond because of these capabilities.
2. Growth of digital construction
Due to the pandemic, Virtual Design and Construction (VDC), Building Information Modeling (BIM), and Computer-Aided Design (CAD) also grew immensely popular. In fact, researchers project that by 2025, the growth of these industries will reach 8.8 billion.
Analysis by private research groups also suggested that the rise of digital construction could redeem the industry from the economic slump it suffered within the last four years. While doing that, it’s also said to address such issues as labor scarcity and rising labor costs.
Aside from its remote benefits, contractors can also benefit from BIM because of its coordination in the whole construction cycle.
Clashes and misunderstandings are also easier tracked and eliminated before they could happen in the field. As such, unforeseen costs and project delays are eliminated.
3.Active usage of VR and AR
The need for remote capabilities and pandemic-related constraints has also intensified the interest in VR and AR technology.
With interactive experiences, those involved in the planning and build can study and check trade designs, suggest changes, and coordinate the same without coming to the site.
Even if the technology adaption and widespread adoption could take time and demand more funding, it’s still gaining a massive following because of convenience and ease of collaboration. It’s expected that it will grow even more and will be more extensively used.
4. Improvement in on-site data and analytics software usage
This year and in the coming year, the construction industry is also said to explore more data and analytics software. In the past, construction managers struggled in streamlining their operations.
With the use of accurate and up-to-date data, a better and more realistic analysis is made. Because of this, the considerable gap between information and decision is bridged.
Since the remote operation is increasing, both the pre-construction and actual construction execution database are expected to grow. Since there are various parties involved in the build, relaying information from one person to another has been challenging.
To remedy this problem, builds should be analyzed remotely for the project leads to know their team’s progress and check the field status.
Though the pandemic has caused various repercussions to different industries, there’s no denying that it also gave birth to many technological breakthroughs. Construction firms may have suffered from these repercussions.
However, with the help of new and upcoming technology, it would only take a matter of time before the losses are recovered and new systems smoothen the old and unfit ones. These technologies may also cost the construction firms a substantial amount as investments.
Still, when you take a closer look at it, the benefits these technologies offer will always outweigh the costs.