The Future of Technology in the Construction Industry

Technology touches virtually every facet of construction. From Building Information Modeling (BIM) software to 3D printing, from drones and crane cameras to mobile apps, hardly anyone working in construction today isn’t using some form of digital technology.

Yet failing to adopt new technologies poses a substantial risk to the industry.

Emerging construction technologies offer the potential for a radical shift in how we build and the performance of the buildings we deliver. We must find ways to overcome the multiple obstacles that stand in the way of achieving that potential.

First, the margins just aren’t there that would allow builders to experiment with new tools like other industries. Many different industries are able to invest heavily in new technologies because their profit margins are as high as 20 per cent, making it easy to just move on if they don’t meet expectations or deliver value. According to the North American Industry Classification System, the average profit margin for commercial and industrial building construction is 2.1 per cent.

That leaves little room to experiment with costly technology that may or may not prove effective. When we try new technology, it needs to (in most cases) be inexpensive, it must demonstrably add value immediately, be easy to use without training (or nobody will use it), and with luck, it must be able to replicate that value over the long-term across multiple one-off projects.

A robot that automates the drywall finishing process provides an excellent example of the struggle to adopt new technology. Finding tools like this is important as the construction labor market shrinks. The technology is positioned to change the way we finish drywall across all of our projects and likely throughout the industry. We would like to incorporate this tool into our technology tool stack; however, cost remains a barrier. With that said, there will no doubt be an inflexion point where it pencils in the near future. The question is, how much can we afford to invest in getting ahead of the curve while we wait for that inflexion point?

On the other hand, Smart sheet hit all the right buttons for us immediately. This feature-rich, easy-to-learn cloud-based spreadsheet came to our attention when one employee on a project started using it. Others found it to be really useful, and it started getting adopted organically throughout the company. We found it was making everyone more productive and removing pain points immediately, so we evaluated whether we could scale it companywide. When we validated it could scale, we did.

Technologies are coming at us faster and faster, promising to revolutionize the industry, but few of them ever do. The first technology imperative is sifting through all that noise while committing the least number of resources to identify those tools that provide immediate value and have the potential to disrupt construction. If we don’t search out, test, and adopt technologies that add value, others will, and we will be left behind. Yet construction margins do not support being on that leading edge, and it quickly becomes the bleeding edge.

For this vision of a tech-enabled future, we need to transform from an information-hoarding industry into an information-sharing industry. Builders rarely share what they learn from project to project with competitors. We see those learning as a value we can bring to our next client. But that pays off only if the next client wants to build something very similar to the project that produced that learning. Clients want us to build what THEY want, not what WE recently built.

That seamless transfer of knowledge from platform to the platform must be based on broadly shared information, not just the data each company has accumulated. Knowledge sharing -- like we see in other industries -- will benefit all of us.

While we wait for the catalyst that aligns the industry around this notion, we are keeping an eye on a number of technologies, including.

Artificial Intelligence can do the heavy lift analysis and provide actionable data using analytics and insights.

Robotics, can remove our workers from harm’s way and supplement a shrinking workforce, as well as allow us to be more efficient with the workforce we have.

The Internet of Things, sensors, and smart devices help us capture data from the field and measure the performance of our buildings in real time during and post-construction.

Conceptual design tools leverage the rapid iteration capabilities to move the design process forward more quickly and evaluate more options.

Virtual, Mixed, and Augmented Reality -- and their inevitable transformation into the metaverse -- hold tremendous promise for bringing people together in virtual settings, enabling the construction of digital twins of the buildings we are planning to build (so we can identify challenges and solutions before a shovel hits the ground), and layering vital information directly on top of a work area.

I don’t know what catalyst will launch the technology revolution the construction industry sorely needs. In the taxi industry, it was Uber, which owns no vehicles. Media was upended by Facebook, which produces no original content. The lodging industry is struggling to compete with Airbnb, which maintains no real estate. Somewhere, perhaps in a garage, someone is developing a technology that will awaken construction to the need for a new approach based on knowledge sharing, seamless integration of tools, and end-to-end digital processes.

Until then, we will continue to filter out the noise, put promising new technologies through their paces, and adopt what adds value.