Approaches of Implementing ICT Technologies within the Construction Industry

Abstract

Industry in general has seen many technological developments in recent decades. However, the construction industry has not kept pace particularly within the area of information and communication technologies (ICTs). This could be for many reasons notably including the fragmented structure of the industry. Many studies regard the construction industry's failure to keep pace with ICTs as a major problem affecting its performance. Hence, they have tried to diagnose the problem in this regard. Many drivers have seen the successful adoption of new ICTs within other industries with this trend now emerging within the construction industry. Because of the increasing awareness among practitioners of the benefits of utilising ICTs within construction, the recent decade has seen many construction projects harnessing ICTs methods and strategies in construction. This paper has an exploratory approach with the aim of reviewing the existing research publications on the subject, describing the current state of ICTs in construction industry, and introducing some successful methods. The presented discussions will provide guidelines for practitioners and policy makers in the construction industry regarding the advantages of adopting ICTs for enhancing the efficiency of the construction industry. The methods introduced could be beneficial for key construction stakeholders in developing countries by presenting the advantages gained from merging ICTs into construction projects processes based on methods previously tested in developed economies.

What Causes Companies to Transform Digitally? An Overview of Drivers for Australian Key Industries

“…In the construction industry, the implementation of information and communication technologies has been proven to lead to productivity improvements [28]. The employment of BIM (Business Information Models) is widely considered to improve productivity [29] [30].…”

“…• Idiosyncrasies of the industry The construction industry is characterized by many factors that represent challenges and characteristics proper of the sector, including tight scheduling, high dependency on information and communication, being comprised by SMEs, proximity issues, project orientation of the industry, multi-organizational structure, necessity of multi-disciplinary skills and temporary or short term nature of the business. Digital technologies help facing most of these issues and support these characteristics [28].…”

“…The use of digital technologies allows companies to address these aspects and more generally to achieve productivity improvements. Reference [28] analyzing previous studies [48][49] [50] and claims that the implementation of ICTs increases the level of productivity in construction processes. Along with ICTs, the most popular technology employed by construction companies is the Building Information Model (BIM).…”

Performance Evaluation for Global Virtual Teams (GVTs): Application of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA)

“…Heavy reliance of GVTs on ICTs (Booth, 2011, Hosseini et al, 2012 increases their vulnerability to technological problems. In addition, the inferior quality of communications via ICTs in GVTs in comparison to conventional teams is another drawback of using ICTs as the main medium (Hertel et al, 2005).…”

Exploring behavioural factors for information sharing in BIM projects in the Malaysian construction industry

“…Building Information Modeling (BIM) is known as one of the initiatives to enhance information management throughout the building life cycle (Akponeware and Adamu, 2017;Liu et al, 2017). The benefits include delivering precise project information with greater visualisation via multi-dimensional modeling capabilities that enhance the quality of communication on projects (Hosseini et al, 2012). Despite the wave of enthusiasm for BIM as an information sharing platform, the problem associated with information sharing among project teams within BIM projects still exist.…”