Investigating Adoption of Digital Technologies in Construction Projects

Abstract

This thesis investigates the adoption of digital technologies to improve logistics processes in construction projects. The focus is on the main contractor firms and construction projects, but first-tier suppliers, transportation firms, and technology vendors are also considered. The logistics processes that are studied are order-to-delivery processes and onsite logistics. Order-to-delivery processes and on-site logistics play a critical role in ensuring the availability of goods for the construction process, in the right amount and time, at the right location, and without damage.Inefficient logistics processes that do not support construction projects with the right resources (materials, tools, and machinery) are one reason for low construction project performance. Inefficient logistics processes cause disruptions to construction projects, such as material stockouts, material surpluses, unavailability, idle waiting and searching time, and waste (e.g., damages). On a larger scale, inefficient logistics processes cause significant project delays and cost overruns. Therefore, improving logistics processes can improve construction project performance.To address the inefficiencies of logistics processes, main contractor firms face increased pressure to adopt digital technologies. It is known that adopting digital technologies can improve communication between project stakeholders, construction automation, and data acquisition, visualization, and analytics. The adoption of digital technologies has also been reported to improve the construction process, such as design, production, logistics, and procurement of materials and services. However, the adoption of digital technologies is a complex and inter-organizational process, and the industry's decentralized, project-driven nature makes many efforts ad hoc and one-of-a-kind endeavors. Moreover, there needs to be more clarity in the path of digital technology adoption for increasing construction project performance. A knowledge gap in this context has been a lack of actionable recommendations to practitioners, such as main contractor firms.Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to formulate recommendations for the adoption of digital technologies that enable the main contractor firms to improve logistics processes. Based on this, the following research questions guide the research: RQ1: What are the drivers and barriers for the adoption of digital technologies at the project level from a main contractor perspective? RQ2: What are the effects on logistics processes when adopting digital technologies in construction projects? iv RQ3: What are the lessons learnt from the adoption of digital technologies in construction projects?The findings identify drivers and barriers to adopting digital technologies at the project level from a main contractor perspective, the effects of adopting digital technologies, and lessons learnt from adopting digital technologies in construction projects. Furthermore, a successful technology adoption process is driven by identifying the drivers a...

Adoption Behaviour of Digital Technologies by Firms: Evidence from South Africa’s Manufacturing Sector

“…Evidence from empirical studies shows that some scholars have made attempts to understand the various factors influencing the adoption of digital technology by firms (Avenyo et al, 2022; Gholami, 2023; Park, 2019; Vrontis et al, 2022). Other previous studies have focussed on digital technologies adoption and its link to value creation (Vrontis et al, 2022), use of digital technologies, and how it affects firm innovative performance (Usai et al, 2021), nexus between digital technology adoption and knowledge flows (Forman & Zeebroeck, 2019) and impact of digital technologies adoption on firm supply chains (e.g., Yang et al, 2021).…”